(Something to ponder during Black History Month. It is part of a dialogue on racism that the left does not wish to explore.)
In one of her boilerplate speeches, Minnesota Senator and Democrat presidential candidate Amy Klobuchar glorified one of the most racist presidents since the days of slavery. In fact, the entire Democratic Party turns a blind eye to his racist history to celebrate him much like Republicans celebrate President Lincoln.
No, I am not talking about Democrat President Woodrow Wilson. Most Americans already know that he was an outrageous racist as president of Princeton – where he blocked black enrollment – and as President of the United States – where he segregated the military and Executive Branch of the federal government, believed in eugenics – the faux science designating inferior humans — and promoted the Ku Klux Klan. But even Wilson is honored and revered by modern-day Democrats. It is no small irony that hypocritical left-wing Democrats gather at the Woodrow Wilson Center – a progressive think-tank.
Klobuchar’s reference is to President Franklin Roosevelt – the autocrat President who was characterized as America’s first dictator, who was elected to four terms in the White House – the last within weeks of his expected death. Like most autocrats, he clung to power until his death. He was so dangerous that Congress immediately passed a constitutional amendment limiting future presidents to two terms.
Klobuchar relates an apocryphal story of a weeping man – sometimes white, sometimes black depending on the storyteller — watching Roosevelt’s funeral train pass by. When asked if he knew the President, the man said, “No, but he knew me.” Klobuchar uses the story to proffer the claim that she – like Roosevelt – knows each of us. Nice story, but she honors a man who was an avid racist and White supremacist.
More than Wilson, Roosevelt is revered by Democrats, including most blacks. It is based on ignorance of America’s racial history the permeates American politics. Not only was Roosevelt a hardcore racist, his policies did more damage to the lives of black Americans than any President since the end of slavery.
To wit.
- FDR was the young navy officer who carried out the segregation of the military as part of the Wilson administration.
- In his run for governor of New York, he ordered that his staff should not allow negroes to have photographs with him.
- He opposed marriage between the races – and even stated that a child conceived between a Caucasian and an Asian – specifically a Chinese person — would result in an “unfortunate” outcome.
- He ordered the rounding up of Japanese Americans to be sent off to concentration camps during World War II. He said it was because we were at war with Japan. However, he assured German and Italian Americans that he would not do such a thing to those of European ancestry.
- FDR’s New Deal policies were crafted by southern racists and designed to take jobs away from blacks so that Depression-desperate whites could take them. Prior to the Depression, black and white unemployment rate was about the same – although blacks had the lowest level jobs. Because of his policies, black unemployment rose to over 50 percent while white unemployment rose only to 20 percent.
- The NAACP of the time called Roosevelt’s National Recovery Act (NRA) the Negro Riddance Act.
(Several years ago, I was giving a speech at a black Baptist church. A lady parishioner said blacks appreciate Roosevelt because “he got us out of the Depression.” I had to remind that lady that based on the history of black unemployment in Democrat-run cities, they were not out of the Depression yet. But I digress.)
- FDR’s sadly successful plan to use welfare as a means or maintaining black loyalty was advanced by Roosevelt – replacing social justice, economic opportunity, safe streets and freedom of mobility with the new civil rights of generational dependency. The idea was conceived in Chicago by a black congressman named William Dawson. FDR had him appointed vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee to implement the plan across the nation. Segregated blacks in our major cities still suffer from the effects of that social policy.
- One of the crafters of the New Deal was Hugo Black – who FDR would later put on the Supreme Court alongside his other racist appointments. Black was a former member and unrepentant sympathizer of the Ku Klux Klan.
- Virtually every program of the New Deal was administered by racists. When whites were compensated for the loss of land to be used to create the TVA, blacks were not. The Boulder Damn project had 25,000 workers and only 25 blacks could be counted.
- During World War II, German prisoners in Texas were allowed to be seated in theaters in the front rows with white American soldiers while black American servicemen were relegated to the back rows. German soldiers were even allowed to have jobs on local farms while blacks could not.
- Roosevelt spent time at a spa in Warms Springs, Georgia for the supposed healing quality of the waters – especially in terms of polio. Blacks were not allowed, with Roosevelt claiming that blacks did not get polio. What few people know is that FDR owned the spa. It was his policy that banned blacks – including children with polio.
- Roosevelt held an annual birthday party at the spa to which America’s elite would assemble and drop lots of money on the President. The spa was so notorious for its racism, that black leaders refused to participate in the fundraising.
- Roosevelt supported malicious medical programs that involuntarily sterilized black women — known in the community as a “Negro appendectomy.”
- It was during that progressive era that black males were intentionally infected with syphilis to “study” the advancement of the disease – and were not properly treated even after the penicillin vaccine had become a common cure.
- When the American track star Jesse Owens won gold medals against Hitler’s team in the 1939 Olympics, the white American players were invited to the White House, but not superstar Owens. When it was said that Hitler snubbed Owens, the athlete said, “No, my President snubbed me.”
And the list goes on … and on … and on. Roosevelt lived and governed as THE most racist and a white supremacist of the Twentieth Century – alongside Wilson. Although Wilson’s racist policies were never able to have the enduring impact of Roosevelt – an impact that is still found in America’s segregated and impoverished inner cities.
While Democrats, the left-wing media and the entire progressive movement have called for the removal and destruction of the statues and monuments of Confederate leaders, they lift their glasses high to toast a man who was not only a strident racist, but an outrageous hypocrite, to boot.
So, there ‘tis.