If only changing parties or ideology was as easy as changing your pants.
But ingrained loyalty is hard to just drop. It has nothing to do with intelligence or give aways or anything like that. At some time in the past the blacks switched from the party that FREED them to the party that actually did put them in CHAINS. The same party that has not yet apologized for their past. Why doesn't someone apologize? Because they don't feel they have done anything wrong. So be it with the democrat party.
LBJ predicted he would have those n....ers voting democrat for 100 years and so far he has been right.
There are two huge con jobs that simply amaze me.
One is that the rich democrat aristocrats were able to talk the brave southern poor to charge into canister to protect the rich democrat way of life.
The other is how LBJ got blacks to change party.
Both should be in history book on how effective propaganda can really be.
Again, LBJ did not say that. I guess you are of the Party that thinks if they repeat a lie enough times.......
Maybe yes and maybe no. You can't prove a negative and the quote is in a book written about LBJ. If I were to argue for you that the quote really isn't that bad for the time. I wouldl say that using the N word was not out of fashion at the time and LBJ was a noted foul mouth. The rest of the quote certainly has proved to be true. So I am not sure why you shorts are in a knot, it is probably, if not truly an LBJ quote, a paraphrase of his racist sentiments.
Basically it's about people claiming quotes they can't prove. One guy who wrote in a book something that nobody else can corroborate, just doesn't meet the credibility test. If that's all it took, anyone at all could invent a quote they claim they heard, undocumented, and we'd have to accept it as fact. And that won't work.
What he
is alleged to have noted about this, I think it was to Bill Moyers, was "we have lost the South for a generation" ("We" meaning Democrats), an acknowledgement of the party's (until then) bipolar relationship that simultaneously courted conservatives in the South and Liberals everywhere else. And he was right about that except he underestimated the time of "a generation".
Now, LBJ
could have genuinely said it at least privately --- there is more credible evidence of his saying to a young attorney who was just joining his staff and proposing an obscure black judge for the Supreme Court, ""Son, when I appoint a n*gger to the court, I want everyone to know he's a n*gger".
From here:
The attorney never heard him speak about blacks that way again and felt that Johnson was playing a part and trying to create a kind of rapport between two "good old Southern boys" at their first meeting.
The same book noted a similar quote from 1957: Sam, why won't you let this n*gger bill pass?" to Sam Rayburn.
Both of these accounts, as the attorney assesses, indicate the use of the word "n*gger" is what's called "mirroring" in psychology; establishing or maintaining a connection with the conversant. In other words "n*gger would not be about the subject, but about the person he was talking to. And if there's one thing Johnson was known for above all, it was his powers of persuasion. And playing the role within the context of the South was crucial in doing so:
the very naked reality was that if you did take a position [in civil rights] it was almost certain you would be defeated... by a bigot. (ibid, p. 99)
Jimmy Carter faced the same conundrum early in his political career. So did George Wallace, whose early defeat led Wallace to remark he would never allow an opponent to "out-n*gger me again".
Finally, the use of the word "n*gger" doesn't necessarily indicate racism in itself; actions do. And while the accompanying text from the link above illustrates Johnson's history in civil rights dating back to the 1930s, clearly these two examples use the word as a psychological device. Not a "paraphrase of his racism" -- that just doesn't add up.
Which serves quite well to explain your next part here:
Here is an discussion about LBJ from another site. Interesting that LBJ is truly the one that had a southern strategy based solely on race.
From 1940 to 1960 Johnson voted with the South 78% on civil rights issues. Before 1957, voted 100% against civil rights issues. He also voted against the C.R.A. of 1957 and 1960.
LBJ reversed his position on race 180%, likely because he was a consumate politico who realized he was going to need the black vote, rather than any sense of brotherhood or equality. In Congress, LBJ repeatedly voted against legislation to protect black Americans from lynching. As a Senate leader he did his best to cripple the C.R.A. of 1957 managing to reduce it to an act of mere symbolism by taking out the enforcement provisions before sending it to Eisenhower. Dem colleague Strom Thurmond staged the longest filibuster in history up to that point, speaking for 24 hours in a failed attempt to block the bill.
In 1960 another C.R.A. was introduced to try to correct the LBJ deficiencies of the 1957 act, and Senate Democrats again staged a record-setting filibuster. In both cases, LBJ petitioned the northeastern Kennedy liberals to credit him for having seen to the law’s passage while at the same time boasting to southern Democrats that he had cut the legs out from under the legislation.
Johnson later explained it: “These Negroes, they’re getting pretty uppity these days, and that’s a problem for us, since they’ve got something now they never had before: the political pull to back up their uppityness. Now we’ve got to do something about this — we’ve got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference.”
That's another quote that has no documented source
. It's become an internet Google Image meme but it has no historical root. And the Thurmond filibuster, 24 hours and 18 minutes, which still stands as a record that has never been surpassed, backfired on Thurmond, didn't change a single vote, and was seen even by his Southern colleages as a betrayal. Thurmond had already been kicked off the ballot by the South Carolina Democratic Party for his endorsement of Eisenhower in 1952 (he actually won re-election as a write-in, not a Democrat).
EDIT: More about this from my recent post in another thread, here
The opposition to civil rights was still somewhat prevalant in the Dem party at the time, excepting the northeastern liberal wing. They again filibustered the 64 C.R.A (for 57 days) and a (much) larger percentage of Republicans than Democrats in both houses of Congress voted for it. In the House, 80 percent of the Republicans and 63 percent of the Democrats voted in favor. In the Senate, 82 percent of the Republicans and 69 percent of the Democrats voted for it.
Did LBJ really say I ll have those n s voting Democrat for two-hundred years when passing the Great Society legislation - Quora
Actually it was prevalent only in the South; the "liberal wing" was the entire rest of the country, so actually it was the South that was a "wing" until 1964, which was both preceded and followed chronologically by over a century of fraternal rebellion as late as 1972 and as far back as 1860. And again, about that supposed "reversal", see the link illustrating a history all the way back to the 1930s that puts that to rest.
As for the percentage of that vote on CRA '64, that's just flat out wrong. I've posted this a dozen times before but here it comes yet again:
The original House version:
- Southern Democrats: 7–87 (7–93%)
- Southern Republicans: 0–10 (0–100%)
- >>> ALL SOUTHERNERS: 7-97 (6.7%--93.3%)
- Northern Democrats: 145–9 (94 – 6%)
- Northern Republicans: 138–24 (85 – 15%)
- >>> ALL NORTHERNERS: 283-33 (89.6%--11.4%)
The Senate version:
- Southern Democrats: 1–20 (5–95%)
- Southern Republicans: 0–1 (0–100%)
- Northern Democrats: 45–1 (98–2%)
- Northern Republicans: 27–5 (84–16%)
- ALL SOUTHERNERS: 1--21 (4.5%--95.5%)
- ALL NORTHERNERS: 72--6 (92.3%--7.7%)
Totaled up, these votes do show a slight pattern of party in that each line shows more support from the D side than the R side. But again, 94 versus 85 on one side --- that's not significant.
But
96 on one side versus 92 on the other side?? You just hit the motherlode.
That is a pattern.
But that pattern is
regional, not political. And
regional means
cultural.
You take the numbers from the North -- both Dems and Repubs are for it.
You take the numbers from the South -- both Dems and Repubs are agin' it.
It's truly bipartisan in both directions. (!)
So enough of this politics-as-football-score invention. What we're describing has to do with regional culture and history specific to that region --- not political parties. Johnson's POV and thrust of idealism wasn't the result of being a
"Democrat" --- it emanated from his being a
Southerner, and a Texan.
In short, there is no simple algebraic equation telling us "Democrat votes X, Y, Z in year A mean racism or not-racism". It just isn't anywhere near as simple as that.
