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So a real quick mention of some problems with @DineshDSouza. @KevinMKruse took him apart already but I have a book coming out next year that addresses how Democratic politicians fabricated a past to justify racist policies in Jim Crow North Carolina so I take this one personally.
It sort of reminds me of what @DineshDSouza & the some in the GOP do today. They fabricated a past through a selective use of decontextualized facts, willful amnesia to evidence that challenges their narrative, and straight up lies to justify a world view that skewed reality.
As any historian can tell you, the Lost Cause was used to justify Jim Crow and was full of fabrications. Among many smaller lies were the big falsehoods like the Civil War wasn’t about slavery and that slavery had been benevolent.
By claiming slavery was benevolent, and Reconstruction a disaster due to African American participation and Northern interference, Confederate veterans and other white supremacists argued that whites should be allowed to run things.
In this world view Jim Crow era racial tensions were blamed on Emancipation and the 15th Amendment instead of oppression, lynching, or discrimination. Disenfranchisement was presented as the cure, which would return the South to the idyllic antebellum period.
This explanation for disenfranchisement makes more sense if you believed slavery was benevolent and slaves happy. If the period includes runaway slaves and slave revolts, or whippings, rape, branding and torture than it fails to justify Jim Crow laws as easily.
Same goes for Reconstruction. Misremembering Reconstruction as corrupt & forced upon the South from outsiders helps justify disenfranchising African Americans.Recalling it as a time of progress with public education & successful biracial coalitions would have undermined Jim Crow.
These interpretations justified disenfranchisement (sound familiar?). Using lies to justify legally disenfranchising people of color without using the word race explicitly in the law is not new (although it used to be a Democratic instead of Republican priority)
In the early 1900s North Carolina’s Democratic Party lied about all sorts of things to appeal to their (white) base including claims nearly all southern whites had always supported the Democratic Party despite the fact that large numbers supported Reconstruction & Fusionism.
Creating a historical narrative where whites had always voted Democratic encouraged whites to vote along racial lines. They also exaggerated the number of black office holders and made up stories of black rapists to stoke fears of “Negro domination.”
There has been extensive research on the ties between racism and Democratic politics. For example see the work of @GilmoreGlenda and @SassyProf who have both written excellent work on the turn of the century South that my own research builds off of.
There were lots of little lies used to help gain votes during the white supremacist campaigns of the 1890s and 1900s. Many of them tied to justifying white supremacy by painting their opponents as anti-white.
In 1900 Democratic newspapers claimed Republicans had voted to adjourn the state legislature to honor Frederick Douglass despite not honoring Robert E Lee or George Washington’s birthday in the same way! In reality Lee’s birthday had been honored & Washington’s was on a weekend.
Democratic politicians used this fib to present white Republicans as betraying their race. Helen Edmonds wrote about this back in 1951.
Some Democratic politicians lied about their own past. Julian Carr’s 1900 senate campaign exaggerated his military service. His supporters claimed he served for 3 years in the Confederate army when it was closer to three months than 3 years.
His campaign motto was “the white man shall rule or die” and part of his argument for why he was the best defender of white supremacy was his Confederate service. Lying to defend white supremacy is not a new phenomenon in the Trump era.
This is just a sampling of the lies I discuss in my book “The False Cause” coming out next year.Before I go, I’d like to point out that the Democratic Party of North Carolina was formerly known as the “Conservative party” & historians wrote about that too ncpedia.org/conservative-p…
The party realignment is clearly a historical reality. Just look at how people vote demographically. African Americans vote overwhelmingly for Democrats now but voted overwhelmingly Republican in 1868. Why did this group realign? Largely due to shifts on stances on racial issues.
It wasn’t just white southerners who flipped parties.
The Party of Lincoln is not the party of Trump. As a historian once told me: The party of Lincoln isn’t even the party of Grant. Parties evolve. That is why the 2012 GOP Presidental candidate didn’t endorse the 2016 one. @HC_Richardson writes on the GOPs evolution extensively.
While the GOP helped pass the voting rights act in the 1960s, which @DineshDSouza likes to point out, in 2006 all Democrats supported its reauthorization and 33 Republicans opposed it.
All this is to say. Historians have written extensively on the topic of Democrats & their problematic history with racism. We just recognize change occurs over time & parties change over time. enough with the lies already. I study lies in the past & I guess now the present too.
While I’m at it. For an examination of the German history side of this check out my friend and fellow graduate of that “third tier” school UNC @waitmanb debunking @DineshDSouza from all sides!
