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Health & Fitness

The Misunderstood Radical Right

A discussion on racism; 4th in the series of The Misunderstood Radical Right

The Misunderstood Radical Right -- Institutions of Slavery and Racism

By Cindy Peak

I am continually amazed that so many blacks associate themselves with the Democratic Party, given that Democrats were the major political support for such things as the Ku Klux Klan, Planned Parenthood, and slavery, all things that I would have thought made their policies at least suspect if not repulsive to blacks.  Is the Right perfect?  No.  But at least they don’t create institutions to kill the objects of their racism. 

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The Ku Klux Klan

“From 1868 through the early 1870s the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) functioned as a loosely organized group of political and social terrorists.  The Klan's goals included political defeat of the Republican Party and the maintenance of absolute white supremacy in response to newly gained civil and political rights by southern blacks after the Civil War (1861-65)…  For many, the KKK and its public political wing, the Young Men's Democratic Clubs, offered a chance to take action.”  Today the KKK has 30 chapters across the United States. 
(http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-694)  (http://www.popmatters.com/pm/review/169554-kkk-beneath-the-hood-interviews-with-todays-members/). 

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Although the Democratic Party no longer claims association with the KKK, their policies on social issues continue to harm blacks.  Larry Elder, black radio personality and author said in an interview with Mike Huckabee, “[t]he policies of the Democratic Party, Governor, are not good for Americans of any race.”   He goes on to say that they specifically hurt blacks more and cites unemployment rates under President Obama as being worse for blacks than for other races.  Democratic policies on welfare create incentives for black women to remain single and black men to abandon their financial and moral responsibilities to the mothers of their children and their children, 75% of whom are born outside of wedlock.  Elder cites studies done by the Heritage Foundation that show that the lack of a father in black families can be directly connected to the high High School drop-out rate, high crime rates of black men, and the high rates of blacks on welfare [note:  37.2% of welfare recipients are black but they make up only 13.1% of population (http://www.reference.com/motif/society/welfare-statistics-by-race, http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html)].  He referred to an interview he had with Kweisi Mfumi, former President of the NAACP, who stated that the absence of black fathers was more detrimental to the black family than white racism.  (http://video.foxnews.com/v/2142317091001/democratic-policies-helping-or-hurting-african-americans/).

Planned Parenthood

Planned Parenthood is so integral to the Democratic Party it is even mentioned in the 2012 Platform: “The President and the Democratic Party believe that women have a right to control their reproductive choices.  Democrats support access to affordable family planning services, and President Obama and Democrats will continue to stand up to Republican efforts to defund Planned Parenthood health centers…  The Democratic Party strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v.  Wade and a woman’s right to make decisions regarding her pregnancy, including a safe and legal abortion, regardless of ability to pay.  We oppose any and all efforts to weaken or undermine that right.”

The Planned Parenthood website attributes its founding to Margaret Sanger in 1916 who “open[ed] America's first birth control clinic in Brooklyn, New York.”  (http://www.plannedparenthood.org/about-us/who-we-are/history-and- successes.htm#Sanger)  According to them, her desire to build such an organization came from her work as a nurse to poor immigrant families who had little money to afford the children they bore.  They make it sound very noble.  But unfortunately, Sanger’s positions were not quite that pure of heart.

Sanger embraced an idea called eugenics.  Eugenics is “the study of hereditary improvement of the human race by controlled selective breeding.”   (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/eugenics)   On some level, it sounds good to only bring into the world healthy children that you can afford.  But when you start to peel back the skin on this onion, things get pretty ugly pretty quickly.

Sanger says in her book “The Pivot of Civilization” that “[o]n its scientific side, Eugenics suggests the reestablishment of the balance between the fertility of the ‘fit’ and the ‘unfit.’  The birth-rate among the normal and healthier and finer stocks of humanity, is to be increased by awakening among the ‘fit’ the realization of the dangers of a lessened birth-rate in proportion to the reckless breeding among the ‘unfit.’  By education, by persuasion, by appeals to racial ethics and religious motives, the ardent Eugenics hopes to increase the fertility of the ‘fit.’”  Are you beginning to see the implications?  Who gets to be the judge of who is “fit” to breed?

But Sanger doesn’t stop at here, which might leave one to believe in her benevolence.  She actually targets blacks in her “Negro Project”.  The following is an excerpt from a paper written by Tanya L.  Green entitled:  The Negro Project -- Margaret Sanger's Eugenic Plan for Black Americans.   (http://www.citizenreviewonline.org/special_issues/population/the_negro_project.htm)  It shows the deception she used upon the black community in Harlem under the guise of helping them. 

“Although the clinic served whites as well as blacks, it ‘was established for the benefit of the colored people.’  Sanger wrote this in a letter dated 11 November 1930 to Dr.  W.  E.  Burghardt DuBois, one of the day's most influential blacks.  A sociologist and author, he helped found the National Association for the advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909 to improve the living conditions of black Americans…  That blacks endured extreme prejudice and discrimination, which contributed greatly to their plight, seemed to further justify restricting their numbers.  Many believed the solution lay in reducing reproduction.  Sanger suggested the answer to poverty and degradation lay in smaller numbers of blacks.  She convinced black civic groups in Harlem of the “benefits” of birth control, under the cloak of “better health” (i.e., reduction of maternal and infant death; child spacing) and ‘family planning.’”

No one can argue that there isn’t some kernel of truth in the notion that the fewer children you have feed the more money you have left at the end of the day.  But to target for limiting the reproduction of a race of people is just a slower form of genocide.  In Sanger’s own words:  “The actual dangers [of allow the unfit to be born] can only be fully realized when we have acquired definite information concerning the financial and cultural cost of these classes to the community… when we see the funds that should be available for humans development, for scientific, artistic and philosophic research, being diverted annually, by hundreds of millions of dollars, to the care and segregation of men, women, and children who never should have been born.” (The Pivot of Civilization, by Margaret Sanger)  In her 1915 work entitled, What Every Boy and Girl Should Know, she said:  “It is a vicious cycle; ignorance breeds poverty and poverty breeds ignorance.  There is only one cure for both, and that is to stop breeding these things.  Stop bringing to birth children whose inheritance cannot be one of health or intelligence.  Stop bringing into the world children whose parents cannot provide for them.”

This is what started Planned Parenthood.  And the results have been remarkably "successful” from Sanger’s perspective.  “From 1973 to 2012, abortion reduced the black population by 30%, and that doesn't even factor in all the children that would have been born to those aborted a generation ago.  To put it bluntly, abortion has thinned the black community in ways the Ku Klux Klan could have only dreamed of.”  (http://www.abort73.com/abortion/abortion_and_race/)

Slavery 

Slavery was part of our national history for 87 years although the first slaves arrived in North America in 1619 http://afroamhistory.about.com/od/slavery/a/The-Start-Of-Slavery-In-North-America.htm), the United States didn’t exist as a government until 1776); fortunately, this blight was eventually corrected and all men and women were recognized as having the God-given rights to freedom outlined in our Bill of Rights.  And despite Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee’s claims of being a freed
slave, there have been no legal slaves in this country since the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863.  That is over 150 years ago, yet the vestiges of slavery remain.  Such is the generational evil that accompanies the degradation of our fellow man.

The Democratic Party was very much involved with slavery, but has conveniently eliminated some of its actual history from its website.  Here are a few omissions (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121856786326834083.html):

  • There is no reference to the number of Democratic Party platforms supporting slavery.  There were six from 1840 through 1860.
  • There is no reference to the number of Democratic presidents who owned slaves.  There were seven from 1800 through 1861.
  • There is no reference to the number of Democratic Party platforms that either supported segregation outright or were silent on the subject.  There were 20, from 1868 through 1948.
  • There is no reference to "Jim Crow" as in "Jim Crow laws," nor is there reference to the role Democrats played in creating them.  These were the post-Civil War laws passed enthusiastically by Democrats in that pesky 52-year part of the DNC's missing years.  These laws segregated public schools, public transportation, restaurants, rest rooms and public places in general (everything from water coolers to beaches).  The reason Rosa Parks became famous is that she sat in the "whites only" front section of a bus, the "whites only" designation the direct result of Democrats. 
  • There is no reference to the formation of the Ku Klux Klan, which, according to Columbia University historian Eric Foner, became "a military force serving the interests of the Democratic Party." Nor is there reference to University of North Carolina historian Allen Trelease's description of the Klan as the "terrorist arm of the Democratic Party."
  • There is no reference to the fact Democrats opposed the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution.  The 13th banned slavery.  The 14th effectively overturned the infamous 1857 Dred Scott decision (made by Democratic pro-slavery Supreme Court justices) by guaranteeing due process and equal protection to former slaves.  The 15th gave black Americans the right to vote.
  • There is no reference to the fact that Democrats opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1866.  It was passed by the Republican Congress over the veto of President Andrew Johnson, who had been a Democrat before joining Lincoln's ticket in 1864.  The law was designed to provide blacks with the right to own private property, sign contracts, sue and serve as witnesses in a legal proceeding.
  • There is no reference to the Democrats' opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1875.  It was passed by a Republican Congress and signed into law by President Ulysses Grant.  The law prohibited racial discrimination in public places and public accommodations.
  • There is no reference to the Democrats' 1904 platform, which devotes a section to "Sectional and Racial Agitation," claiming the GOP's protests against segregation and the denial of voting rights to blacks sought to "revive the dead and hateful race and sectional animosities in any part of our common country," which in turn "means confusion, distraction of business, and the reopening of wounds now happily healed."
  • There is no reference to four Democratic platforms, 1908-20, that are silent on blacks, segregation, lynching and voting rights as racial problems in the country mount.  By contrast the GOP platforms of those years specifically address "Rights of the Negro" (1908), oppose lynching (in 1912, 1920, 1924, 1928) and, as the New Deal kicks in, speak out about the dangers of making blacks "wards of the state."
  • There is no reference to the Democratic Convention of 1924, known to history as the "Klanbake." The 103-ballot convention was held in Madison Square Garden.  Hundreds of delegates were members of the Ku Klux Klan, the Klan so powerful that a plank condemning Klan violence was defeated outright.  To celebrate, the Klan staged a rally with 10,000 hooded Klansmen in a field in New Jersey directly across the Hudson from the site of the convention.  Attended by hundreds of cheering convention delegates, the rally featured burning crosses and calls for violence against African-Americans and Catholics.
  • There is no reference to the fact that it was Democrats who segregated the federal government, at the direction of President Woodrow Wilson upon taking office in 1913.  There is a reference to the fact that President Harry Truman integrated the military after World War II.
  • There is reference to the fact that Democrats created the Federal Reserve Board, passed labor and child welfare laws, and created Social Security with Wilson's New Freedom and FDR's New Deal.  There is no mention that these programs were created as the result of an agreement to ignore segregation and the lynching of blacks.  Neither is  there a reference to the thousands of local officials, state legislators, state governors, U.S.  congressmen and U.S.  senators who were elected as supporters of slavery and then segregation between 1800 and 1965.  Nor is there reference to the deal with the devil that left segregation and lynching as a way of life in return for election support for three post-Civil War Democratic presidents, Grover Cleveland, Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt.
  • There is no reference that three-fourths of the opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Bill in the U.S.  House came from Democrats, or that 80% of the "nay" vote in the Senate came from Democrats.  Certainly there is no reference to the fact that the opposition included future Democratic Senate leader Robert Byrd of West Virginia (a former Klan member) and Tennessee Senator Albert Gore Sr., father of Vice President Al Gore.
  • Last but certainly not least, there is no reference to the fact that Birmingham, Ala., Public Safety Commissioner Bull Connor, who infamously unleashed dogs and fire hoses on civil rights protestors, was in fact--yes indeed--a member of both the Democratic National Committee and the Ku Klux Klan.

Racism Today

It seems to be an ugly part of the human condition to dislike or fear something we do not know or understand.  Getting past cultural, language, racial, or color barriers takes courage.  And far too often, we lack the courage to try.  It’s not easy to approach people you don’t know and risk ridicule, rejection, or worse.  It is far easier to be the one who does the ridiculing or to just not try. 

Part of the difficulty in addressing racism is that virtually everyone who speaks about it wants to say they are not guilty of it, but that other people are.  There are countless examples of people like Jesse Jackson, Louis Farrakhan, Rev.  Jeremiah Wright, and Al Sharpton who have used race as a tool for their own power and gain, but whose rhetoric only serves to divide.  Similarly, there are those not nearly so famous but nonetheless present who lead “white supremacy groups” in equally ugly displays of humankind.  There are more.  But once we remove these agitators from the mix, we are left with people – from different races, different cultures, different religions, different groups. 

The United States has been called a melting pot, a mixture of people from all over the world who bring their culture (and cultural baggage) with them.  While no one wants to advocate ignoring one’s heritage, neither can we as a nation tolerate
isolationism within the American society.  There has to be a balance and a  foundation of common ground.  Fortunately, there is such a foundation.  It is the American proclamation that “all men are created equal.”   We are not equal in
opportunity, wealth, education, or even capability – nor are we guaranteed those equalities.  But we are equal before the law, which means that each person regardless of his race, status, or cultural background can stand before any court in this land and obtain justice. 

Does this “blind justice” happen in reality?  Not always.  And therein lies the rub as seen by the Right:  this ship of state has drifted too far from the Constitution and Bill of Rights.  The balance of power among the branches of government is off.  There are too many Executive Orders around Congress, too much legislation from the bench, too few in Congress doing their job, and too much government that in seeking to correct wrongs, creates more of them. 

The Right seeks to return America to its founding documents and principles; to keep people from being enslaved by the government through welfare and social programs that make them wards of the state instead of free and independent people; and to stop the genocide, the mass murder of babies who are disproportionately children of minorities according to the statistics from the references cited above,  through abortion.

A return to the Constitution is where real hope is found.  Because when the equality there is reflected in our rule of law, the courage to overcome racism can be found.  And perhaps, just perhaps, we can get beyond the name calling and race baiting and truly become a United States of America.

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