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| Picture from LBJ Presidential Library |
I post this writing as a citizen expressing my own personal views which are not to be construed nor inferred as representing any organization or ministry of which I may be involved.
Being the ever-diligent
student of history and political realignments as I am, I cannot refrain from
commenting on a recent meme I have seen on Facebook.
The meme reads something
like “It was Democrats that fought against abolition and Republicans that freed
the slaves.”
This is one of the many
circumstances in which the words are technically correct while the lack of
proper context is (probably intentionally) misleading.
For those that may be old
enough to remember, lived through, personally observed the height of the Civil
Rights era, we know what a political tectonic shift occurred the moment Lydon
Johnson signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
It was reported, though I
cannot find any credible evidence of the statement, that Johnson said “We have
lost the South”. I believe that to be true whether Johnson said it or not.
The South, former
Confederate states, upon LBJ’s signature on the Civil Rights legislation,
immediately disengaged from the Democratic Party.
In short, the Democratic
Party of the last sixty years is substantially different in policy than it had previously
been before the Civil Rights Act.
Unlike meme posting
influencers and manipulators of political emotion, I provide a deliberative and
objective study on the matter by Ilyana Kuziemko (Princeton) and Ebonya Washington (Columbia).
Their conclusion of the
study states…
“The exodus of Southern
whites from the Democratic Party is one of the most transformative, and
controversial, political developments in twentieth-century American history.
Using newly available data, we conclude that defection among racially
conservative whites just after Democrats introduce sweeping Civil Rights
legislation explains virtually all of the party’s losses in the region. We find
essentially no role for either income growth in the region or
(non-race-related) policy preferences in explaining why Democrats “lost” the
South.”
Again, the Democratic Party of the last sixty years is
substantially different from
the residual party of the Confederacy which existed
before 1964.
For those of you who may care enough, I provide the link to the complete study by Kuziemko and Washington here:
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20161413
