# The GOP and Race **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [August 29, 2013, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-gop-and-race/667522 "2013-08-29T19:06:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 10
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2013, 4:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-gop-and-race/667522/181 "2013-09-05T04:35:01Z")
> [@Conservian](#): > > I’ve more recently come to know, say and believe the following: liberalism/socialism/fascism can be likened unto shades of the same color. > Ideologies favoring centralized power always start with Utopian aspirations, but end up smoldering on the ash heap of history. > > A couple of names for you - Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson… Get my “point?” The point looks like useless ramblings. Learn some history, if you are correct there is no explanation why Einstein was a liberal that left Germany and helped other Jews Escape Nazi Germany. Oh, and he also helped defend many Black Americans from the usual pumped up accusations that were racially motivated back in the day. > **[Political views of Albert Einstein](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein%27s_political_views)** > > This is an accepted version of this page > German-born scientist Albert Einstein was best known during his lifetime for his development of the theory of relativity, his contributions to quantum mechanics, and many other notable achievements in modern physics. However, Einstein's political views also garnered much public interest due to his fame and involvement in political, humanitarian, and academic projects around the world. Einstein was a peace activist and a firm advocate of global federalism... > [@](#): > > Einstein was a proponent of civil rights. When he arrived in America, objected to the mistreatment of African Americans.[25] Einstein, who had experienced heavy anti-Semitic discrimination in pre-World War II Germany worked with a number of leading civil rights activists [26] and civil rights organizations (such as the Princeton chapter of the NAACP) to demand equality and denounce racism and segregation.[27] Wherever he saw injustice, Einstein spoke out. When African-American singer and civil rights supporter Marian Anderson was denied rooms at hotels and forbidden to eat at public restaurants, Einstein invited her to his home. After a bloody racial riot in 1946 in which 500 state troopers with submachine guns attacked and destroyed virtually every black-owned business in a four-square-block area in Tennessee and arrested 25 black men for attempted murder, Einstein joined Eleanor Roosevelt, Langston Hughes, and Thurgood Marshall to fight for justice for the men, acquitting 24 of the 25 defendants. > > In 1946, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist traveled to Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, the alma mater of Langston Hughes and Thurgood Marshall and the first school in America to grant college degrees to blacks. At Lincoln, Einstein received an honorary degree and gave a lecture on relativity to Lincoln students.[28] > > Also, when two black men and their wives were murdered in Monroe, Georgia, and justice was not served, Einstein was so outraged, he lent his prominence to actor and activist Paul Robeson’s American Crusade to End Lynching and wrote a letter to President Truman calling for prosecution of lynchers and passage of a federal anti-lynching law. He became good friends with Robeson and when Robeson was blacklisted because of his activism against racism, again it was Einstein who opened his home to his long-time friend of 20 years. > > From the Scottsboro Boys case to the numerous attempts to stop the execution of Willie McGee, a black Mississippi sharecropper accused of raping a white woman, and efforts to prevent New Jersey from extraditing Sam Buckhannon, a black Georgian who had escaped a chain gang after serving 18 years for stealing a pack of cigarettes, Einstein used his fame to condemn American racism. > [@](#): > > There is, however, a somber point in the social outlook of Americans. Their sense of equality and human dignity is mainly limited to men of white skins. > > Albert Einstein in speech to Princeton University, 1948[26] ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2013, 4:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-gop-and-race/667522/182 "2013-09-05T04:39:01Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Look, regardless of platform or policy, the GOP is at any rate a party that includes racists in significant numbers; because it is a fact of American history that the GOP is where the white racists **went,** when they exited the Democrats in reaction to civil-rights legislation, etc., in the 1960s and 1970s. Many of them going there by way of George Wallace’s American Independence Party in 1968, but then voting for Nixon in 1972. No doubt they have grown somewhat less racist in the decades since, as American society and culture have changed, but do you really think they’ve all outgrown it entirely? If you’re saying that racist voters switched to the GOP, maybe, but it doesn’t matter. If you’re saying that the racist politicians switched to the GOP, that’s revisionist history. Nearly all the segregationist Democrats stayed Democrats until the day they retired or died. Strom Thurmond is the only Senator to switch, and no governors did. And even Thurmond doesn’t really count, because when he switched he became one of the most progressive southerners on race while a lot of his Democratic compatriots remained ardent racists. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2013, 4:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-gop-and-race/667522/183 "2013-09-05T04:40:01Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Ideologies favoring centralized power are on the right end, not the left. Does the phrase “unitary executive” ring any bells? Even GWB never claimed the right to simply ignore laws he didn’t like. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2013, 4:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-gop-and-race/667522/184 "2013-09-05T04:47:31Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > If you’re saying that racist voters switched to the GOP, maybe, but it doesn’t matter. If you’re saying that the racist politicians switched to the GOP, that’s revisionist history. Nearly all the segregationist Democrats stayed Democrats until the day they retired or died. Strom Thurmond is the only Senator to switch, and no governors did. And even Thurmond doesn’t really count, because when he switched he became one of the most progressive southerners on race while a lot of his Democratic compatriots remained ardent racists. Racist voters did switch, it came with the territory: > **[Were Republicans really the party of civil rights in the 1960s? | Harry J Enten](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/28/republicans-party-of-civil-rights)** > > Harry J Enten: Once you control for region, it turns out that Democrats were actually more likely to support the 1964 Civil Rights Act > [@](#): > > Were Republicans really the party of civil rights in the 1960s? > > Once you control for region, it turns out that Democrats were actually more likely to support the 1964 Civil Rights Act > > Nearly 100% of Union state Democrats supported the 1964 Civil Rights Act compared to 85% of Republicans. None of the southern Republicans voted for the bill, while a small percentage of southern Democrats did. > > … > > The same pattern holds true when looking at ideology instead of party affiliation. The folks over at [Voteview.com](http://Voteview.com), who created DW-nominate scores to measure the ideology of congressmen and senators, found that the more liberal a congressman or senator was the more likely he would vote for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, once one controlled for a factor closely linked to geography. > > That’s why Strom Thurmond left the Democratic party soon after the Civil Right Act passed. He recognized that of the two parties, it was the Republican party that was more hospitable to his message. The Republican candidate for president in 1964, Barry Goldwater, was one of the few non-Confederate state senators to vote against the bill. He carried his home state of Arizona and swept the deep southern states – a first for a Republican ever. > > Now, it wasn’t that the Civil Rights Act was what turned the South against the Democrats or minorities against Republicans. Those patterns, as Trende showed, had been developing for a while. It was, however, a manifestation of these growing coalitions. The South gradually became home to the conservative party, while the north became home to the liberal party. > > Today, the transformation is nearly complete. President Obama carried only 18% of former Confederate states, while taking 62% of non-Confederate states in 2012. Only 27% of southern senators are Democrats, while 62% of Union state senators are Democrats. And 29% of southern members in the House are Democrats compared to 54% in states or territories that were part of the Union. > > Thus, it seems to me that minorities have a pretty good idea of what they are doing when joining the Democratic party. They recognize that the Democratic party of today looks and sounds a lot more like the Democratic party of the North that with near unity passed the Civil Rights Bill of 1964 than the southern Democrats of the era who blocked it, and today would, like Strom Thurmond, likely be Republicans. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2013, 4:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-gop-and-race/667522/185 "2013-09-05T04:59:26Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > Even GWB never claimed the right to simply ignore laws he didn’t like. What? Are you defending torture boy? > **[Legal Group Says Bush Undermines Law by Ignoring Select Parts of Bills...](https://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/24/washington/24prexy.html?_r=0)** > > The American Bar Association said President Bush was flouting the Constitution by disregarding parts of bills. > [@](#): > > WASHINGTON, July 23 — The American Bar Association said Sunday that President Bush was flouting the Constitution and undermining the rule of law by claiming the power to disregard selected provisions of bills that he signed. > > In a comprehensive report, a bipartisan 11-member panel of the bar association said Mr. Bush had used such “signing statements” far more than his predecessors, raising constitutional objections to more than 800 provisions in more than 100 laws on the ground that they infringed on his prerogatives. > > These broad assertions of presidential power amount to a “line-item veto” and improperly deprive Congress of the opportunity to override the veto, the panel said. > > In signing a statutory ban on torture and other national security laws, Mr. Bush reserved the right to disregard them. There is evidence that Bush the lesser did have a reason to attempt to disregard the law. > **[George W Bush should be prosecuted over torture, says human rights group](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/12/george-w-bush-torture)** > > Human Rights Watch claims Obama administration 'failing to act on evidence', and also names Cheney and Rumsfeld in report > [@](#): > > Reported roles > > President George Bush: He has publicly admitted that in two cases he approved the use of waterboarding. Bush also authorised the “illegal CIA secret detention and renditions programmes, under which detainees were held incommunicado and frequently transferred to countries such as Egypt and Syria where they were likely to be tortured”. > > Vice President Dick Cheney: “The driving force behind the establishment of illegal detention and interrogation policies, chairing key meetings at which specific CIA operations were discussed, including the waterboarding of one detainee, Abu Zubaydah, in 2002.” > > Defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld: “Approved illegal interrogation methods and closely followed the interrogation of Mohamed al-Qahtani, who was subjected to a six-week regime of coercive interrogation at Guantanamo that cumulatively appears to have amounted to torture”. > > The CIA director, George Tenet: “Authorised and oversaw the CIA’s use of waterboarding, stress positions, light and noise bombardment, sleep deprivation, and other abusive interrogation methods, as well as the CIA rendition program”. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2013, 9:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-gop-and-race/667522/186 "2013-09-05T09:30:47Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > And even Thurmond doesn’t really count, because when he switched he became one of the most progressive southerners on race while a lot of his Democratic compatriots remained ardent racists. This is false- Thurmond did not moderate his views for at least a decade after becoming a Republican. And he never apologized for or renounced his earlier views on segregation. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2013, 9:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-gop-and-race/667522/187 "2013-09-05T09:37:27Z")
A decade later, how were the segregationist Democrats doing? The whole revisionist history thing is stupid, because it’s not like the Republicans became segregationists and the Democrats renounced it. It simply ceased to be an issue and the parties found other things to disagree about. ---
**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2013, 9:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-gop-and-race/667522/188 "2013-09-05T09:54:34Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > A decade later, how were the segregationist Democrats doing? > > The whole revisionist history thing is stupid, because it’s not like the Republicans became segregationists and the Democrats renounced it. It simply ceased to be an issue and the parties found other things to disagree about. Segregation still lives- it’s now called school vouchers. For many, sending their kids to public schools with significant minority populations is unacceptable, they send them to private schools with much much whiter demographics. And which party is always pushing for sending public money to these lily white schools? That’s right, the Grand Old White People’s Party. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2013, 10:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-gop-and-race/667522/189 "2013-09-05T10:20:16Z")
Now you’re just being silly. Vouchers help minority students too, and African-Americans tend to support vouchers. It’s one of the few wedge issues Republicans have tried to use to pull African-Americans away from the Democratic party. That and immigration. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2013, 11:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-gop-and-race/667522/190 "2013-09-05T11:20:58Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > A decade later, how were the segregationist Democrats doing? Poorly- they were renouncing their old views, or changing parties, or losing to Republicans in the South because of the Southern Strategy. > [@](#): > > The whole revisionist history thing is stupid, because it’s not like the Republicans became segregationists and the Democrats renounced it. It simply ceased to be an issue and the parties found other things to disagree about. No, the Republican party just made a conscious effort to appeal to those racist white voters that felt aggrieved by Civil Rights (and other progressive victories)- also known as the Southern Strategy. There were still, unfortunately, millions of racist white voters- and the Republicans made a play for them. It worked, too- for a few decades, anyway. ---
**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2013, 11:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-gop-and-race/667522/191 "2013-09-05T11:44:51Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > Now you’re just being silly. Vouchers help minority students too, and African-Americans tend to support vouchers. It’s one of the few wedge issues Republicans have tried to use to pull African-Americans away from the Democratic party. That and immigration. Tell that to the minorities left in public schools that lose their funding via vouchers. How does the Republican Party use immigration as a wedge issue with blacks? By trying to convince them that they hate Hispanics even more than they hate blacks? ---
**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2013, 12:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-gop-and-race/667522/192 "2013-09-05T12:36:26Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > There is nothing about being far right wing that requires you to be racist or anti-science or sexist or homophobic. That’s not ideology. There are left-wingers with the same problems, but those are personal problems, not a matter of their ideology. > > Tea Partiers could be racist, but if they are, it’s not their conservatism that is making them racist. That should be the case, and it used to be the case, but now people who aren’t willing to take positions that are racists, anti-science, sexist or homophobic are called “RINOs” and made to feel not welcome. I was a republican, until I started to identify as a feminist and was no longer welcome. My father was a republican, but eventually they moved too far right - now they want his money, but abhor his positions - which were reasonable republican positions 30 years ago. Now, neither of us waited around until the party became personally disgusting to us - we left years ago, but neither of us had a lot invested in party identification. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2013, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-gop-and-race/667522/193 "2013-09-05T18:02:38Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > Now you’re just being silly. Vouchers help minority students too, and African-Americans tend to support vouchers. It’s one of the few wedge issues Republicans have tried to use to pull African-Americans away from the Democratic party. That and immigration. I hope you’re sitting down, but I have bad news for you: [you’re wrong](http://creativedestruction.wordpress.com/2006/09/05/most-black-americans-oppose-school-vouchers/). Sure, in polls with poorly designed, no-context questions, you’ll sometimes find a bare majority of African Americans supporting vouchers. But when questions acknowledge the zero-sum-game of funding schools (that is, when the questions ask whether tax dollars should go to vouchers or straight to public schools), African Americans overwhelmingly oppose sending money to vouchers. And when the issue comes up at the ballot box, the Republican effort to use this as a wedge issue becomes pitifully unsuccessful. If the question is, “No vouchers, or vouchers produced from the Magical Voucher Tree?” of course I’d support them. But if the question is whether vouchers should be paid for at the expense of our public school system, of course I’m gonna oppose them, and so will most African Americans. ---
**Author:** ![drewtwo99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d07c76/32.png) [@drewtwo99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drewtwo99)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2013, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-gop-and-race/667522/194 "2013-09-05T18:35:41Z")
“Magical Voucher Tree” - worst band name ever? ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2013, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-gop-and-race/667522/195 "2013-09-05T18:51:03Z")
> [@drewtwo99](#): > > “Magical Voucher Tree” - worst band name ever? Actually a book in Glen Beck’s children’s series. ---
**Author:** ![Truman\_Burbank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ecc23a/32.png) [@Truman\_Burbank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Truman_Burbank)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2013, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-gop-and-race/667522/196 "2013-09-05T19:04:52Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > Actually a book in Glen Beck’s children’s series. Which, ironically, the majority of Glen Beck’s listeners find too difficult to read, even when they move their lips! ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2013, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-gop-and-race/667522/197 "2013-09-06T16:40:07Z")
> [@BobLibDem](#): > > Tell that to the minorities left in public schools that lose their funding via vouchers. How does the Republican Party use immigration as a wedge issue with blacks? By trying to convince them that they hate Hispanics even more than they hate blacks? Don’t be silly. They used gay marriage as a wedge issue with blacks and tried to convince them they hate homosexuals even more than they hate blacks. ---
**Author:** ![Buck\_Godot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/buck_godot/32/6573_2.png) [@Buck\_Godot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buck_Godot)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2013, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-gop-and-race/667522/198 "2013-09-06T17:18:52Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Don’t be silly. > > They used gay marriage as a wedge issue with blacks and tried to convince them they hate homosexuals even more than they hate blacks. Why can we all just get along and agree that in God’s eyes the Blacks, Hispanics, Homosexuals and Muslims are all equally worthy of our hatred. ---
**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2013, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-gop-and-race/667522/199 "2013-09-06T17:43:11Z")
> [@Buck\_Godot](#): > > Why can we all just get along and agree that in God’s eyes the Blacks, Hispanics, Homosexuals and Muslims are all equally worthy of our hatred. Looks like the Republican platform in a nutshell. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2013, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-gop-and-race/667522/200 "2013-09-06T18:47:04Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > If you’re saying that racist voters switched to the GOP, maybe, but it doesn’t matter. **Of course** it matters. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-gop-and-race/667522.md?page=9) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-gop-and-race/667522.md?page=11)