That one of the two major parties is pointing proudly to its positive contribution is not grounds for complaint. Bark on the other tree. Ask them why they aren't emphasizing their positive contributions.

The major party is pointing to contributions they didn't make. ALL the "Democrats" that opposed equality for Black people became Republican.

And if they're claiming Lincoln they have to take it all...including Lincoln's belief in the inferiority of Black people.

Part two tomorrow.

And if they're claiming Lincoln they have to take it all...including Lincoln's belief in the inferiority of Black people.

I suggest that if we're going to judge Lincoln, we should judge the whole Lincoln, and in context. I think he comes off a giant among men.

Recall the discussion regarding whether those who legalized slavery accepted Africans as being human like them? The prevailing belief among whites, northern whites, at that time was to the racist side of what Lincoln said. Southerners were willing to watch public auctions where children were sold away from their family.

As we've also discussed, people are not born believing in racial equality, let alone human equality. It is human nature to reject differences, and to feel superior, particularly in a context which seems to prove such every day. It's analogous to a flat earth in the center of the universe. That's what we experience, that's what we're strongly inclined to believe. It took progress of civilization to construct an educational system which presents the contrary evidence to every child.

It took progress of civilization for America to begin to lead the world in first eliminating slavery, and then eliminating legally enforced racial superiority. Lincoln had a crucial role in this progress.

I suggest that if we're going to judge Lincoln, we should judge the whole Lincoln, and in context. I think he comes off a giant among men.

I'va already acknowledged Lincoln was a good guy, considering.

But judging Lincoln isn't the point. I'm judging the Republican's attempt to usurp his story when the Republican Party consists of those elements that left the Democratic party because Black people were given legal...not actual...rights.

The point is, the Republican Party of today is composed of those that were the "Democratic" party they are decrying.

And looking ahead, even during the time they want us to judge them by, they abandoned Black people to the haters of the South to solidify their political power...remember the Tildon Hayes compromise? The agreement that gave Republicans the Presidency in exchange for ending Reconstruction and the protection of Africans in America?

They raided the Freedmens Bank, stealing all the wealth Black people accumulated after the Civil War. They only gave Black people the vote to lock in their own political position.They sacrificed the interests of Black people to forward their issues...just as this nation always has.

This isn't about Lincoln. It's about a Republican Party that never gave a damn about Black people even at the best of times.

Judge Lincoln as you will. I'll judge the past and current hypocrisy of the Republican party as it deserves.

George Wallace stood in the doorway as a Democrat.

I don't see where the comprehensive historical analysis supports one party over the other.

The idea that contemporary Republicans care to point to their better moments seems good.

I don't see where the comprehensive historical analysis supports one party over the other.

[NOTE: I was so happy to see that quote...using it here was something of a Freudian slip. Edited...carry on...]

George Wallace stood in the doorway as a Democrat.

True. And he left the doorway a Republican. Followed by ALL of his allies.

The CURRENT record strongly favors the Democratic party...which is why Republicans must go back 100 years to find a case where a party bearing the name "Republican"...a party that has nothing to do with the current party...did anything that even looked like it benefitted Black people.

I'm not defending Democrats...I'm exposing the active misrepresentations of the current Republican party.

I don't see where the comprehensive historical analysis supports one party over the other.

You realize I'll remind you of this statement in future conversations, don't you?

As we've also discussed, people are not born believing in racial equality, let alone human equality. It is human nature to reject differences, and to feel superior, particularly in a context which seems to prove such every day. It's analogous to a flat earth in the center of the universe. That's what we experience, that's what we're strongly inclined to believe. It took progress of civilization to construct an educational system which presents the contrary evidence to every child.

P6, if you believe the rhetorical resort to comprehensive historical analysis was notable, I'm a little surprised you let this TRULY dubious resort to human nature slip past without comment.

DW - as a longtime and ruthless interrogator of the issue of *race* - I'd love to see the evidence you've accumulated to support this contention. Having never been privvy to any such evidence, I'm afraid I'll have to reject this claim on the grounds that no scientific or historical analysis of human behavior I've ever seen supports this claim.

The exploitation of intraspecies differences is a learned behavior, not a simple reflex. Anecdotally, human children don't reject, they often-as-not don't even question. Once they have language in which to frame questions, they ask. Once they ask, they're taught interpretations of differences. Racism is nurture, not nature.

Anglospheric whites are not so civilized that they're overcoming ANY aspect of their nature. Matter of fact, in the current polity, some of the worst aspects of anglospheric white culture are fully resurgent. The "islamo-fascist terrorist" is the nigger du jour - because *our* oil sits under western asian land.

P6, if you believe the rhetorical resort to comprehensive historical analysis was notable, I'm a little surprised you let this TRULY dubious resort to human nature slip past without comment.

Matter of focus.

I can't let the initial issue slip...we need to develop the practice of not allowing distractions. I can (and do) raise the human nature issue...but that's always dealt with...incorrectly...as a matter of opinion.

This Republican-as-savior-of-the-blackamoors thing can be disproven in documentable fashion, and should be.

Let me ask you cnulan. Do you recall believing that the earth was flat?

I don't see where the comprehensive historical analysis supports one party over the other.

You realize I'll remind you of this statement in future conversations, don't you?

Fair enough, I still believe it even after you hold it up and spin it around.

Make sure you point out what you think is spin.

Let me ask you cnulan. Do you recall believing that the earth was flat?

I don't recollect giving it much thought as a child. Similarly, I don't recollect having any xenophobic reflexes, at all. During my testosterone fueled salad years, I became a frightening racist for a spell. All that behaviour was learned, emotionally, intellectually, and behaviorally acquired.

I consider the flat earth/native xenophobia analogy extremely weak and misleading. I'd still very much like to see any evidence you can marshall in support of your contention that racism is native? Got URL(s)?

Accepting expedient republican revisionism is a faustian bargain acceptable only to miseducated black folks. The neo-altertumswissenschaft of Rovian political gaming is plainly obvious, falling for it would be the height of stupidity, much as accepting the ever-changing coverstory plastered around the so-called War on Terror would be the height of immorality.

Make sure you point out what you think is spin.

Thanks for inviting me to clarify. The image I had in mind was holding up a small statue to the audience, and turning it all directions so that everyone could examine it in detail.

here's the best I can do for now, cnulan. It's based on observation, and I agree, my observations may or may not generalize better than yours do. As you've seen, I offer my analysis into the mix. Sometimes a superior analysis arrives, and sometimes from you personally.

Further, we may or may not strongly diverge. As I worked to reduce this to more elemental reasoning, I came to agree that historically, teaching racism was ubiquitous.

-small children (not babies, they don't care) who are raised among a small number of people develop a fear of other people.
-this fear is magnified when the other people look dramatically different from the people they know. A beard, for example.

(so far ok?)

-if the child regularly interacts with people of different skin color, or people with beards, the child will quickly lose that fear
-if the child is advised by his parents to continue to fear such people, or to feel superior to them, the child will easily traverse that path. In a culture which incorporates racial superiority, this becomes the strong default.

(so I agree with you on that point. Maybe I should let it drop there, because we don't necessarily have to explore further, but it leaves open an analysis which is relevant in contemporary times, times where our culture does not universally incorporate racial superiority)

-(now for the contentious case) If the child continues to live in isolation from different people, and with no strong guidance from his local family, the child will remain fearful. This fear will eventually be replaced by a feeling of differentness. Maybe they're not scary, but they sure are different. And by "human nature", different means not equal. It's this state which must be overcome by many contemporary whites.

Where racism is found, it is ubiquitously the case that it was taught. As for the ideologically induced mental illness itself, it is far less ubiquitous than some of your comments lead me to suspect you believe.

-small children (not babies, they don't care) who are raised among a small number of people develop a fear of other people.

This phenomenon in and of itself explains very much about why anglospheric culture with its emphasis on the *nuclear family* is as it is. I recommend you look into Christopher Bollas and what he termed normotic illness. The psyche of a child raised among an unnaturally small number of people is prone to cognitive underdevelopment - in addition to being susceptible to a number of mental illnesses, as well.

Here's a useful link on the subject of Human Nature

I strongly encourage you to explore this topic as fully as you're able. Had I not done so myself, it is highly likely that I would not have recovered from my own flirtation with racism. I was certainly never raised to think, feel, or behave that way, quite the contrary. However, having encountered as much racism as I was able to tolerate, including an incident in which I rode the subway too far into south boston and wound up in one of the nastier and more lopsided fights of my life, it subsequently became very easy and gratifying for a time for me to deny the humanity of white people.

"True. And he left the doorway a Republican. Followed by ALL of his allies."

P6 - I think Br. George left the doorway to form the American Independent Party. I don't believe he was ever a member of the Republican Party. I think that by that time or shortly thereafter the GOP had Strom Thurmond in its ranks, which sort of lessened the need for Wallace and the emergence of Jesse Helms eliminated any possible role for Wallace.

Negroes who wish to support the Republican Party should simply declare their allegiance to that Party's platforms and principles and give up their efforts to rewrite history. It ain't working. There are too many of us around who were there back in the day.

"I suggest that if we're going to judge Lincoln, we should judge the whole Lincoln, and in context. I think he comes off a giant among men."

Lincoln certainly comes off as giant among American Presidents many of whom quickly faded into the obscurity from which they emerged. Lincoln stands head and shoulders above, say, Millard Fillmore, Benjamin Harrison or Warren G. Harding. I think you are off-base, however, when you imply that the descendants of slaves are being insufficiently objective when they consider the man's merits. It may have been the prevaling view among whites that blacks were by nature inferior to whites but you cannot argue that all whites shared this unwarranted presumption. Since those of us who are descendants of American slaves know that our ancestors were not inferior to whites, if for no other reason, that we, ourselves, are not by nature inferior to whites it is difficult for you to insist that we measure Lincoln by some other standard if he regarded our ancestors as inherently inferior to him and his white brethren.

I think Br. George left the doorway to form the American Independent Party. I don't believe he was ever a member of the Republican Party.

I stand corrected, though the principle holds. I do regret the loss of a really good line...

Stepping from "slavery" to "racism, but not slavery" seems an important step forward. The man who caused that to occur was advancing the cause of black people.

It may have been the prevaling view among whites that blacks were by nature inferior to whites but you cannot argue that all whites shared this unwarranted presumption.

I'd never argue that all of any group of a million living people shared anything beyond time on earth.

However, while slavery was highly devisive among whites, superioricist views were the norm in 1860. They were still the norm in 1910. By 1960, we had made serious progress, at least in the more civilized parts of the country.

Had I not done so myself, it is highly likely that I would not have recovered from my own flirtation with racism. I was certainly never raised to think, feel, or behave that way, quite the contrary. However, having encountered as much racism as I was able to tolerate, including an incident in which I rode the subway too far into south boston and wound up in one of the nastier and more lopsided fights of my life, it subsequently became very easy and gratifying for a time for me to deny the humanity of white people.

Can you tell me cnulan some details of the intellectual journey? What did you learn which got you back on track?

Stepping from "slavery" to "racism, but not slavery" seems an important step forward. The man who caused that to occur was advancing the cause of black people.

I don't care what you think of Lincoln. He's dead. And in any event there was no single man that caused that to happen.

Current day Republicans are liars for attempting to take credit for the event. They are still attempting to use Black people for their own benefit. That is what I have always had issue with. That is what they are continuing to do. They have shown no evidence of any concern for the issues Black people face. You can avoid discussing those truths if you wish.

By 1960, we had made serious progress, at least in the more civilized parts of the country.

But it was still the norm nationwide.

"However, while slavery was highly devisive among whites, superioricist views were the norm in 1860. They were still the norm in 1910."

I do not think that slavery per se was a highly divisive issue among whites in 1860. I think the unceasing efforts of slaveholders to push slavery into new territories and states was much more of a divisive issue.

"By 1960, we had made serious progress, at least in the more civilized parts of the country."

If you want to argue that by 1960 there were fewer sections of the country as backward as the southern states in terms of racial issues you can make a moderately plausible case that has some merit. The matter of "serious progress", however, greatly depends on what you as a white American mean by serious progress. I don't think that many black people who were alive at the time and are alive today would share your percepton even if they did not live in the south.

I live today, for example, in an affluent Pennsylvania town that loves to boast of its Quaker roots and it having been a station on the Underground Railway. The new high school in fact will be named after Bayard Rustin (plenty, plenty struggle over this issue). In the 1960s, however, the schools in this district were still racially segregated and this was ten years after Brown v. Board of Education.

In my hometown, which, as I have written before, has an undeserved reputation as being liberal (It is only liberal compared to the rest of the country.), racial discrimination against blacks was a routine everyday occurrence. The previous mayor of that city, who is black, first came to public prominence because he and his wife and their baby daughter were denied the opportunity to rent an apartment because of the color of their skin. He put a protest sign on his daughter's stroller and began picketing the offices of the rental agent.
I 'll save the Willie Mays and Wilt Chamberlain stories for later.

Racial discrimination and oppression was still a pervasive part of the American landscape in 1960.

Can you tell me cnulan some details of the intellectual journey? What did you learn which got you back on track?

I had an epiphany.

First thing to understand, it's not an *intellectual* journey. Left to intellect alone, I would still take unwarranted pride in my natural endowments and the undeserved gifts bestowed on me by parents and others. THAT is precisely the nature of the thought crime at the root of imagined superiority. It is a "but for the grace of God, there go I" realization that is at the heart of self-remembering. Self-remembering is at the heart of humility, and humility is the beginning of conscience. Conscience is the possibility of feeling with the totality of your capacity to feel.

For discussion's sake, let's say that consciousness is "knowing" the totality of data your organism has assimilated and conscience is "feeling" the totality of emotion that your organism has felt. By that yardstick, you quickly come to realize the pitiful truth of your own insufferable nothingness. In terms of sheer being, my 5 year old is far more than I am. He exists in a continuous eidetic state of unrestricted access to himself that I can only intermittently achieve.

Back to the point, I got back on track because something literally whispered into my ear that hatred is the antithesis of consciousness and conscience. I learned that my self-interest is best served not by a partial evaluative representation of others, but instead by Working harder on enlarging my routine, pedestrian, in-the-moment experience of self. I discovered that it was possible to return to a state of normalcy - if I could let imaginary representations of my self, others, and self-in-relation-to-others go.

Normalcy is such that what motivates it is a kind of selfless service to the aims of the community as a way of developing personal being. Service to others, advancing an atmosphere of compassion, the promotion of understanding and the pursuit of excellence in life are the aims of normally functioning human beings. A normally functioning human being develops will by anamnesis (self-remembering) in relation to the duty of social reciprocity.

The matter of "serious progress", however, greatly depends on what you as a white American mean by serious progress.

I mean we were ready to kick George Wallace out of the schoolhouse door.

I mean we were ready to eliminate Jim Crow.

We were nowhere near either of these in 1910. By 1960, the time had come.

Left to intellect alone, I would still take unwarranted pride in my natural endowments and the undeserved gifts bestowed on me by parents and others. THAT is precisely the nature of the thought crime at the root of imagined superiority.

I've been thinking of this since I read it this morning, cnulan.

It's a hard concept to swallow, not being proud of your genetic makeup.

yeah....,

after seeing it twice, here and at Faye Anderson's spot, it finally dawned on me exactly what the yardstick for serious progress must be.

When the GOP repudiates the southern strategy, I'll concede your point about serious progress.

By 1964-5, not 60, "we" were eyebrow deep in Vietnam and conscripting bullet catchers. Lots and lots of these were black. Both Seymour Hersh and Noam Chomsky have come correct in the past week on exactly why things had to change here in the U.S. if we were to continue fighting and imperial war using conscripted troops.

It's a hard concept to swallow, not being proud of your genetic makeup.

Taking pride in something you did nothing to earn is simply vanity. Time and tide typically take that nonsense out of most men, no matter how exceptional their providential endowments.

Not if you're on the positive side of the support system. That only happens when you're fuel.

"I mean we were ready to kick George Wallace out of the schoolhouse door."

DW - You must mean you and the members of your family because I can assure that in 1960 racial discrimination against African Americans was a ubiquitous feature of American life. Don't forget that in 1972 George Wallace's candidacy for the office of president was considered so strong that many people feared that he would capture enough states that November to throw the election into the House of Representatives. Wallace ran on a platform of state's rights, which then and now black folks interpret as being a form of code expressing displeasure with black advancement.

I can assure that in 1960 racial discrimination against African Americans was a ubiquitous feature of American life.

I don't disagree with that assessment, PT.

But there were some serious differences compared to 1910.

Things were beginning to change fast. In 1910, things weren't changing at all.

Was 1960 externally dramatically different from 1910? Not a lot. I'm not trying to make a case that things were good in 1960. Discrimination was still the norm. But discrimination was coming to be widely seen as uncivilized. Attitudes were different. Profoundly, we had mostly decided "no more thugs".

The various small-time confrontations during the early '60s which were so well recorded (Rosa Parks, for example) had been occurring all along, but yielded no change. Thugs were engaged in suppression of uppity blacks, no one cared about that either. By 1960, we were ready to put racist thugs in jail. No, not everywhere, but almost everywhere. It was this hope, this sense that the spotlight would protect from thugs which enabled the Rosa Parks story.

Serious progress.

Wallace ran on a platform of state's rights, which then and now black folks interpret as being a form of code expressing displeasure with black advancement.

I hope you see at least some "states rights" defenders as focused on legalizing medical marijuana.

I think folks have the right to smoke marijuana for whatever reasons they deem appropriate and necessary.

I'd agree with you PT (not all that rare) that marijuana should be legal. But it's not. And it's a crucial focus for states rights. Does a state have the right to legalize marijuana even for medical purposes? The feds say no.

Why are you guys discussing marijuana?

because nobody's buying the revisionist rhetoric about the republican party, the prototypical deeply closeted logcabin republican president, or the evolving consciousness of white america.

might as well fire up a blunt and all get along....,

...and to the eternal consternation of neo-conservatives, none of whom ever smoked, let alone inhaled, do we get to sing "Kumbayaa" too?

Pass the Dutchie on the left hand side
Pass the Dutchie on the left hand side
It a gonna burn, give me music make me jump and prance
It a go done, give me the music make me rock in the dance

I say east, say west, say north and south (on the left hand side)
This is gonna make us jump and shout (on the left hand side)"

You shoulda seen the moderator's howl on the so-called "black conservatives" yahoo group when the subject of the Southern Strategy was raised. THIS is a tremendous, *within my lifetime* structural weakness in the republican party that has nothing whatsoever to do with conservatism, and EVERYTHING to do with catering to the racist sensibilities of a huge chunk of the white republican base.

As far as I'm concerned, it is the fundamental dealbreaker, cultural, moral, and spiritual divide which until and unless it is directly addressed by republican leadership - rather than accomodated and exploited by minister of propaganda herr stumpfenfuehrer Rove - makes everything with the imprimatur of this party suspect.

BTW, is it just me or are there others who think that we have stepped through the "Looking Glass" and everything that once seemed solid has turned to air? I find it terribly ironic that Condi Rice of all people would reach into the past and pull out the slavery card when she and her fellow neo-conservatives continually argue that blacks and others who bring this issue up are simply pandering and failing to encourage people to take responsibility for their behavior. Since she is a student of Russian history can we expect her to argue at some point that Czar Nicholas intended to out an end to serfdom and that the Bolsheviks (who imposed a new variant of serfdom) were just being impatient?

Both of my grandfathers always told me to watch out whenever a Negro started that Lincoln freed the slaves kind of talk. I have never forgotten their advice.

BTW, is it just me or are there others who think that we have stepped through the "Looking Glass" and everything that once seemed solid has turned to air?

Those who view the world from a psychological perspective see altogether too clearly what is afoot. and it's ugly....,

might as well fire up a blunt and all get along....,

Today was the first time I actually laughed out loud while reading p6.

Today's Republicans, aside from the Moral Majoritarians are largely Goldwater Republicans. These folks were and are not principly racist. The fundamental assumption that they are is what's stopping this discussion from being reasonable.

I don't take the Black Conseravatives as seriously as I do the Conservative Blacks. The Yahoo group is all of the former. Let us also remember that the head black neocon is Thomas Sowell, so it would behoove us all to have some citations of his readily accessible writings when we start painting neocons in superlative rhetoric.

There's so much straw in this joint that I sneeze when I read.

Brother Cobb, I thought we were just trying to prevent folks from rewriting history, i.e., conflating today's Republican Party with the attributes of the sainted Lincoln. I'm sure that as a Conservative Black you object to folks using slavery as a crutch and object, too, to folks wanting black people to view the Republican Party through the prism of Massa Lincoln doing all he could to free the slaves.

I don't know if Goldwater's political heirs are racist but I did know, for example, two now deceased black Republicans who attended the 1964 Republican Convention in San Francisco and years later told me that they had never felt so unwelcome in the Republican Party. I don't think that their sense of unease came solely from their support of Nelson Rockefeller either. Peace be unto you, my brother.

There's so much straw in this joint that I sneeze when I read.

I suppose I could vacuum after smacking down the Republican strawmen...

I thought he was talking about the quality of the repub-dutchie what got handed to him on the right hand side.....,