Fear indeed! Fear keeps those radio talk show hosts in business. Fear keeps the gun shop owners and gun show promoters in business. Fear is what has more than doubled right-wing extremist groups in the past year.
"The only thing we have to fear…is fear itself!" A wise man once said that. He knew then - as any historian knows now — that fear is perhaps the greatest enabler of persecution, of tyranny, of atrocity.
This, too, will pass. In the decades to come, when whites are no longer the majority race in America and the Republican party finally confronts its own imminent marginalization, then and only then will they begin to realize the magnitude of the long-term error of Kevin Phillips' Southern Strategy, his cognizance of the Southern whites' Fear of a Black Planet. Perhaps it will then be too late to avoid marginalization… but given the fact that both major political parties have remade themselves before, there is hope for them yet. But it will surely be a painful transition, as all political upheavals are wont to be.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Dave Nalle
Sen. Edward Brooke (1967-1979) (who was by today's standards more liberal than most Democrats), Rep. Oscar DePriest (1929-1935), Rep. Gary Franks (1991-1997), and J.C. Watts (1995-2003)…and none of these were from the South, the home of the KKK
Glenn. First I suggest that you go and find a map of the United States and locate Oklahoma on it. Then locate the Mason-Dixon line and extend it westward. Where is Oklahoma relative to that line?
Second I suggest that you go check out a history book and look up the history of the KKK. In particular look into the period of its greatest popularity which was in the 1920s. Note which states it was most popular in under the leadership of David C. Stephenson. It had chapters in 22 states when he was Grand Dragon. Almost all of them were located in the north.
Dave
2 - Glenn Contrarian
Dave -
First, those of us from the Deep South do not consider Oklahoma as being part of the South. In all honesty, where I grew up we considered neither Florida - the Great Northern Retirement Home - nor Texas part of the South. Texas, as far as the Deep South is concerned, is "out west".
Second, if you'll look at your map, there's a WHOLE LOT MORE STATES in the North than in the South. Furthermore, at the time of the "Second Klan":
The Klan had major political influence in several states and was influential mostly in the center of the country. The Klan spread from the South into the Midwest and Northern states, and into Canada where there was a large movement against Catholic immigrants. At its peak, Klan membership exceeded four million and comprised 20% of the adult white male population in many broad geographic regions, and 40% in some areas.] Most of the Klan's membership resided in Midwestern states.
3 - zingzing
"First, those of us from the Deep South do not consider Oklahoma as being part of the South."
oklahoma? the south? you have to be kidding. dave, that's the midwest. "the south" is the southeast, even according to you plains or desert folk. the south extends to missusuapai, but don't stend no futhu. we out hea don't tend to no plane that go in no bread baskut. we just tend on our coasts. o-griginal colonies, we are, just from maryland down to georgia. arkansas go go fuck it self. maybe florda counts, but that's just a bunch of snowbirds.
don't put no oklahoma shit on us lest we put some oklahoma shit on you, texas boy.
4 - zingzing
glenn--fear of a black planet is probably the best production job i've ever heard. a lot of people would point to nation of millions, but fear is just information overload. one of the greatest albums ever made. i know you're talking about a lot more than this, but i just thought i'd go for the music. (and the music is always more important than the stupid politics, so
5 - Arch Conservative
If you don't share Glenn's political views you're a racist?
Didn't see that one coming. I mean the entire article is so original and refreshing.
The pulitzer is in the mail I'm sure Glenn.
6 - Glenn Contrarian
Dave -
Now that I have a spare moment to finish my reply, your comment on the KKK is essentially a non sequitur.
But let me digress for a moment. Up until yesterday afternoon - after my article had been published - I had bought into the belief (taught me back in the days when I still thought the Confederacy was a pretty cool thing) that the Civil War was never about slavery, but more about commerce issues and states rights. Even until YESTERDAY, Dave, the conservatives had me - a left-wing moonbat - fooled!
But I happened upon a quote from the Mississippi Declaration of Succession, and the Civil War WAS all about slavery! From beginning to end, the document declares the 'absolute necessity' of slavery and decries the growing hostility of the northern states to said institution of human bondage. The NAACP was right all along, and the old white men I listened to were flat wrong.
Remember - I've got deep roots there. All my direct ancestors (save one) all the way back to before the Civil War lay in a small cemetery not five miles from my house there.
Was Mississippi's declaration perhaps an aberration? So I checked, and it was NOT. Georgia felt the same way, and - to an only slightly lesser extent - so did Texas.
And now you see in me the tendency carried on by so many in the South who even now - nearly 145 years after Lee's surrender at Appomattox Courthouse - still argue about the War and its causes. Those in Texas won't do so to the same degree, for while you did spend blood and treasure for the Confederacy, there were no major battlegrounds in Texas. Our major monuments are the major battlegrounds of the War - your monuments are from your war of independence from Mexico.
But from this day forward I know the truth - the Civil War truly WAS the "war against slavery", as this article from the Texas-based right-wing Wallbuilders is gracious enough to show.
But that's not what my article is about, Dave. What my article IS about is the continued tolerance for racists within the Republican party, and about a pivotal political strategem (the Southern Strategy) which played upon the fears stoked by racism. My article is NOT about the KKK of the 1920's. I'd appreciate it if you'd address the issues I raised in my article.
7 - Glenn Contrarian
erratum - Lee's surrender was just over 145 years ago - April 7th, 1865.
8 - Glenn Contrarian
doggone it! April 9th, 1865! Sometimes being a little obsessive-compulsive is a real pain in the keister!
9 - Glenn Contrarian
Arch -
The Republican party certainly does not condone racism...but does knowingly tolerate racists. I provided solid proof of this within the article. Whether or not you want to agree with the facts is of no consequence.
10 - Ruvy
Chairman of the Republican National Coeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeemittee,
Glenn, leaving aside entirely the content of the article (which I haven't fully read yet), it really strikes me as odd that no editor caught this blooper on Page 1. I realize that the immense salaries they receive for their work can be used to justify this kind of carelessness, but it still makes the site look bad.
11 - Ruvy
Well, Glenn, I finally did read the full article. When are you going to seek to have the Republican party banned in America as racist? That is the next logical step, isn't it?
Oh, and in case any editors are actually reading this, the blooper in the article is still there, and is on Page 2 of the article, not Page 1. Feel free to edit out this paragraph and comment #10 when you have actually corrected the error.
12 - Doug Hunter
A read I suppose, nothing I haven't come to expect from you. I think your comment regarding the reasons for secession would have made a better article (perhaps shown some light on a little ignorance), although more historical than political, but still applicable in either case.
I don't know whether governers of certain southern states harbor racist sentiment. What I do know is that racism has been made into a witchhunt and a default argument by some (yourself included). You have trouble admitting a call to kill whites is a racist comment on one hand, yet it's enough to be convict someone else based on a photograph with somebody, who's part of some organization, that at some time held racist views.
Of course, it seems entirely baseless and illogical to me, but that's a different worldview. In the ultimate of ironies, someone like me (or perhaps MLK) who believes in a colorblind society is now considered racist, while those who support encoding racial preference and special treatment are considered innocent of the same. Skin color is no different than eye or hair color.
In a nation of 300,000,000+ and 299,999,999+ camera phones it's fairly rare to catch someone higher than a D-lister in life doing anything overtly racist. There are a tiny fringe on Stormfront, etc. and almost every year someone dies in a hate crime (usually homosexuals). We don't really have far to go except in the mind of the older generations who must view everything through a racist prism. Have faith though, the youth in this country aren't burdened with that handicap. Can race be let go, or must we simply let all the racists die off?
13 - Dr Dreadful
"served two terms as Chairman of the Republican National Coeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeemittee"
Whoa... what?!?!?!?
Now I need to wait for my brain to stop ringing before I read the rest of this.
14 - Dr Dreadful
Since 1901, there have been exactly THREE African-American Republicans elected to Congress: Sen. Edward Brooke (1967-1979) (who was by today's standards more liberal than most Democrats), Rep. Oscar DePriest (1929-1935), Rep. Gary Franks (1991-1997), and J.C. Watts (1995-2003)…
That's four, not three.
Who edited this?
15 - Glenn Contrarian
To all -
As I pointed out to Arch-Con, the Republican party does not condone racism, but DOES tolerate racists...and I provided proof of this within my article. Furthermore, I pointed out that there is real hope for the Republican party to change since history shows that political parties can radically change, that the Republicans were once the only party that really supported civil rights for African-Americans.
Sistah Souljah's "moment" looks like a racist call to arms...until one examines the CONTEXT of her words, of her life. Governor Haley Barbour's "[slavery] doesn't mean diddly" statement can even seem somewhat reasonable...until one examines the CONTEXT of the life he's lived.
In my experience, most conservatives don't think racism is nearly so big a deal as liberals make it out to be. But then, why is it that even now, 55 years after Brown vs. Board of Education, are there schools in strongly-conservative small-town Mississippi having to be forced by court order to comply with desegregation?
America's come a long, long way when it comes to racism...but we've still got so very far to go.
16 - cannonshop
Ah, where to start?
it isn't like this is unexpected. A few articles ago, I finally realized that Contrarian really CAN'T comprehend the idea that someone might be opposing his holiness the One, the Gentleman from Chicago, hte Occupant of the White-House, without being a racist.
It's simply not possible, in Glenn's world. Probably one of the most toxic legacies of Jim Crow, is the obsession with skin colour, and in trying to overcome his crippled upbringing in south Georgia, he's just traded one obsession with skin colour for another.
It's really sad, it's also pathetic. (Hey, I'm assuming sincerity instead of crass exploitation here-it's certainly possible that it's just a convenient weapon, but the man's former Navy, and not all Navy men are asshats that dishonoured the uniform like John Frikking' Kerry...)
So, for the moment, I'll just chalk it up to cultural disability here-you can't be opposed to the Left-Democrats without being a racist fuck in Glenn Contrarians world.
As for the editing mistakes-either Glenn's rep is so good that nobody bothered with the huge mass of mulch that needed editing, or...the polemic displayed here was so rife with problems that these slipped through due to deadline.
I favour the former over the latter. I've seen it in game-development when I was freelancing for a wargaming publisher-someone with a good rep chunks in a piece, and it gets a very light once-over so a few minor mistakes slip through to publication that would otherwise have been caught by the editor.
It's no big deal.
17 - Dr Dreadful
A few articles ago, I finally realized that Contrarian really CAN'T comprehend the idea that someone might be opposing his holiness the One, the Gentleman from Chicago, hte Occupant of the White-House, without being a racist.
Cannon, not only does this article have nothing to do with Republicans opposing Democrats, it doesn't contain a single mention of Obama either.
Sure, somebody did a diabolically bad job of editing this piece, but that's no excuse for doing a diabolically bad job of reading comprehension.
18 - John Wilson
Good article. Having a black foster-daughter has reminded me of how racist our society remains.
So few AA Republican congressmen is a startling fact.
19 - Glenn Contrarian
Doc -
I just lost a lengthy reply to C-shop thanks to Askimet...and returned to this page to find that you summed up almost everything I said in only two sentences. I've got a lot to learn....
20 - handyguy
Maybe we need another word. "Racism" [the word, not the phenomenon itself] carries a lot of historical baggage.
The political reality is that after 1964 and the Civil Rights Act, southern whites moved en masse from the Democratic to the Republican party -- and stayed there. Nixon utilized fear of crime [without needing to bring up race overtly] to solidify his election margins.
And the Republican party today has a distinctly southern accent. In the 2008 election, Obama got 53% of the total vote, but 43% of the white vote and 41% of the white male vote -- and 10% of the white vote in Alabama, and lower percentages of white voters than Kerry had in a number of states. [No Democratic presidential candidate after LBJ has gotten a majority of white votes; southern candidates Carter and Clinton came closest.]
The undercurrent of much of the most emotional, vitriolic opposition to the health care bill is this: Don't you dare take my money and help those people. And for some that attitude may well have a racial component.
It's not all about race, and no one's claiming all whites or conservatives are racially motivated. But these facts do define a political reality worth discussing -- preferably without blowing a gasket.
Like Glen, I'm a child of the South. I think both he and I want to be fair, but we worry about the state of denial when this subject comes up.
21 - Glenn Contrarian
John -
My youngest Foster child is African-American. He's been with us for almost eleven years now. Our other Foster child is full-blood Thai. In the past we've had one full-blood Quinalt Indian, one Hispanic, and two whites.
And your comment of how racist our society remains is why I included the second quote by Sistah Souljah about those who deny said racism.
22 - roger nowosielski
"No Democratic presidential candidate after LBJ has gotten a majority of white votes; southern candidates Carter and Clinton came closest."
(LBJ was sourhtern.)
Do you mean "southern white votes" or white votes, period.
If the latter's the case, Handy, that's a hell of a statistic. Kind of tells where the majority of US whites is at.
It should pierce anyone's false conception of self or the clique to which they belong.
Don't count on it, though. They'll all claim that the Democratic party choices since LBJ were better qualified for McCarthy's witchhunt trials than the office of the presidency, that it's got nothing to do racism or fairness or affirmative action, only with true blue patriotism, that the Democratic candidates were would-be-traitors to the country and its cherished ideals; and the Republicsn opponents, true saviors.
And so on and so forth.
23 - handyguy
The "after LBJ" is significant because LBJ signed the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act. The southern whites who changed parties in the 1960s are mostly not around anymore, but their influence lingers.
And Obama did get a majority of one group of white voters: those ages 18-29.
24 - roger nowosielski
Let's hope for a permanent change of the guard, and soon.
Let the old farts retire (along with the lingering remnant).
Baronius spoke of "post-American" presidency, and I realize you don't care much for this characterization; but that's how I see it, and I don't think it's a bad thing. (Probably another major reason for virulent Obama opposition: they all sense it.)
25 - Dr Dreadful
Glenn: I just lost a lengthy reply to C-shop thanks to Askimet
Ah, Akismet - the one enemy both the liberals and the conservatives of BC can unite to hate. :-)