Racist Presidents.

Procrustus · April 28, 2018, 2:20am

And Supreme Court. Marshall was an outstanding choice.

Little_Nemo · April 28, 2018, 2:44am

My personal assessment is that Lyndon Johnson genuinely did care about the rights of black people. Johnson always saw himself as a persecuted victim and this led him to sympathize with black people as his fellow victims. He genuinely wanted to be their champion.

Yes, Johnson said and did things that would be racist by modern standards. Johnson was a master politician and he knew how to play to his audience. And he was certainly a man capable of deceit.

So I figure if you want to judge Johnson’s true character you have to look at the things he did when he gained no advantage from doing them. And pushing for civil rights was one of those things. Johnson knew that supporting civil rights would break up the power base of the Democratic party. He knew the Republicans would move in and appeal to southern white voters and the Democrats would lost ten white votes for every black vote it gained. But Johnson did it anyway.

Horatio_Hellpop · April 28, 2018, 2:48am

By some definitons, all white people are racist. By others, all white people who came of age before the Civil Rights movement meet at least some metric of being racist. I’m afraid the word has been rendered useless as a meaningful descriptor.

How many presidents were/are white supremicists? How many modern (post-WWII)? How many presidents within a desired timeline have signed legislation that specifically disenfranchised or discriminated against non-whites? Why is the “There’s no such thing as race” contingent being so quiet?

We need a different, more carefully-constructed question to reach whatever answer the OP is seeking.

FlikTheBlue · April 28, 2018, 3:42am

I think that Kanye is either a fool or being disingenuous. To me it’s obvious that Trump is more racist than Bush (either one), even taking into account the Willie Horton ad back in the day.

Tom_Tildrum · April 30, 2018, 3:46pm

Don’t exclude Franklin Roosevelt. FDR interned Japanese-Americans by executive order, turned away a shipload of Jewish refugees (claiming that they could threaten national security), and continued the Hoover administration’s massive deportation of between 500,000 - 2,000,000 Mexican immigrants and Mexican-Americans.

On the other hand, he did order the desegregation of the federal civilian workforce (albeit not the military).

puddleglum · April 30, 2018, 4:45pm

Given that West has had personal interactions with Trump, his opinion should carry more weight.

Doubticus · April 30, 2018, 5:21pm

I can’t say I am an expert on LBJ, but I do know that he taught poor Hispanic children in Texas and had a deep affection for them.

Moriarty · April 30, 2018, 5:24pm

Little_Nemo:

My personal assessment is that Lyndon Johnson genuinely did care about the rights of black people. Johnson always saw himself as a persecuted victim and this led him to sympathize with black people as his fellow victims. He genuinely wanted to be their champion.

Yes, Johnson said and did things that would be racist by modern standards. Johnson was a master politician and he knew how to play to his audience. And he was certainly a man capable of deceit.

So I figure if you want to judge Johnson’s true character you have to look at the things he did when he gained no advantage from doing them. And pushing for civil rights was one of those things. Johnson knew that supporting civil rights would break up the power base of the Democratic party. He knew the Republicans would move in and appeal to southern white voters and the Democrats would lost ten white votes for every black vote it gained. But Johnson did it anyway.

In his early years, before entering politics, Johnson was a school teacher who taught very poor Mexican kids. This is often described as a formative period in his life, and he saw the fate of these children as something he wanted to help.

I believe he had a soft spot for oppressed minorities, but he was also a caustic (and narcissistic) son of a bitch, so he would throw out an epithet, like calling civil rights legislation “the nigger bill” when cajoling a southern congressman to support it. LBJ was immersed in racism, being a southerner, but his actions contradict the conclusion that he was a virulent racist.

The Civil Rights Act of 1957 was the first civil rights law since reconstruction. LBJ was democratic Senate Majority Leader at the time. This is akin to Mitch McConnell’s role now - how far do you think a bill gets if McConnell doesn’t want it to get through the Senate?

Which was only necessary because Woodrow Wilson had ordered the federal civilian workforce segregated. They had been desegregated since Reconstruction.

See, there are racist presidents, and then there are Racist Presidents.

you_with_the_face · May 2, 2018, 6:26pm

You know that Kanye West is crazy, right?

Lamoral · May 2, 2018, 6:40pm

I think a lot of this Johnson-hate is coming from the fact that there was recently a movie that depicted him in a negative light, as a obstacle to the Civil Rights movement rather than an enabler of it. From what I understand, that’s bullshit.

Prior to this, I never heard anyone bash Johnson for anything other than prolonging the war in Vietnam. Other than that, he seems to be admired and respected.

XT · May 2, 2018, 6:51pm

The man was an abrasive ass. That doesn’t mean there weren’t aspects of him that could be admired or respected, but by today’s standards he was definitely a racist. This doesn’t mean he didn’t do a lot, or believe in civil rights, because he certainly did.

I think a lot of folks in this thread are confusing or confused by people having personal racist beliefs or notions, by today’s standards, and them doing things or believing in things that assisted in civil rights or better attitudes or tangible things for minorities. Just because someone was for civil rights in the past doesn’t preclude them being a racist by today’s standards. Not all racists wanted to keep minorities ground down, and what someone might have done politically or broadly didn’t have anything to do with how they felt or interacted personally. Johnson is a perfect example of this…the man was a bigot, a sexist and just an abrasive asshole, but he was also a key player in getting civil rights on the front burner of US politics and was instrumental in pounding it through…often literally…hard headed congressional opposition.

Urbanredneck · May 2, 2018, 7:16pm

HERE is a wiki article listing 18 US presidents who owned slaves.

Now was/is it racist to also dislike the Irish or Italians? Also at one time Norwegians were the “N” word group.

Thudlow_Boink · May 2, 2018, 8:27pm

I’ve known he was an abrasive ass; no argument there. Before this thread I hadn’t heard that he was a racist. He could well have been, but I’m still wondering what those of you who are claiming that he was a racist are basing this claim on (and hoping it’s not just the movie that Jacquernagy mentioned).

XT · May 2, 2018, 8:40pm

No, I didn’t even see whatever movie Jac is talking about. You can Google it yourself, but there are a ton of instances of Johnson saying or doing things that, today, would be considered very racist. Not surprising, since he was a man of his time. I did a quick Google, and found this MSNBC article:

Lyndon Johnson was a civil rights hero. But also a racist.

Lyndon Johnson said the word “nigger” a lot.

In Senate cloakrooms and staff meetings, Johnson was practically a connoisseur of the word. According to Johnson biographer Robert Caro, Johnson would calibrate his pronunciations by region, using “nigra” with some southern legislators and “negra” with others. Discussing civil rights legislation with men like Mississippi Democrat James Eastland, who committed most of his life to defending white supremacy, he’d simply call it “the nigger bill.”

Then in 1957, Johnson would help get the “nigger bill” passed, known to most as the Civil Rights Act of 1957. With the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the segregationists would go to their graves knowing the cause they’d given their lives to had been betrayed, Frank Underwood style, by a man they believed to be one of their own. When Caro asked segregationist Georgia Democrat Herman Talmadge how he felt when Johnson, signing the Civil Rights Act, said ”we shall overcome,” Talmadge said “sick.”

The Civil Rights Act made it possible for Johnson to smash Jim Crow. The Voting Rights Act made the U.S. government accountable to its black citizens and a true democracy for the first time. Johnson lifted racist immigration restrictions designed to preserve a white majority – and by extension white supremacy. He forced FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, then more concerned with “communists” and civil rights activists, to turn his attention to crushing the Ku Klux Klan. Though the Fair Housing Act never fulfilled its promise to end residential segregation, it was another part of a massive effort to live up to the ideals America’s founders only halfheartedly believed in – a record surpassed only by Abraham Lincoln.

So it would be tempting, on the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, as Johnson is being celebrated by no less than four living presidents, to dismiss Johnson’s racism as mere code-switching – a clever ploy from an uncompromising racial egalitarian whose idealism was matched only by his political ruthlessness.

But that wouldn’t be true. Johnson was a man of his time, and bore those flaws as surely as he sought to lead the country past them. For two decades in Congress he was a reliable member of the Southern bloc, helping to stonewall civil rights legislation. As Caro recalls, Johnson spent the late 1940s railing against the “hordes of barbaric yellow dwarves” in East Asia. Buying into the stereotype that blacks were afraid of snakes (who isn’t afraid of snakes?) he’d drive to gas stations with one in his trunk and try to trick black attendants into opening it. Once, Caro writes, the stunt nearly ended with him being beaten with a tire iron.

Thudlow_Boink · May 2, 2018, 9:00pm

Thanks, that’s a good article.

astorian · May 3, 2018, 2:49am

So, who was it that got all the important civil rights legislation passed?

astorian · May 3, 2018, 2:50am

And they’re such intellectual giants, they MUST be right.

elucidator · May 3, 2018, 2:48pm

Reagan.

Fotheringay-Phipps · May 3, 2018, 11:06pm

New Documents Reveal FDR’s Eugenic Project to ‘Resettle’ Jews During World War II

Roosevelt’s first choice to head the M Project was Aleš Hrdlička, curator of physical anthropology at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. The two men had carried on a lively correspondence for over a decade and the President had absorbed the scientist’s theories about racial mixtures and eugenics. Roosevelt, the scion of two families that considered themselves American aristocrats, was especially attracted to Hrdlička’s notions of human racial “stock.”

A prominent public intellectual who had dominated American physical anthropology for decades, Hrdlička was convinced of the superiority of the white race and obsessed with racial identity. Shortly after the Pearl Harbor attack he’d written to Roosevelt expressing the view that the “less developed skulls” of Japanese were proof that they were innately warlike and had a lower level of evolutionary development than other races. The president wrote back asking whether the “Japanese problem” could be solved through mass interbreeding.

Roosevelt had asked Carter to recruit Hrdlička, and to tell him his task would be to head up a secret international committee of anthropologists to study the “ethnological problems anticipated in post-war population movements.” Outlining the president’s charge for the committee, Carter told Hrdlička it was expected to “formulate agreed opinions as to problems arising out of racial admixtures and to consider the scientific principles involved in the process of miscegenation as contrasted with the opposing policies of so-called ‘racialism.’ ” The instructions were consistent with views Roosevelt had expressed for decades.

[…]

Roosevelt wanted the committee to explore questions such as the probable outcomes from mixing people from various parts of Europe with the South American “base stock.”

FDR asked the committee to consider some specific questions, such as: “Is the South Italian stock—say, Sicilian—as good as the North Italian stock—say, Milanese—if given equal economic and social opportunity? Thus, in a given case, where 10,000 Italians were to be offer[ed] settlement facilities, what proportion of the 10,000 should be Northern Italians and what Southern Italian?”

This seems to be missing the point of “historical standards”. It’s not about what anyone at the time - whether white or black - thought of him. It’s about how his views compared to those of other people at the time.

Nava · May 4, 2018, 9:00am

Wait, he wasn’t called “the guy after Kennedy”?

From what I’ve read on the subject, it was definitely paternalistic, but not racist in that it wasn’t “go back to where you came from!” but a misguided intent to put things back right. Little details such as “dude, they don’t know which part they’re from, they don’t know anybody there and they don’t speak the language” were being overlooked. Little details such as “the people there have no reason to want these people”, as well. It’s the same mindset which had led to the creation of Liberia.