The fact of the matter is that the entire country has a shameful record on these things, and you can spend eternity listing all the places where things could have and should have been done better.

There can be no doubt that Republicans have at times throughout their history -- and I do mean their entire history, including and since the Lincoln presidency -- have been ambivalent or AWOL on civil rights issues. In the case of individual Republicans, this is absolutely true. Some Republicans were segregationists, or apologists for it. A handful apparently still are.

What is ripe and offensive is the self-satisfied, smug, and outrageously common falsehood that Democrats are, were, or ever have been "the civil rights party." On the whole, you can pick any -- I said ANY -- ten-year period in American history and you will find the Republican record on race and civil rights is better than the Democrats'. And that's the simple truth.

This widescale, cynical, and wholly dishonest makeup job, attempting to paint the Democrats the party of racial reform is asinine. This fairy tale is fueled by an ivory-tower academic world and a New York mainstream press, each made up almost entirely of lifelong Democratic voters. It simply should not be allowed to continue without notice or objection.

The kneejerk canards will not stand: Lyndon Johnson, after a lifetime of segregationist votes and anti-civil rights activism, suddenly worked with Republicans to pass a Civil Rights Act almost 40 years ago. This erases everything else? Harry Truman, a lifelong racist, is a saint simply because he integrated the military? And yet nothing done by any Republican President in the last century is even relevent, because of their own omissions?

This is absolute, unequivocal, stinking-to-high-heaven BULLSHIT.

The party of Bull Connor and Lyndon Johnson has absolutely no place lecturing the party of Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon on race issues. None.

Please do not forget to add that Republican Senator Everett Dirksen (IL) blocked attempts by Democrats to filibuster the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Two Republican accomplishments I almost forgot to add were the two Presidential elections of the 1950’s. BOTH Martin Luther King, Sr. and Jackie Robinson endorsed and voted for Nixon and Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956. I guess you could call that an accomplishment of sorts.

I was surprised to learn that the first US presidents to propose any sort of national commission to improve race relations in this country were none other than Warren Gamaliel Harding and Calvin Coolidge. That was when I read a treatise by Alvin S Felzenberg, staff director of the Empowerment Subcommittee of the Small Business Committee in the US House of Representatives, and published online by the John F Kennedy Library.

In 1921, "more than a generation before Mr Clinton was born", Felzenberg points out, Harding, then president, and Coolidge, his vice president, proposed a commission that would bridge the gap between the races. Coolidge, who succeeded to the presidency after Harding's death in 1923, urged that year and again in 1925 that a Negro Industrial Commission be created to "promote a better policy of mutual (interracial) understanding". Both men were responding to greatly increased levels of lynchings in the south and to strife in northern cities that accompanied the migration of about a half-million American blacks from southern farms to northern factory communities.

These actions, on the part of two Republican presidents who have been commonly viewed respectively as little more than a tool in the hands of crooked businessmen and as a silent, small-minded and insensitive Yankee smalltownsman, came at a time when the Klu Klux Klan was at its height with 3 million members, marched 40,000 strong on the streets of Washington DC and all but brought the 1924 Democratic national convention to a halt.

The work by Harding and Coolidge on behalf of improved race relations followed by only six years a well-known comment by Democratic president Woodrow Wilson about the 1915 film "Birth of a Nation", which openly justified the Klu Klux Klan and extolled its exploits following the Civil War. The film, Wilson said, was "history written in lightning, and unfortunately, all of it is true." This was the same Woodrow Wilson whose inept foreign policy acquiesed in the disgraceful treatment of the beaten Germans at Versailles in 1919, leading directly to the rise of Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist movement, and on to 50 million deaths and the expediture of 3 trillion dollars on World War II.

The role of the Democratic Party and its leaders most frequently has been to manipulate blacks mostly for their own political gain. But while segregation was popular or at least universally accepted until shortly after World War II, the Democrats were content to stay in power by means of a universal Democrat segregationist vote not only in the south but in the north as well. Ask anyone who lived in a major northern city during that period and watched the Democrat political gangs that played racial politics among the white ethnic communities which at that time made up one of their key political constituencies.

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

Dean brings up some interesting points here. I first of all, believe it is unfair and distorting to compare important historical figures through the gimlet eye of the present day morality. As Robert Morris said, “The past is past. You cannot go back and change it.” Castigating probably our greatest foreign policy President, Teddy Roosevelt, for not making human rights, a priority as our present day Presidents always is an excellent case in point.

Teddy Roosevelt governed in a day when the Westphalian system ruled international affairs. The Treat of Westphalia signed on October 24, 1648 Peace Treaty between the Holy Roman Emperor, and the King of France and France's respective Allies established the international standard for diplomacy followed by all statesmen up to 1919. This most significant treaty ended the very bloody Thirty Years War between the Holy Roman Empire, and France and her allies.

The Thirty Years War, one of the bloodiest in history, resulted in millions of deaths across the Western Europe. Historians believe Europe’s population dropped from 21,000,000 to 13,000,000 between 1618 and 1648. The war began when the Holy Roman Emperor used the authority of the Catholic Church to foment rebellion in France. It ended when all the parties decided it was self-defeating to undermine each other’s governments. The Treat of Westphalia recognized the sovereignty of each signatory nation and formally respected the sovereignty of each. This established that each country would not interfere with the internal affairs of other nations, something that both Mainland China and the defunct U.S.S.R. demanded since the Cold War’s genesis.

This all ended when the Treaty of Versailles ended the First World War. President Woodrow Wilson insisted on the creation of only “open covenants openly arrived at.” He also lobbied for the creation of a League of Nations to help “keep international peace” even though mankind never achieved any such thing in history. Wilson naively envisioned a world government to police the affairs of member nations negotiating and enforcing treaties amongst the nations of planet Earth thereby preserving world peace. This reduced the dominion of a nation’s internal affairs opening Nazi Germany to criticism of its treatment of Jews and the U.S.S.R. to its treatment of any ethnic group before, during, and after WWII. This never would have happened before Wilson’s Presidency.

International diplomacy occurred in the context of a balance of power system before the First World War. Teddy Roosevelt was quite comfortable in that world even though America was not as powerful as she is today. Roosevelt saw international relations through this prism projecting American power through the Great White Fleet and his successful negotiation of the Russo-Japanese Treaty of 1906. Roosevelt is still the only sitting President to win the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating this treaty.

Human rights never entered the calculus of Roosevelt, or any other statesmen for that matter, under the Westphalian system before WWI. It was a balance of power world where such meddling was verboten. Today, the United States uses the leverage of human rights to officiously force change in authoritarian governments almost at its liking worldwide. This undermining of other nation’s sovereignty is a hallmark of not only the U.S.A., but the United Nations as well.

This is not only an entirely different world from that of one hundred years ago scientifically, but also diplomatically, economically and politically, as well. Comparing any modern day President’s foreign policy to that before 1919 is like comparing Windows to any real operating system. The same is true regarding race relations in America.

Comparing Jefferson’s slaveholding to Lincoln’s abolitionism and racism, or comparing Lincoln to Trent Lott or Truman is impossible and spurious. These are different men who each lived in different times believing a different and changing set of morals. Present day morality renders 17th and 18th century slavery immoral.

Try reconciling all this with Lincoln’s abolitionist beliefs plus his (racist) belief in black’s inherent inferiority with present day morality that would render both slavery and racism immoral. Lincoln did free the slaves, after all. He did so not believing blacks were equal; but instead believing they deserved equal treatment. This is a philosophical Gordian knot.

Everybody today will agree that no one person is inferior because of the color of his skin. Just as anybody today will agree that all men are created equal deserving equal rights to all the things our fecund nation has to offer. Each political party chastising the other in the present tense for the other’s sins of the past does no justice to either the past or the present. This myopic use of history provides no formula for resolving issues. This is not why we study history, either. George Santayana encapsulated this best, “Anybody who forgets the past is condemned to repeat it.”

Arnold: You might have mentioned that Woodrow Wilson was an ardent segregationist, and as President worked to re-segregate Washington D.C.

Another interesting tidbit: The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was not just written by Republicans. It was based largely on a Civil Rights Act that Republicans had written about 80 years earlier, and which President Harrison had worked hard for the passage of. It had failed to get out of the Senate, of course.

Regarding Chicago: having lived in Chicago in the 1970s and 1980s, I can tell you that the open exploitation of White/Black animosity was always de rigeur in that solidly Democratic city--which hasn't seen a Republican mayor since William Hale Thompson left office in 1931. I don't believe there was a single Republican member (alderman) of the city council there the entire time I lived there. I don't know about today.

When I was growing up there, Chicago was the most racist place I have ever lived. I had friends who were proud of relatives who had thrown molotov cocktails in the homes of "niggers" who tried moving into their all-white neighborhoods.

I think what bothers me the most is when I ask liberals and democrats how they can call Republicans racist? They always say well they are.
I say past and present has a proven track record that we are not racists. they say ya right. I say prove it. They say well I could if I looked hard enough. I ask myself what is the real fact is victimization. Many feel if they don't have the Republicans to blame(Unwarranted) that they'll lose a right to playing a victim. One must question could this be the real fact? I have addressed the Black Democratic Leaders and Party Members. I point out facts in a kind fashion of true concern for what history is not being taught to the young black youth's. I get responses of we will not talk to you. I mention also in all other history that it is Fritz Hollings a (D) who put that confederate flag over the state house, it is Sen Bryd(D) who said he would never fight next to a "Negro" and worked for the KKK. I also mention even in the JFK tapes Kennedy says Keep those Negro's on those buses and off those streets, While he tapped MLK's phone and Democrats spied on Malcolm X and Strom Thurmond held his segregationalist views when he was a democrat leader and that Trent Lott couldn't support him in 1948 as he was only 7 at the time. I explain a republican philosophy of uniting our races in community, work etc. Why? It brings in more revenue, creates less pressure on local and federal government for social programs while it unites us both in community and as American's. (Which in all the responses I have recieved I see page after page from the Black Democrats that they do not want to be part of America but be soveriegn from America and quite honestly that really eerrks me) .I then ask how can they not tell the truth about the Republicans? They have no answer. I firmly believe they couldn't care less about an answer or the blood shed in Civil Wars and Riots and that many just like to keep a status of being the victim. There is no other reason when they are surely informed through the elders who remember what party has always tried to do their best for all races for many reasons.
I must also believe it is up to US as Republicans to spread these facts Nationwide in every paper and even demand it be sent to large populated African -American youth's in their history books because blood was shed many times and in many ways and if we don't continue to try to teach the truth's than ultimately it was all in vain if these young african-american's refuse to even notice Republicans because they have been taught it is teaming up with" whitey" as so put by the Black Commentary.
Now that the facts are estalished and they cannot steal history we must help to make sure that young youth's do not have their true history stolen from them while they develope an anger towards the Republican party and feel their lives are going no where because they believe the Democrats will only be there for the handing out of checks but no real hope for a true future. So what do we do is now to me the importance to help them achieve the true hieght of their freedom that so many great people fought and died for.
Thi is truly the one issue that break my heart.

Excellent comments Shannon.
It is my belief that Democrats and "black" leaders want to keep the mantle of victim on black americans. That is why they support welfare and other hand-out programs (Affirmative Action).

These racist programs give blacks the impression that Democrats care but in reality they keep them poor and in need. The Dems don't really want blacks to become self-sufficient because then they might realize that they are being victimized by them.

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