
<p>President Franklin Roosevelt is among the most honored presidents by Democrats. ; He is especially honored among black Americans. ; Today’s older blacks often recall how images of FDR hung alongside Jesus in the family homes.</p>



<p>When giving a speech at an African AME Church in the late 1990s, a woman in the audience praised Roosevelt for getting her people out of the Depression.  ; I brought to her attention that based on the unemployment rates in her community, they have never been out of Depression-level unemployment since the stock market crash of 1929 – and that was more than 70 years at that time. ; It has now been almost 100 years, and that statement is still generally true.</p>



<p>The unvarnished truth about FDR is that he was a hardcore racist and white supremacist – and his personal action and policies reflected that at every turn. ; Rather than lift blacks out of the Depression, his policies plunged them deeper into it.</p>



<p>So, let us look at some of the FACTS that are not included in contemporary left-wing interpretations of Roosevelt and race – the politicized version which dominates the culture today.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-a-few-factoids-about-fdr"><strong>A Few Factoids About FDR</strong></h2>



<ol class="wp-block-list">
<li>When running for governor, Roosevelt ordered his aides to prevent a photograph of him with Negroes.</li>



<li>FDR was a staunch supporter of President Wilson’s racist segregationist policies – and, as an official in the Navy Department, participated in the segregation of the military and the Executive Branch of the federal government.</li>



<li>During World II, Roosevelt illegally and unconstitutionally ordered Japanese Americans into concentration camps because we were at war with Japan.  ; When German and Italian Americans expressed fear of similar action, Roosevelt assured them that the order would not apply to them &#8212; white folks.</li>



<li>Roosevelt expressed his deeply racist beliefs about Asia. ; He wrote: “Japanese immigrants are not capable of assimilation into the American population. ; Anyone who has traveled in the Far East knows that the mingling of Asiatic blood with European and American blood produces, in nine out of ten, the most unfortunate results.”</li>



<li>FDR was an acolyte of the racist eugenic movement that used pseudoscience in an attempt to “prove” the inferiority of Negros and to oppose intermarriage. ; He was a friend and follower of Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, who used Eugenics to advance her genocidal practices of forced abortions and sterilizations. ; ;</li>



<li>When Roosevelt hosted the 1936 Olympic team at the White House, black participants were not invited – including the four-time gold medal winner and national hero Jesse Owens. ; When told that Hitler had disrespected the track star responded that it was his own President who disrespected him. ; Owens did not even get a congratulatory telegram from Roosevelt.</li>



<li>Roosevelt died at an alleged health spa in Warm Springs, Georgia, that he frequented allegedly for health reasons. ; It had a whites-only policy. ; It was FDR’s own policy because he owned the resort – and often used it to entertain major donors. ; It is where he hosted his annual birthday fundraiser. ; Despite the pleas of such black groups as the NAACP, Roosevelt maintained his racist policies up to his death in 1944.</li>



<li>Roosevelt successfully opposed repeated efforts by congressional Republicans to pass federal anti-lynching laws.</li>



<li>FDR refused recommendations to appoint a black person to the Cabinet. ; Rather he created a window-dressing committee of prominent leaders in what was referred to as his “black cabinet”. ; They had no power, and their recommendations were basically ignored by the President.</li>



<li>Roosevelt appointed four staunch segregationists to the Supreme Court – including Hugo Black, a one-time organizer for the Ku Klux Klan.</li>



<li>FDR’s prisoner of war policies were racist. ; German prisoners in Texas were allowed to take jobs in the local town – jobs not available to the black residents or soldiers. ; German prisoners were given the best “white” seats in the theaters, while their black military guards were assigned to less desirable seats.</li>



<li>FDR was responsible for the scheme to hook segregated black on generational government dependency as a cynical means of controlling and maintaining black voting loyalty. (More on that in a later commentary.)</li>
</ol>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>The New Deal</strong></h2>



<p>Despite FDR’s noble rhetoric about the New Deal, the implementation was turned over to the most racist leaders of the Democratic Party. ; Prior to his Supreme Court appointment, Hugo Black was a major influence in crafting and implementing the New Deal’s racist programs.</p>



<p>The racism was prominent in three elements – jobs, financial compensation, and accommodations. ; The unstated purpose of the New Deal was to transfer the jobs of working blacks to unemployed white folks. ; This was made apparent in the numbers. ; Prior to the Great Depression, blacks and whites had about the same unemployment rate (roughly 3 to 4 percent) – although blacks held low level jobs that white workers did not want at the time. ; ;</p>



<p>When the Depression hit, unemployed whites were desperate for any jobs – and the only jobs available were those held by blacks. ; As a result of the racist policies of the Roosevelt administration, black unemployment rose to over 50 percent while white unemployment hit a high around 18 percent. ; There is only one explanation for that difference. ; Blacks were losing jobs to whites.</p>



<p>Black sharecroppers were not provided with the government financial assistance as were white sharecroppers. ; Whites losing land to the Tennessee Valley Authority project were compensated. ; Blacks were not. While more than 25,000 men were given jobs on the Hoover Dam project, only about 25 were black. ; Agricultural grants were not available to black farmers. ; Land owned and worked by blacks was seized and turned over to white farmers. ; In situations in which a small number of blacks were hired for government funded work projects, they would be given inferior accommodations and services.</p>



<p>Every New Deal program was so obviously racist that the head of the NAACP renamed the National Recovery Act (NRA) as the “Negro Riddance Act”.</p>



<p>Of all the contemporary presentations we see in the media on black history, where have you seen any of these FACTS? ; The historic image of FDR has been whitewashed – figuratively and literally – by a politically biased recounting. ; The Democratic Party still honors Roosevelt as one of its most admired historic figures. ; Hillary Clinton launched her 2016 presidential campaign with a speech in New York City’s Roosevelt Park in homage to the past President.</p>



<p>It is long past the time for grandma to remove that photograph of Roosevelt from the dining room wall.</p>



<p>So, there ‘tis.</p>

Black History Month: The White Supremacy of Franklin Roosevelt
