Boston University is closing its Center for Antiracist Research as its founding director, scholar Ibram X. Kendi, leaves for another job. https://t.co/jJY7zbT98i
— Axios (@axios) January 31, 2025
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth: “One of the dumbest phrases in military history is ‘our diversity is our strength’… Our diversity is not our strength — our unity and our shared purpose is our strength.”
— America (@america) January 30, 2025
pic.twitter.com/20IS0BLS9L
BREAKING — US Department of Defense announces the end of “identity months,” ending the celebration of black history month and others. pic.twitter.com/rokwTahMWZ
— Election Wizard (@ElectionWiz) February 1, 2025
In honor of Black History Month 2025, I want to draw your attention this morning to how race relations began to change as Reconstruction shaded into the Gilded Age.
The following excerpt comes from Robert W. Merry’s book President McKinley: Architect of the American Century:
“The 1876 outcome, viewed by many at the time and later as a stolen election, turned out to be a turning point suffused. Republicans had used antiblack discrimination as a basis for challenging the presidential vote totals in the South and then sealed the deal by ending Reconstruction and turning back to the South much greater leeway in managing the region’s race relations. This inevitably meant more widespread antiblack discrimination. For a dozen years, lingering Civil War passions had dominated national politics, reflected in the penchant among Northern politicians to “wave the bloody shirt,” emphasizing what many Northerners considered the South’s profound civic transgressions leading to and during the war. Southern politicians responded with equal asperity, and there didn’t seem to be much hope for any lessening in interregional acrimony.
Then McKinley’s mentor, in a move born of political necessity, sacrificed the protection of Southern blacks in favor of fostering greater prospects for healing the wounds of war among the nation’s whites. As far as is known, McKinley never commented on this fearsome tradeoff, either publicly or in private letters or conversation. While he took pride his his lifelong antislavery convictions and his wartime part in saving the Union and emancipating black Americans, he seemed to accept widespread racial prejudice as an inevitable fact of life that would direct the course of national politics long into the future. The result was a kind of patronizing attitude toward African Americans – lamenting their tragic fate and cheering them on as they struggled against it but offering little in the way of political action aimed at ameliorating their condition.”
The following except comes from Jon Grinspan’s The Age of Acrimony: How Americans Fought to Fix Their Democracy, 1865-1915:
“Attacking cranks was a useful political tool. As the revolutionary possibilities of the postwar era settled into the cynical machine politics of the 1880s, practical politicians and mainstream journalists had an epithet to limit the horizons of public discourse. The term race crank was hurled at anyone, Black or White, who focused inordinately on racial issues, be they defending Black voting rights or excessively preaching White supremacy. Socialists, anarchists, and third-party voters were easily dismissed as “cranks – crack-brained, semi-idiotic.” Even the mild George Willian Curtis, already skewered so mercilessly by Conkling, was mocked as a crank who “imagines that by softly stroking his side whiskers he can purify the Republican Party.”
Americans didn’t embrace White Nationalism in the Gilded Age.
The country simply gave up on Reconstruction. Massive negro fatigue set in. The culture rapidly shifted away from trying to expand minority rights toward material concerns like economic growth, the tariff, debates over the currency like free silver, greenbacks and the gold standard.
The term “race crank” was the Gilded Age version of “woke.” It was used to bludgeon and marginalize anyone who was overly obsessed with race. Blacks were still given lip service by Republican politicians throughout this period, but this gradually diminished over time. In the Civil Rights Cases (1883), the Supreme Court struck down the Civil Rights Act of 1875. Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882. It was signed into law by President Chester Arthur. It was the first in a series of laws that restricted immigration and culminated decades later in the Immigration Act of 1924.
In 1896, the Plessy v. Ferguson decision laid the constitutional foundation for segregation, which began to emerge in the South in the late 1880s and early 1890s as the interregnum of “colorblindness” gave way to white supremacy. Booker T. Washington gave his famous Atlanta Compromise speech in 1895. Republicans gave up on black rights after the the failure of the Force Act of 1890. In 1901, Rep. George H. White gave his Farewell Address to Congress. Blacks disappeared from Congress for a generation. Southerners elected men like “Pitchfork” Ben Tillman and James K. Vardaman.
The country took a hard right turn on race. Thomas Dixon Jr. published The Clansman: A Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan in 1905. It was made into The Birth of a Nation in 1915 by D.W. Griffith. By the early 20th century, the descendants of Union soldiers were LARPing as Klansmen. The Confederate monuments which were torn down by leftist mobs were erected in this period. It probably never occurred to them to stop and think much about how that happened in the first place.
Anyway, I thought I would share that because I was amused by the parallels. Trump gives lip service to blacks like McKinley and other Republicans of his era while eviscerating their racial agenda. It is all being done in the name of colorblindness too which is something we have seen before.
Note: Hegseth has scrapped the liberal calendar in the Defense Department.
Blacks have contributed practically nothing to their own advancement or anyone else’s. What is black history month other than a predictable recitation of all the wrongs done to them by Whites? Funny how they never go back to Africa.
At least February is the shortest month.
There is no utility to White Interests in the antagonization of Blacks. They are in huge numbers becoming vastly dissatisfied with their treatment by Democrats, especially in cities where, arguably, they’ve suffered the brunt of the illegal alien invasion through crime, diversion of resources and competition for jobs. In cities, they are most likely to be the engine of change necessary to undo the sanctuary laws facilitating the marxist replacement agenda. For us, that is a win because we benefit long term, where they only benefit in the near term.
Giving lip service to black history month costs us nothing. Somehow eliminating it, though I’m not even sure such a thing is even possible cause its not formal in the public space, would be unnecessarily confrontational.
It is what it is. The DEI agenda being dismantled is the greatest redress of racial discrimination against Whitey that has happened since segregation. Its an unalloyed good.
South Africa just legalized the expropriation of land from Whites, without compensation. Never forget that we were on our way to that here in the US. Reparations would have been this on a massive scale. As of right now, something like that will never be possible now. That too is an unalloyed good for Whitey.
I wish it had happened 10 years ago. My own career could have turned out very different.
@IronicSockAccount
meanwhile jew strength gets stronger; Trump just put forward the plan to pull the visa of any student who protests Israel’s policies on our college campuses
Who cares?
It’s just Trump throwing some crumbs their way as he realises there’s no point antagonizing them. They’re never going anywhere. It balances out all the good stuff he’s doing. The huge black vote helped his landslide victory. He needs to focus on groups he can deal with and get rid of, not the ones he’s stuck with.
My cousin visited the US late last year. She couldn’t believe how pale a lot of AA’s are. In Australia, we just get black Africans from Africa, and they are BLAAAACK! Most black Americans are partially white. That often gets forgotten in the discussion.