(06-22-2020 04:57 PM)Texasowl Wrote: Shouldn’t the Democratic party have to change their name too since they promoted slavery and slaughtered so many innocent blacks through the KKK?
Okay, let’s not beat around the bush. The civil war “freed“ slaves, but in no way did it flip some magical switch that made everything okay. Both political parties were extremely racist and implemented all kinds of things to suppress black people, a lot of which have created some of the economic disparities that you still see today. Subjectively, you’d be absolutely correct that the democrats did horrible things to African Americans post civil war...it’s easy to see all the black codes and Jim Crow BS that southern democrats implemented across the south (including pretty much the loss of voting rights). The newly granted “freedom”, plus the immediate oppression meant that 99% of AAs were republican in that time frame. The issue going forward from this point is that republicans did not oppose these democratic laws. They may not have explicitly created many of them, but they implicitly voted for, and were complicit in the implementation of these laws. After all, free is free, the country is unified and industrializing appropriately. These southern laws caused a lot of African Americans to migrate to the North (which almost immediately began redlining...look it up). Surprisingly, the Democratic Party up north backed organized labor, which gave people real employment possibilities (southern AAs for the most part were still being paid crumbs and certainly were not amassing anything to be associated with wealth). Fast forward to the 1960s and beyond, the Democratic Party, got behind the civil rights movement. That’s where you saw the majority of African American defections from republicans to democrats.
So yes, democrats do have a terrible history of hate filled laws, lynchings, and overall suppression in southern states (Andrew Jackson reversed a decision that possibly had the potential to nullify the overall economic disparities between whites and blacks and very well could have changed the very conversation we are having now). Also true however is that republicans for the most part turned a blind eye to all of this once the war was over. Ironically, dems are the primary party promoting the idea of social and civil justice (even if only for pandering purposes). Maybe it’s a gigantic “Hey! Look at how I’ve changed!” act, but it’s something that republicans currently don’t give enough/give little effort to, and sometimes even play the part of antagonist. As mentioned earlier, this is historically the primary thing that makes AAs democrats.
Fun fact: Most AAs are socially conservative...but are not republicans. Look it up!
Edit: Here’s and article that sums up the book that I just wrote.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2020...787551001/