Bob Herbert may think the Republican party is the true party of racists, but some* in the reparations camp might disagree:
On December 10th 2004, inner-city minister, Rev Wayne Perryman, – filed a class action Reparation lawsuit (in the United States District Court in Seattle Case No. CV04-2442), alleging “that because of their racist past practices the Democratic Party should be required to pay African Americans Reparations.” Perryman said “he based his case on the research that he gathered during the past five years while writing the three editions of his latest book, Unfounded Loyalty: An In-depth Look Into The Love Affair Between Blacks & Democrats.
Heh. In the book, Perryman alleges the following:
· Democrats opposed the Abolitionist
· Democrats supported slavery and fought and gave their lives to expand it
· Democrats supported and passed the Fugitive Slave Laws of 1793 & 1854
· Democrats supported and passed the Missouri Compromise to protect slavery
· Democrats supported and passed the Kansas Nebraska Act to expand slavery
· Democrats supported and backed the Dred Scott Decision
· Democrats supported and passed Jim Crow Laws
· Democrats supported and passed Black Codes
· Democrats opposed educating blacks and murdered our teachers
· Democrats opposed the Reconstruction Act of 1867
· Democrats opposed the Freedman’s Bureau as it pertained to blacks
· Democrats opposed the Emancipation Proclamation
· Democrats opposed the 13th , 14th, and 15th Amendments to end slavery, make black citizens and give blacks the right to vote
· Democrats opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1866
· Democrats opposed the Civil Right Act of 1875 and had it overturned by U.S. Supreme Court
· Various Democrats opposed the 1957 Civil Rights Acts
· Various Democrats argued against the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Acts
· Various Democrats argued against the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Acts
· Various Democrats voted against the 1972 Equal Employment Opportunity Act
· Democrats supported and backed Judge John Ferguson in the case of Plessy v Ferguson
· Democrats supported the School Board of Topeka Kansas in the case of Brown v The Board of Education of Topeka Kansas.
· Southern Democrats opposed desegregation and integration
· Democrats started and supported several terrorist organizations including the Ku Klux Klan, an organization dedicated to use any means possible to terrorize African Americans and those who supported African Americans.”
I have nothing to add to this because I am too busy laughing.
And I mean laughing REAL HARD. The lawsuit can be found here.
KC
I saw this kook on C-SPAN before. He didn’t want to answer any questions about the last half of the twentieth century, who sponsored civil rights legislation, and which party pushed the voting rights act. To be honest, he seemed like a Republican searching for a cause. Oh well.
John S.
Now does this take into account that in the 19th century Republicans were called Democratic Republicans and Democrats were called Republican Democrats?
Because a lot has changed since then, besides the names of the parties themselves…
Stormy70
The lawsuit is dumb, but ….BWAAHAAAAA! No, really…hee hee…must stop laughing….(falls over).
Otto Man
As far as party identification goes, you’re absolutely right. White southerners led the charge for slavery, for the black codes, for segregation, etc., and they did so through the auspices of the Democratic Party which they dominated for so long.
But you’re ignoring the precise point that Herbert stressed in that column — as soon as the national Democratic Party started supporting civil rights aggressively in the 1960s, virtually all those Southern segregationists packed up and moved to the Republican Party, where they were welcomed with open arms. For some, this entailed a formal party switch, as in the case of former Dixiecrat candidate Strom Thurmond, and for others, it entailed starting out in the GOP, as in the case of Trent Lott, who’d worked for a retiring Democrat who told him the GOP was the way of the future.
The Democrats may have had the racists in the 19th century, but the Republicans have them today. Which is worse?
Listen, I’m not saying all Republicans are racists, or Bush is a racist, but this argument is frankly pathetic if you know anything about American history.
Republicans bragging about what a great job they did on racial issues back in the 1870s is like Pabst still claiming it’s a “blue ribbon” beer because it won a contest back in 1893. Both boasts seem to point out that they haven’t done much since then.
KC
Scratch the kook remark. I should say I found his conversation highly disappointing in the sense that he did not seem to recognize the Democratic Party’s role in supporting and passing civil rights legislation. He also failed to mention the Republicans that were quite satisfied with the Jim Crow state of the South after the Civil War. I guess I should have said that I found him to be extremely guilty of omission–partisanly so–and that his lawsuit will be interesting to follow in court.
Bob
What’s this guy’s position on the Whigs? I’ve always thought that they were a bunch of racists.
Mike S
Another GOP usefull idiot. I hope his kids weren’t home schooled. They’d probably think good ol’ Strom was still a Dem.
Sinequanon
John,
That seems to me to be an endictment of the conservative southern Democrat more so than Democrats as a whole, in the day. It was that way as I grew up in Texas. But other states I have lived in, not nearly so much. And, truly it is likely tied to the Civil War and Reconstruction as your post states. As you are aware, alot of states, the Carolinas are an example, continue to call the Civil War the War of Agression. And, these days, those states are Republican. Alot of families continue their prejudice and xenophobia like a edit of how they are supposed to behave. It is really unfortunate. I do know that this kind of behavior has little to do with prejudice as a whole these days.
S-
Marx Marvelous
I like how for the 1957 civil rights act and those items that follow it, the text changes from “Democrats” to “Various Democrats.” Almost as if there was some political change going on at the time. Hmmmm.
Steven
Perryman is a favorite of right wing talk radio out here in the upper left corner. If you look at his website, you’ll find the following:
A former newspaper publisher and radio talk show host and in his current profession as a fact-finding investigator in discrimination cases for the plaintiff, Rev. Perryman devotes much of his time serving his church and the inner-city community.
You gotta the Republican p-i working for the plaintiff’s bar. John Edwards would be so proud.
Ralph Flaugher
I am a life long Democrat and I lived through that time. While one half the party fought the hardest for civil rights the other half fought hardest against it. Luckly the good guys won out in the end.
smijer
This is an amusing post and thread. I think some of us who are defending the Democratic Party’s record on race and rights are blithely ignoring the larger trap set. The hope was to get us to lay out facts and logic to show that modern Democrats shouldn’t owe reparations for past persecution of African Americans, and let the world watch in wonder as we failed to notice how similar facts and logic show that modern Americans, or the modern U.S. government shouldn’t owe reparations either.
I haven’t yet adopted a firm stance on the U.S. government reparations for slavery, Jim Crowe, etc. I do lean strongly against a policy that makes the sons pay for the sins of the father. But I also try to remember the other perspective – the labor, social status, and blood sacrificed by African Americans in earlier generation, if they had kept it, invested it, used it to ensure their own kids had a proper education, and passed it on with interest and with little in the way of estate taxes to their descendents… and if Europeans had not been able to use that to build up their own descendants… well… there’d be a lot more wealthy, influential, and well educated African Americans today.
I honestly don’t know what the answer is. I imagine that lots, and lots, and lots of time, with as much awareness and good will as we can muster, will eventually equalize the playing field between European, Christian, heterosexual males and the rest of us.
I feel like reparations are the crudest and least effective measures we can take – though I don’t oppose them, because that would be too much like un-enlightened self interest. I just let it ride, and listen with interest to the arguments from each side… even when they come packaged as satire from faulty analogies, as this fellow’s lawsuit seems to.
Rick
Well, at least one of the reparations crowd is going after the real, deep-pocketed, profited-from-servility institutions.
Good luck to him. I guess that would be one jury from which I’d be excused, what with wearing a s***-eating grin and all.
Cordially…
Slartibartfast
How do you feel about policies that make the sons pay for the sins of someone else’s father? I know how I feel: strong resistance.
wild bird
Enguard demacrats now its hell to pay now we know just how much the demacrats were proslavery wheres jessie jackson and al sharpton? isnt this something else? the demacrats turkeys have come home to roost
Tractarian
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Wait a minute, what am I laughing about?
eileen from OH
Democrats refused to help Prissy when Miz Scarlett was birfin’ a baby!
eileen from OH
S.W. Anderson
Perryman’s schtick really is laughable. Wonder when he fell through the looking glass.
Next up, an equally quirky thesis:
One to the effect that Dr. Martin Luther King was a closet monarchist — in league with Nat King Cole, Ben. E. King, B.B. King, Queen Lateefa (sp?), et al. (The singer formerly known as Prince opted out, however.)
(Here’s to a cool new look and nicer functionality.)
Kimmitt
Well, that’s the trick, isn’t it? If we do nothing, the sons of African-Americans who were brutalized pay for what our fathers did, countenanced, or failed to defeat.
Speaking as the great-great grandchild of refugees from the potato famine, there’s a point at which you have to decide that what was done to your ancestors a long time ago happened then, and now is now. On the other hand, that’s a much easier attitude to take from a comfortable, middle-class perch, if you take my meaning.
Rick
The great point being that it was the Democratic party, more than any other institution, that oppressed Black folks. If there is a real logic to the reparations movement, then Moveon.org ought to start collecting for the pay-out.
Cordially…
Flagwaver
One thing that always amuses me about these arguments, where the Democrats CLAIM that all the “segregationist” Democrats abandoned the party and became Republicans after the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act were passed – it ignores both politics and history. I mean, it’s a great way to continue to mislead their Black consituents, but there is no “there” there.
First off, it’s simply a fact that the Civil Rights Act simply would not have passed without Republican support. So, if I’m a “segregationist” Southern Democratic politician, I’m going to abandon the Democratic Party, the Northern wing of which sort of half-heartedly supported the Civil Rights Act, for the Republican Party which voted overwhelmingly in favor of it??????? I don’t think so.
Second, I get amused as hell with all these “enlightened” Northern liberals telling the rest of us how backwards and racist the South, and Southern politicians, are. Yes, there are racists in the South. There are groups in the South that yearn for the “good ole days” when the “darkies” knew their place. If you think that is even CLOSE to a concensus view in the South, you simply don’t know dick about the modern South. I’ve lived in the South, and I’ve lived in the North, and guess what? There are JUST as many racists in the NOrth – they simply tend to be sneakier about it. Live in the South yourself, for a while, and THEN come talk to me about how “racist” the South is. Better yet, talk to a BLACK person who has lived in the South and in, say, Boston or Detroit, and ask THEM which place they think is more racist.
Boston (reliably Democratic, year after year) is the most racist city I can think of. So put THAT in your half-assed argument and smoke it.
Veeshir
I would just like to note that many of the people who are saying that, “50-150 years ago is long ago, get over it” are the same ones who defend Moslems hating us for the Crusades.
That makes it even funnier.
Jon H
“If we do nothing, the sons of African-Americans who were brutalized pay for what our fathers did, countenanced, or failed to defeat.”
Problem is, lots of people arrived afterward, or else were in no position to take advantage of the benefits of slavery. (Or to oppose it, for that matter.)
Anyway, any accounting certainly ought to include the costs (in money and blood) of the Civil War.
Jon H
I think this argument gets too hung up on names.
By extension, this argument could blame the Democratic Party for Communist East Germany, which was called the German Democratic Republic. Same name! Must be the same ideology!
Jon H
The best indicator is “What Party Was Strom In?”
I mean, damn, the guy started in Congress around the Civil War, right?
The Democratic party intentionally left Strom and his ilk. Their officials took steps which alienated a large portion of the base. That took political courage which this administration certainly lacks.
The Republican party leadership, instead of doing what was right, did what was politically expedient, and intentionally adopted the principles the Democratic leadership had abandoned.