> FDR . . . refused to support an anti-lynching bill
> in Congress for fear of offending the Dixiecrats
> . . . . however, Eleanor Roosevelt organized a
> concert for . . . Marion Anderson on the Capitol
> steps . . .
. . . actually, the Lincoln Memorial . . .
> . . . after the DAR had refused to let her sing at their
> convention. This gesture, historians of the period say,
> was important in cementing black loyalty to the DP.
> Was this a case of "being more responsive to the needs
> of black people?" Well, it's true that the Republicans
> or Dixiecrats . . . wouldn't even have made such a gesture.
> Roosevelt needed black votes. But it's also true that
> this was part of the Eleanor and Franklin show. It was
> an attempt to distract attention from Roosevelt's refusal
> to act against a horrendous ongoing anti-black crime with
> a concession that was insignificant by comparison. But a
> But a lot of blacks bought it. They didn't perceive the
> connection between these two things.
Apart from this implied ability to read other peoples' minds (what "a lot of black . . . didn't perceive") what is the data -- what _facts_ can be cited -- that support the concluding assertions above?
How are these claims and the gist of the others below anything more than a preconceived "just so story"?
What evidence is there to refute, f'r'instance, that "a lot of blacks" understood FDR's civil rights enforcement limitations very well and yet in increasing numbers ("increasing" of course qualified by the question how many were eligible to vote) beginning around 1932 voted Democratic albeit, since they presumably also were well aware that FDR did not campaign on any sort of civil rights platform, for the same reasons FDR offered to whites -- namely, what they (black voters like white voters) perceived, correctly, to be a comparatively more credible promise of economic recovery?
> They thought of Roosevelt as the president
> whose wife played hostess to Marion Anderson
> rather than as the president who refused to
> stop lynching.
And this was attributable to . . . what? - that they were too stupid and ill-informed to be able to make even the most elementary of distinctions (HINT: that whatever the limitations of a refusal to promise governmental action to stop lynching, etc., the prospect of some sort of status quo re. lynching, etc., but with continued extreme joblessness and all the other then pressingly painful aspects of poverty warranted opting, even if unhappily re. a deferral of dealing with lynching, etc, on the basis of explicitly promised prospects of economic recovery).
> For similar reasons, many black people liked Bill
> Clinton because he felt comfortable around
> them socially, rather than hated him for abolishing
> welfare.
Maybe, many liked him because, in addition to their considering the alternatives, his feeling comfortable around them socially, those who liked him also felt that his example of exactly that sort of "social" behavior would even if incrementally have cultural/political benefits while those who disagreed with his "End of welfare as we know it!" positions/policies disagreed with him about the latter?
In any event, note the maybe more than merely borederline racist assumptions above -- still another element of a "just so story" -- that there is something about being black, standing alone, that ought result in "hat[ing} Clinton for proposing policies (enacted by congress) essentially eliminating welfare (as "we [before then] knew it") because . . . what? . . . "many blacks" are also too uninformed to be aware that non-blacks receiving AFDC and other welfare benefits outnumbered black persons receiving such benefits in huge numbers? that "abolishing welfare" is, if you will, a predominantly "black issue"?
> They support Obama because he is black, regardless
> of anything he has done or will do for them (and no doubt
> despite many things he will do to harm them).
And how do we know this, too?
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