Please explain Woodrow Wilson then. Sure, he was racially prejudiced but does that automatically negate his Progressivist outlook?
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I wouldn’t say Wilson was that progressive. Teddy Roosevelt was even more progressive domestically.
Not so in 1912. If you put yourself in the shoes of someone in 1912, you’d say that Wilson was pretty much a progressive. And I don’t mean that positively.
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I disagree. But it does show the incoherence that had developed in the Democratic Party.
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What’s the KKK (ku klux Klan?)? I mean . I know full form but what did they do
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Correct, it’s the Ku Klux Klan.
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So they are a Batshit crazy organisation that seeks to spread chaos?
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You could say that. My grandfather despised them for not just their views on blacks, but Catholics too.
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So… What religion did they follow?
They seek Protestant domination, but my grandfather never saw them as true Christians (he’s quite the religious man).
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Changing racial feelings in the United States is/was a process. The US Army allowed African-Americans to fight (and well they did - as well as any white, hispanic, japanese-american, American Indian, and so on.).
The Army (and Navy) allowed them to show the rest of the US (and some within the military) that African-Americans could be as brave, as manly, smart and American as they were, when there were many in the country who said stupid stuff like “blacks are not smart enough to fly aircraft in combat”, or “blacks will not fight.”
The Army (and African-Americans) in WWII set the stage for EO 9981 in 1948.
The success of the process is to be admired, not escoriated. The African-Americans who recognized the process and worked to continue it are to be admired, by all of us… and you. The whites who saw the process, and worked to continue it are to be admired, by all of us… and you.
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A little of this (by a very special orator):
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The biggest thing the War Department did to combat racism was probably the making of this educational film, although it may not have released it until after the War:
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That is a peace of art. The “German teacher” debunking nazi racism. And the man who was born in Hungary, migrated to Berlin, fled to the US, telling an American what America should be.
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That’s what government propaganda, including well-meaning and benevolent propaganda, does. Government propaganda shapes a people’s national identity.
By the way, when you said “peace of art”, did you mean that as a pun to suggest that the film was made to promote peace in the future or did you mean “piece of art”?
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The later, the “peace” was not intentional.
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To Place FDR’s position a bit more into perspective;
- I don’t think the president can fire members of congress, so he will have to deal with them.
- FDR was a leftist in terms of economy and government control. He wanted a strong government that could intervene in the economy when necessary. Republicans were vehemently opposed to this. These two principles are still somewhat true today.
- On progressive/conservative social norms, the two parties were much less clear defined. Progressives tended to side with the republicans and conservatives tended to side with the democrats. FDR may himself be in favour of equal rights for minorities and poc, but he still had to deal with a largely conservative base.
- This conservative base was an important voting block. You just have to look at the 1940 election map for that. Southern democrats were very important to win a presidential election.
- Not enough white people cared for racial equality in the 40s to vote for that and black people were not a significant voting block as most of them were not registered to vote.
- Advocating for racial equality was thus a politically risky thing to do. When JFK did it he only barely won the 1960 election, the southern democrats having turned against him. With the passing of the 1964 civil rights act by LBJ, the democrats definitively lost the south.
- I hardly doubt the civil rights act would have been able to pass much earlier then it did. Truman had tried, but didn’t get much further than some executive orders.
And as was pointed out earlier, racism was much more deeply entrenched in American society. Segregation was seen by most as natural and normal. Blacks by most white people were seen as second class citizens, not just in the south. Desegregation took decades to complete. Even today black people and people of color while legally of equal status do not enjoy the same treatment and priviliges from the government as white people. WW2 is as far from today as it is from the civil war.
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how can you be a leftist in terms of economy? I thought you can only be left or right in terms of politics?
I hope this is ironic, as I hope you understand politics is not quite that simple nor linear.
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Nope. I was serious.