“the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which basically did what the Civil Rights Act of 1964 accomplished”

Guess we didn’t need that redundant Act of ‘64?  Did they really write that?

If the GOP were all that, then Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton would be buddies with the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Bill Kristol—and yet, they aren’t. Gosh, they sure must be ill-informed about the super-duper black-friendliness of the Republican party. They must just not understand that Reagan played the “Cadillac-driving welfare woman” gambit and Jesse Helms played his whole “unregenerate bigot” gambit to demonstrate their fervent support of black issues.

Also, part of the purpose is convincing non-racist whites to vote for the GOP, too. When the GOP is widely considered to be the party of the Klan, the neo-nazis, and the hardcore racists, there are lots of white voters who hate racism and will refuse to vote for them. They need to somehow convince non-racist whites that they’re not mostly dedicated to a racist society, or they lose even more votes.

THIS? THIS, along with McCain making an incredibly ballsey and disengenuous appearance in front of the NAACP, is how the GOP is courting the black vote?

OMFG.

Republicans also enacted a series of civil-rights laws that culminated in the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which basically did what the Civil Rights Act of 1964 accomplished.

Ummm…this isn’t even English. It doesn’t parse.  In the original, it probably doesn’t even kern.

Richard Nixon is said to have developed a “Southern strategy”

“Said to have developed”?

It’s kind of funny how they have to lie, distort, and mislead in order to feel good about themselves.  Not to mention, what exactly is the intent of that article?  TO convince black people to vote for McCain instead of Obama and to vote Republican instead of Democratic?  Kind of stupid on all fronts, that article, without even mentioning the dishonesty.

Didn’t pay attention in history class, did he?  Both modern-day political parties are arguably descended from the party of Jefferson.  There were the Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans(not the Democrats), then the Federalists did themselves in and with noone to oppose the Democratic-Republican party split into the Democrats and the Whigs.  The Whigs didn’t survive the slavery debates; both parties split over it and the southern wing of the Democrats ended up becoming the only wing of the Democrats.  The Republicans, meanwhile, were formed out a of a sort of mishmosh of Northern Whigs, Northern Democrats, and Free Soilers.  Or at least that’s how my history book told it; it may have been wrong.

This is a pretty common Republican theme—remind us they’re the party of Lincoln and there were a lot of racists in the Democratic party before the Civil Rights movement succeeded, and hope we believe that party identification is somehow genetic and those racists and their descendents couldn’t have possibly moved over to the GOP after that.

But as Scott points out, the primary purpose isn’t to convince black people they’re not racists, it’s to convince white people who don’t like racism that they’re not racists, while continuing to dog-whistle white people who do like racism.

The assumption that black people are too stupid to realize that they should like Republicans is kind of reminiscent of the “Irrational Bush Hatred” argument—the weird belief that liberals and Democrats can’t possibly hate Bush for what he’s done, so it must be the case that they just hate him for no reason, and because of that go looking for things he’s done to criticize. Sort of an “Occam’s Hammer” argument.

One of the things swept under the rug is that Rheinquist was a big racist fuckwit who got to the Supreme Court.

I was born in 1974, GOP. What the fuck have you done for me lately?

You know, I keep waiting for these guys to just go all the way and deny that slavery ever existed—that all those black people picking cotton in the South before the Civil War were paid employees. If we can have Holocaust deniers, who can maintain with a straight face that an event within living memory didn’t happen, what’s stopping slavery deniers?

I heard a similar thing on NPR a week or so ago. FDR’s granddaughter was ranting about how Republicans were the true Civil Rights party and how every major civil rights advance in our nation’s history had been the work of Republicans….....yea, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing either.

http://liberalretort.blogspot.com/

“If we can have Holocaust deniers, who can maintain with a straight face that an event within living memory didn’t happen, what’s stopping slavery deniers?”

But if the blacks really loved being slaves, was it really slavery? They do say that, you know.

Its more that slaves should be happy they were taken away from Africa and brought to the glorious US!  And then we fought a war to free them!  How dare they ask us to also fight racism!

But as Scott points out, the primary purpose isn’t to convince black people they’re not racists, it’s to convince white people who don’t like racism that they’re not racists, while continuing to dog-whistle white people who do like racism.

I’d modify that somewhat: the point is to convince white people that the Republican party isn’t treating blacks unfairly. That’s a big difference from “not racist.” By throwing slurs at blacks for rejecting the Republicans, the righwing is actually being very bigoted and racist, but they hope that non-racist whites will lack the context to recognize their slurs.

(Hypothetical: If I was defending myself against charges of anti-semitism in my peer group and I took a non-Jew aside and pointed out all the good things I did for a particular Jew—and most of those things were either lies or irrelevant—and then neglected to mention the recent, awful things I had done to him, it would be a foul thing to do, clearly. If I then implied that the subject’s Jewishness was the reason why he didn’t like me and called me anti-semetic, then I would have, ironically enough, been anti-semetic within my very plea for acceptance. I’m actually trying to invite my mark to join the bigotry by offering him the privilege of ignoring it.)

Repugs: keeping the world safe for bigots for near a century.

BTW, the meme that blacks really were better off under slavery and should be greatful for it is already out there. I won’t provide links to those pushing the notion, but Orinicus sometimes puts these shits on display. Other variations: blacks were done a favor by being kidnapped, murdered and raped in the U.S. over centuries because they got the advantage of—pick your favorites—technology (which they couldn’t employ since they were slaves), western philosophy (which held that they weren’t human beings—see technology), or Christianity (which pretty much undermined the justification of their slavery unless the text was deliberately perverted—slavery in the ancient world could be bought off, for one thing).

This stuff, again, isn’t designed to convince black people of anything, but is designed to attract whites of dubious character.

technology

Did the parts of Africa Atlantic-trade slaves typically came from have a noticeable lack of technology in comparison to the American south of the same period?  Most of the key forms of personal-use oriented “technology” people think of (telephone, refrigerator, car) were developed and/or popularized long after American slavery was abolished.  And most of the forms of technology that revolutionized the Western world in the antebellum period were more in the line of industrial capital on a large scale—your average joe didn’t have a cotton gin or a steam boat in the back yard, whether in Africa or America. 

Keep in mind, also, that the south was slow to industrialize, anyway, and most of the West African proto-nation states that exported slaves were generally pretty good on the “technology” scale and also had trade contact with both Europe and Asia, especially via the Muslim world.  In 1700, you probably had access to more imported gear in Dahomey than in Pennsylvania.

western philosophy

Again, see above wrt West African contact with the Old World.  Not to mention, of course, that Africa had much stronger cultural ties to classical philosophy via contact with Islam, which preserved classical texts where early Christians sought to destroy them.  And I seriously doubt that most white people in the rural American south had a thorough knowledge of post-classical Western philosophy, anyway.  Not to mention, of course, it was forbidden to teach a slave to read, let alone give her Descartes or Locke.

Christianity

This is so laughable I’m not even going to give it more than a sentence or two.  A) East African Christian communities predate any American congregation and most European ones, too (yes, I realize East Africa is not West Africa, but bear with me here).  B) Jeremiah Wright vs. Peter Akinola; discuss - specifically, who do the Republicans prefer?

“it’s like how your American history class stopped during Vietnam and you were apparently supposed to fill in the blanks by watching Platoon, Wall Street and Forrest Gump. “

Better than English history classes, which used to stop after the (English) civil war unless you went on to do an A-Level. These days GCSEs (national exams for 15/16 year olds) usually stop at World War II.

These articles burn me up. The underlying assumption is….what? That black voters are too stupid to realize that the Republican party really loves them and wants to help?

Not to mention, that it treats the voters as black first and voters second - there’s no way the blacks could be voting Democrat because of non-racial issues. Right? Just like all us women can’t vote now, because Hillary is out of the race, so we have to stay home.

Republicans were the party of Lincoln? Republicans were also the party of the North. So if we encourage people to vote for “the party of the North” that would be, hmm, Democrats. *digs around for map of secession states and map of states won by GWB. confirms states are the same*

If we go back the the late-1860s electoral situation, that would be with Union Army occupying the former secessionist states to ensure equality under the law. Works for me.