Why Republicans are all 'racists'

If you had the opportunity to question most of the people in this nation and ask which of the two parties, Democrat or Republican, displayed the most racism, I am surer the Republicans would be named the most.

I have been searching for the evidence that explains their answers. First I considered it may have started with that great Democratic president, Abraham Lincoln. then I discovered Lincoln was the first Republican president.

Looking a little later in history, I thought that all of the Republican state governments in the South that came up with poll taxes and literacy tests to exclude African Americans from voting might explain these results, but that didn’t work either since those were Democrat run states.

Perhaps it was because of the Republican challenge to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This was legislation that was requested by John F. Kennedy but not considered until after his assassination. President Johnson tried to move it forward but the Republican filibuster held it up. Whoops, wrong again. It was the Democrats that held it up in both the House and the Senate. It was the Republicans that were finally able to produce a compromise that was acceptable to enough Democrats to get it passed.

This is becoming confusing. Perhaps the answer lies in the members of Congress that were former members of the KKK. Wrong again. Robert Byrd was the one admitted member, indeed a Grand Dragon, of the KKK and he was a Democrat. Perhaps the segregationist Republican governors Wallace and Maddox trying to prevent school segregation could be the reason people believe Republicans are more racist. The problem with this: I discovered they were not Republican, but Democrats.

During the 1960s and ’70s, many of the Southern blacks moved north for the opportunities of jobs in the Democratic controlled states, to escape the discrimination of the Republican south. Oh no; another mistake, it was the Democrats that controlled the South and the Republicans that controlled much of the North. It gets really confusing when we discover many of the African-Americans are now moving back to the South even though most of the Southern governments are now Republican.

What conclusion have I drawn from my research? Maybe the best guess would be that Republicans are more racist because the Democrats say they are. They would tell you that it is because the Republicans want to have picture ID shown to be allowed to vote. To them, that is racism rather than a desire to eliminate fraud.

The Republican viewpoint is freedom to make your own choices and be able to succeed or fail on each individual’s own merits. The Democrats promise to take care of these minorities since in their mind they are unable to care for themselves. No, the masters no longer require them to pick cotton or hoe tobacco; now they just demand that they vote for them.

Strong is a resident of Bigfork.