Roosevelt was a white supremacist?

[HEyHEY]

http://thetyee.ca/Books/2010/07/28/TeddyWhiteSupremacist/

Well, that's new to me.

[Recursion]

1. Teddy "White Man's Burden" Roosevelt a racist?

This is a surprise? I'm not sure "racial equality" was even a fully-formed idea by anyone at that point -- 40 years earlier, Lincoln proposed the notion of racial equality as an absurd strawman, a caricature of his position (the abolitionists he was talking to laughed at the very idea), and dismissed it to thunderous applause from the audience.

[Leopolds Ghost]

3. Perhaps someone should post that section of speech by Lincoln here, I'd love to see it.

[Recursion]

7. Here are some quotes from the Lincoln-Douglas debates

From Charleston, IL:

I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races; I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people.

From Ottawa, IL:

I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races. There is physical difference between the two which, in my judgment, will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality, and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior position.

[Leopolds Ghost]

18. To be fair to Lincoln, notions of equality were limited then and his friendship w/ Douglass

Is what caused Lincoln's thinking to evolve somewhat.

Lincoln, like Obama (hate to make the comparison because it hasn't lived up like I hoped it would) came to office as a moderate who was typecast as a radical, and thereby served as a rallying figure for the radicals as existed back then (on both sides.)

I have a friend who is a hard leftist (I'm pretty left-libertarian in outlook, my friend makes me look conservative) and he idolizes Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address as the speech of a man who had been (and many of his constituents had briefly been) "radicalized" by the Civil War. Briefly.

One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the Southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union, even by war; while the government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war, the magnitude, or the duration, which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has his own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!" If we shall suppose that American Slavery is one of those offences which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South, this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offence came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a Living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether!"

With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.

According to my friend, everyone quotes the grey parts ("with malice toward none") to show what a softie to the South Lincoln had been. They don't mention the penultimate paragraph, which is as radical as you could get for the time.

[NYC Liberal]

4. Yes, Lincoln came around to wanting to abolish slavery outright

But that never meant he supported racial equality.

I don't think he would have gone out with a lynch mob or anything like that, probably would have been (or was) perfectly civil any black folks he met. Racial equality, full civil rights...no, sadly.

[Sherman A1]

6. Agreed

as President he did things that were both plusses and minuses in the area of race. He wasn't a perfect human being, but name one that is.

I also suspect that he would be booted out of the Republican Party of today (or he would more likely kick them in the rear end).

[mediaman007]

8. He would be a Teabagger!

I just finished the book. Its well researched. Teddy can't escape this.

[melm00se]

10. "White Man's Burden"

was a significant stance from the Progressive Era of the early 20th Century.

It is so difficult to ascribe "right and wrong" from more than a hundred years later using the filters of today on the actions of these folks.

[Sherman A1]

11. Precisely

You hit the nail on the head. I think TR was well ahead of his time on many topics, a man of his times on others and perhaps a bit behind the times occasionally.

He was human.....Just like we happen to be.

[Recursion]

12. Yep. And 150 years from now...

...people will look back on us and wonder how such otherwise civilized people could do something as barbaric as X. But we don't know what X is; is not even something we can see with our current blinders.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

13. True, but we'll probably see them as barbaric too.

Times change; they don't necessarily always improve (although the general trend over the past century has definately been to improvement).

[Chulanowa]

2. Uh... yeah?

The dude thought we should save Africa from the Africans, pretty much.

So was Wilson.

[Radical Activist]

5. No doubt.

McKinley and Roosevelt began the expansion of the United States as a transoceanic empire.

[Yo_Mama]

9. Wilson was a segregationist

People nowadays forget that these people grew up in a miasma of racial dysfunction.

[AngryAmish]

14. And eugenicist

[Leopolds Ghost]

20. Wilson was FAR WORSE than TR. He re-segregated Washington, DC and deprived DC blacks of rights.

He is remembered as a "progressive" but his progressivism was that of the upper-class Princeton school, like Rahm Emanuel. A technocratic and anti-labor, anti-poor progressivism.

[Yo_Mama]

25. I agree

I would take TR over Wilson, I guess. Both of them were major supporters of Eugenics.

It really shocked me when I read about Wilson's administration coming into power and segregating the civil service in DC. What a smack in the face for black people.

Oh well, our youthful illusions are often doomed. I survived this particular reality, but it did change my view of Wilson.

The very ugly story of the American Eugenics movement points to elements of cultural ugliness in Britain, Canada and the US. But all the prominent universities supported the concept, and the early progressives seem to have been particularly enamored of it.

[DirkGently]

15. Fascinating. Disturbing. Not too surprising.

There are no ideal humans.

Thanks for posting this. It brings up a wordy thought with which I should probably not plug up your thread.

[proteus_lives]

16. Oh bullshit.

Tell that to Booker T. Washington, a friend of Roosevelt.

Or tell that to the black Postal worker whom TR went against the entire state of Mississippi to save her job.

The southern democrats hated him because he wasn't a racist.

EDIT: That jackass is wrong about virtually everything in that article.

[DirkGently]

17. Are you saying the quotes attributed to T.R. are false?

My impression from the article is T.R.'s comments about the necessity of "Teutonic invasion" and so forth were not at issue.

He had a black friend? C'mon, now. We know by now that what's amazing is not that bigots have friends in the groups they're bigoted against, but that the bigots themselves live with the contradiction.

People aren't an all-or-nothing proposition. Shouldn't we look at people honestly, instead of as symbols of good and evil, and give credit and blame where they are due, instead of just where it fits with our preferred narrative?

[proteus_lives]

21. I've already said he was flawed.

But he was no racist.

He etho statements have more to do with strength and culture then skin color.

He was a true progressive.

[DirkGently]

23. So it's a sweeping label you object to?

That's the point. Someone we like, we tend to make explanations and employ empathy and context and whatnot. Doesn't make their wrongs not wrong though, and there's every reason to point them out as much as, or really more so, than we would with someone we don't admire. It doesn't matter whether you prefer to say that these particular views or statements were racist, vs characterizing him as "a racist." The quality of these views remains the same -- not admirable.

There's no reason to shade or duck the truth in criticizing someone we admire. It muddies the point of why we admire them, and opens the door for "the other" to shade the truth about their heroes. I'm not saying we can't choose to accept or admire the whole person, but it's not helpful to gloss over their shortcomings for the sake of that admiration.

[proteus_lives]

24. I agree.

"but it's not helpful to gloss over their shortcomings for the sake of that admiration. "

I don't agree with him being called a racist. It's not right to give a modern label of racism when the actions of his life run counter to that.

In comparison to the age he lived in and with the people he lived with, he was not a racist. Look at his opponents in the media and congress who called him a "n*gger-lover" for what racism looked like then.

He believed people could raise themselves up if they worked hard enough.

[Leopolds Ghost]

19. TR was probably a "casual" ethnocentrist, like most adventurists at the time. Nothing new there.

I mean at the time, it was perfectly plausible for someone like TR raised to believe whites were superior on purely jingoistic grounds, like nationalists or people in the Balkans, but that individuals from other races were not particularly inferior. Just look at his fondness for the Japanese, noted in the article.

Real question is, did he support the Phillipine war? I know Mark Twain and a whole coalition of liberals pioneered the Anti-Imperialism and pro-Third World movement by coming out against that war in the early 1900s.

[proteus_lives]

22. He inherited the Philippine war.

And it petered out during his presidency.

He was a fierce imperialist. He believed in the supremacy of the US but he was was not overtly aggressive in his foreign policy.

[Arkana]

27. Right. Teddy wasn't a cross-burner by any stretch--he was just, well, going with majority opinion

at the time.

Hell, 600 years ago everyone "knew" the Earth was flat, and I guarantee you that if any of us had lived during that time we probably would have believed the same thing.

[HEyHEY]

28. Really?

You should send the editor an email. I personally know nothing about it. See, I figured, because it was back then, he was likely a racist, but a white supremacist?

[Arkana]

26. Roosevelt would have been considered a racist by today's standards,

but he had dinner with Booker T. Washington at the White House at a time where such a move was considered political poison.