The classic family film, Mary Poppins has been recently branded as racist by Professor Daniel Pollack-Pelzner in an article published by the NY Times over the scene where she gets covered in soot. Pelzner is an English and gender studies professor at Oregon’s Linfield College.
I believe it’s time to pin the tail on the donkey.
Since its founding in 1829, the Democratic Party has fought against every major civil rights initiative and has a long history of discrimination.
The Democratic Party defended slavery, started the Civil War, opposed Reconstruction, founded the Ku Klux Klan, imposed segregation, perpetrated lynchings, and fought against the civil rights acts of the 1950s and 1960s.
In contrast, the Republican Party was founded in 1854 as an anti-slavery party. Its mission was to stop the spread of slavery into the new western territories with the aim of abolishing it entirely. This effort, however, was dealt a major blow by the Supreme Court. In the 1857 case Dred Scott v. Sandford, the court ruled that slaves aren’t citizens; they’re property. The seven justices who voted in favor of slavery? All Democrats. The two justices who dissented? Both Republicans.
The slavery question was, of course, ultimately resolved by a bloody civil war. The commander in-chief during that war was the first Republican President, Abraham Lincoln – the man who freed the slaves.
Six days after the Confederate army surrendered, John Wilkes Booth, a Democrat, assassinated President Lincoln. Lincoln’s vice president, a Democrat named Andrew Johnson, assumed the presidency. But Johnson adamantly opposed Lincoln’s plan to integrate the newly freed slaves into the South’s economic and social order.
Johnson and the Democratic Party were unified in their opposition to the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery; the 14th Amendment, which gave blacks citizenship; and the 15th Amendment, which gave blacks the vote. All three passed only because of universal Republican support.
During the era of Reconstruction, federal troops stationed in the south helped secure rights for the newly freed slaves. Hundreds of black men were elected to southern state legislatures as Republicans, and 22 black Republicans served in the US Congress by 1900. The Democrats did not elect a black man to Congress until 1935.
But after Reconstruction ended, when the federal troops went home, Democrats roared back into power in the South. They quickly reestablished white supremacy across the region with measures like black codes – laws that restricted the ability of blacks to own property and run businesses. And they imposed poll taxes and literacy tests, used to subvert the black citizen’s right to vote.
And how was all of this enforced? By terror — instigated by the Ku Klux Klan, founded by a Democrat, Nathan Bedford Forrest. There were also lynching’s, but not what you might think. According to the University of Missouri-Kansas School of Law, between 1882 and 1964 an estimated 3,446 blacks and 1,279 whites were lynched at the hands of the Klan.
President Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat, shared many views with the Klan. He re-segregated many federal agencies, and even screened the first movie ever played at the White House – the racist film “The Birth of a Nation,” originally entitled “The Clansman.”
A few decades later, the only serious congressional opposition to the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 came from Democrats.
Eighty percent of Republicans in Congress supported the bill. Less than 70 percent of Democrats did. Democratic senators filibustered the bill for 75 days, until Republicans mustered the few extra votes needed to break the logjam.
Democrats falsely claim that the Republican Party is the villain, when it’s the failed policies of the Democratic Party that have kept blacks down. Massive government welfare has decimated the black family. Opposition to school choice has kept them trapped in failing schools. Politically correct policing has left black neighborhoods defenseless against violent crime.
As we forge ahead into the critical 2020 election season, let’s not forget the real history of America when blacks and whites, primarily Republicans, worked side by side defending the rights and dignity of all Americans. It’s a history that has been kept out of the history books.
Is racism still in the USA today? Yes. Is it wrong? Yes. —But to have the Democratic Party call everyone and everything a racist just because you don’t agree with their policies only continues to water down the real problems and solutions of racism in our country.
William Salser
Stuart
