Up is Down: Dinesh D’Souza Says the Civil Rights Act Was Part of Progressive Bigotry

Image: The Osceola (AR) Times, Nov. 19, 1920

On Twitter, Dinesh D’Souza is on the defensive. He desperately wants the Democratic party to be a party of bigotry and racism, not just during the 1800s but continuously through to the present. Given that Democratic president Lyndon Johnson supported and signed the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, it is hard to make the case that Democratic party remained the party of racism. However, D’Souza is persistent. He invokes the well-known racism of Johnson as a Senator which to him is proof that the CRA and VRA were not what they seemed.

In a tweet, political scientist Phil Klinker informed D’Souza that no one disputes Johnson’s racism. He then asked D’Souza:

Are you arguing that LBJ’s legislative achievements–the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts–were part of some racist design on his part?

In a mindbinding response, D’Souza said:

Surely, there are other reasons why a president might support legislation, especially legislation as far reaching as the CRA and the VRA. The real mind twister is his contention that Klinker can’t see the reason due to “progressive bigotry.” The CRA and VRA accomplished the aims of civil rights campaigners and many Republicans. Did they also have bigoted reasons for supporting those laws? I can’t figure out what he is getting at. What would LBJ have supported if he wasn’t a racist?

As I demonstrated in recent posts, numerous Republicans were also quite bigoted throughout the period when other Republicans were supporting Civil Rights legislation. Lily white Republicans in the early 1900s wanted to purge the GOP of African-Americans and were successful in some parts of the country.

If D’Souza diminishes the CRA/VRA due to Johnson’s racism, then what will he do with Warren Harding’s similar sentiment? In Harding’s 1921 Birmingham’s speech on race, he told the crowd that blacks should have equal rights to vote but he added this:

Men of both races may well stand uncompromisingly against every suggestion of social equality. . . Racial amalgamation there cannot be.

In his speech, Harding also favorably cited Lothrop Stoddard’s racist book The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy to establish the problem of race in America.

Whoever will take the time to read and ponder Mr. Lothrop Stoddard’s book on The Rising Tide of Color, or. say. the thoughtful review of some recent literature of this question which Mr. F. D. Lugard presented in a recent Edinburg Review, must realize that our race problem here in the United Slates is only a phase of a race issue that the whole world confronts. Surely we shall gain nothing by blinking the facts, by refusing to give thought to them. That is not the American way of approaching such issues.

Stoddard’s book was a call to white supremacy and helped stimulate the 1924 Immigration Act which limited immigration from non-Nordic nations. When D’Souza wants to find fault with Democrats, he associates Stoddard with progressives. In his book, The Big Lie, he says this about Stoddard and his book:

Stoddard was the bestselling author of a notorious tract, The Rising Tide of Color Against White World Supremacy, that portrayed the pristine Nordic race being swamped through immigration and interracial marriage by degenerate hordes from other lesser races. Both Lothrop and Gamble became avid Nazi sympathizers who sought to import Nazi sterilization programs in their full magnitude to America

What D’Souza doesn’t tell his readers is that Stoddard was popular among those in the Harding administration and that Republican Harding himself cited this tribute to white supremacy in a presidential speech on race.

The facts don’t fit D’Souza’s predetermined narrative which leads to strange and ahistorical assertions about the bigotry and the CRA/VRA.

 

 

91 thoughts on “Up is Down: Dinesh D’Souza Says the Civil Rights Act Was Part of Progressive Bigotry”

    1. Good article, although it would have tied a couple of threads together nicely had the author mentioned Trump’s pardon of D’Souza’s criminal conviction.

  1. Regardless of the motive, it is hard to argue that LJB’s New Deal program did not have the actual result that racism would have brought about. It has enslaved multiplied thousands to the government through handouts, it has freed multiplied thousands of men from the responsibilities of sex, it has made multiplied thousands of women dependent on the government for the role of father in their home, it has limited employment and progress by minorities, it has condemned them to failing schools with no real hope for change, and it has cost way too much money.

    In other words, it has hurt the people it was designed to help by subsidizing the very things that need to be left behind. The bottom line is that white people were, by and large, not treated this way. It has, to use a common phrase, a disparate impact on minorities. We could talk about the systemic problem, and that is a part of it, but the New Deal created the system. It seems too easily ignored that the New Deal and its results are the system that is currently causing the problems.

    Thomas Sowell, whose academic achievements are unquestioned, reminds us that poverty rate of two-parent black families has always been in the single digits. The problem is that there are so few two-parent black families and there is good reason to believe that the government has been a part of that. In the 1930s, two-parent black families were somewhere north of 70%; now it is less than 20%.

    If you are black and you don’t want to be in poverty and don’t want to raise your kids in poverty, welfare isn’t the answer. A commitment to marriage is.

    The question is, Why doesn’t that get talked about more?

    1. It has enslaved multiplied thousands to the government through handouts, it has freed multiplied thousands of men from the responsibilities of sex, it has made multiplied thousands of women dependent on the government for the role of father in their home…

      OK. This is laugh out loud hilarious. Without even getting into your racism schtick, I can assure you that never in US history have men, of any color, been unfree from the responsibilities of sex. And women, of any color, still don’t make as much money as men, with women of color especially losing out. How you can confuse the role of money with the role of government is beyond me.

      1. There’s nothing about it that is racist or controversial, and it’s certainly not funny in the least. It is called the welfare cliff and it applies to all races. However, it seems to have a disparate impact on black people particularly in urban areas which is where I have spent the last twenty years. I have dealt with it first hand, and what I have said not disputed by anyone. Today, with abortion and government assistance, men do not have to take responsibility for sex with a woman. There is a good chance the baby momma will have an abortion (again, there is a disparate impact on the black community), and if the woman has the baby, there is a great likelihood that the father will not be involved and will not pay child support. Uncle Sam will do it for him.

        I have coached, taught, pastored, and lived in a major urban city and have experienced it first hand. Dads are absent most of the time.

        BTW, the pay gap is also mostly a myth, as studies have shown.

        But I haven’t confused the role of money with the role of government at all. That comment is not even intelligible in this conversation.

          1. On pay gap? There are studies all over and they have been around for a long time. You can read or listen to people like Thomas Sowell or even back to Milton Friedman. Jordan Petersen also mentions them.

            That there is a “pay gap” is true; the reason for it is not gender however, or at least primarily gender. It is much more complex than that.

            Here’s reality: If companies could get the exact same work for 80% or less of the cost, that is what they would do. In other words, no men, or very few men would have jobs if the gender pay gap was actually true. But for whatever reason, men are still employed. Why would employers pay a 20% premium?

            And as Milton Friedman points out, the gender pay gap actually makes sexist bigots pay a real price for their bigotry. If you want to hire someone for $60,000 when you could get the same results for $50,000, you have to pay $10,000 extra for that. Who would do that? It’s an argument worth considering.

          2. You’re misrepresenting Friedman’s position. What he said was, ““If there is any activity, in which for any reason, a male is preferable to a female, or vice versa, the only weapon the less productive sex has is to offer to work for less.” But guess who is deciding who the lesser sex is and which sex always turns out to be the ‘lesser’?

            Here’s a Pew Study on the pay gap. It exists and it’s real and it’s in the 21st century. There’s many more, but I’ll only burden you with one.

            Source: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/04/09/gender-pay-gap-facts/

          3. I think you are actually misrepresenting Friedman’s position, and the quote you give doesn’t apply here because you are referencing “less productive” when the issue is actually equal pay for equal work. Less productive is not equal work.

            But even given the short out of context quote, it makes the point. The employer decides who the “lesser sex” is and the “lesser sex” depends on the field and the job. But the bigger point is that no one is required for work for anything. People are, or at least should be, free to work for whatever they want to work for. In the end, if a woman works for less than men, it is only because she agreed to … because she values her labor as less than a man’s. It’s the same reason why people pay a whole lot less for one kind of car than another … .They judge is to be of lesser value. Labor is a commodity that gets traded at a mutually agreeable rate.

            I am not sure of the point of your link. It shows a pay gap (which is undeniable in raw numbers) but doesn’t account for it. It uses words like “may” and it relies on claims of gender discrimination. It doesn’t actually show that gender discrimination is the cause. “Pay gap” is usually spoken of in terms of lesser pay for equal work. Your link does nothing to show that to be the case.

        1. I think seashell is calling it racist schtick because your diatribe is filled with racial stereotypes, in addition to using the racially charged “slave” in reference to black people. You realize more white people are on government assistance that black people, right? Why aren’t you railing against them? Why aren’t you calling white people “slaves” to the government. You said you were on government assistance. Were you a “slave”?

          And, according to https://www.statista.com, the states with the highest percentage of single mothers are Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico, North Carolina, and Georgia. The states with the highest divorce rates include: Arkansas, Idaho, Nevada, Louisiana, and Oklahoma.

          These are, mostly, conservative states, especially Mississippi. States that emphasize religion the most. They make abortion generally harder to obtain. They give less benefits to the poor. If your thesis was really true, that easy access to abortion and government assistance makes sex “responsibility free” and therefore encourages having children out of wedlock, we should see these states near the bottom of both those lists. We don’t. Clearly, your thesis has a flaw.

          1. I can only assume you didn’t read what I actually said. Of course it affects all people. The whole idea of a disparate affect is that it affects some more than others. There are not racial stereotypes nor is it racist schtick. Perhaps your racism caused you to read it that way. I am not railing against anyone black or white. I don’t know where you go that from. My point is entirely different, namely, that that which was intended to help has actually hurt those it intended to help.

            People on welfare are enslaved to the government. That’s my point: They often have no way to get off of welfare. The system is stacked against them. They can’t make a little more money. They have to make a lot more or no more, in many cases. Do your stats by city and you find that the cities with the highest percentage are northern cities. And you find that black women are the highest demographic (over hispanic, white, and asian). Again, the point is that there is a disparate impact.

            Lastly, I don’t have a thesis, and your counter about the states doesn’t really make sense. I think you missed the point about responsibility but it might be because you have no interest in getting it. So I will leave it here.

          2. I can only assume you didn’t read what I actually said. Of course it affects all people. The whole idea of a disparate affect is that it affects some more than others. There are not racial stereotypes nor is it racist schtick. Perhaps your racism caused you to read it that way. I am not railing against anyone black or white. I don’t know where you go that from. My point is entirely different, namely, that that which was intended to help has actually hurt those it intended to help.

            People on welfare are enslaved to the government. That’s my point: They often have no way to get off of welfare. The system is stacked against them. They can’t make a little more money. They have to make a lot more or no more, in many cases. Do your stats by city and you find that the cities with the highest percentage are northern cities. And you find that black women are the highest demographic (over hispanic, white, and asian). Again, the point is that there is a disparate impact.

            Lastly, I don’t have a thesis, and your counter about the states doesn’t really make sense. I think you missed the point about responsibility but it might be because you have no interest in getting it. So I will leave it here.

        2. Please read more carefully. I didn’t say anything about black stereotypes. I have long believed and openly said that the issues are much more socio-economic than racial. Poor whites suffer the same as poor blacks and poor hispanics and poor Asians and everything else. The point I made is that black people are disproportionately affected by it for various reasons, some of which are systemic, some of which are cultural/family related, and some of which are related to personal choices. It is much more complex than these simplistic retorts.

          Regardless of the “welfare queen” line, the welfare cliff is real, and there are those who abuse the system and those who make no attempt whatsoever to get off the system.

        3. When I ran an MMO corporation in EVE Online my best players were young white American disability frauds. After that was a Canadian pensioner and then small business owners who had all the time in the world to just play.

  2. Warren, “Distortesh D’Newsa” has had a long history as propagandist since his days at the Dartmouth Review. He is such a consummate spin doctor nothing he says or writes can be taken at face value. I am sure next he will bring up Joe Biden’s anti-busing comments from 1975. No one denies the Democratic Party up until 1964 was imbued with racism as a feature not a bug. What Dartmouth Boy tries to conceal is those racists in the Democratic Party in 1964 simply changed over to the Republicans and stayed there.

    There is some vague theory they say that Democrats want African Americans to be subservient so we keep them so with food stamps, public housing, Obama Phones, etc. Actually these are just basic safety net stuff available to all who qualify regardless of race. There are a higher percentage of poor whites on food stamps and WIC than minorities anyway. Plus, we don’t want them to stay dependent. Every program to lift people out of poverty has been a Democratic one. We aren’t perfect, but on the other hand what have we seen from the other party to lift people out of the bottom tier. From Trump, we get talk but nothing else. Before him,they simply assumed people in poverty are there because they deserve to be.

    Oh, and isn’t that book you cited – Lothrop Stoddard’s racist book The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy – the one the pseudointellectual racist minor character in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” was so enamored of?

    1. “what have we seen from the other party to lift people out of the bottom tier.”

      Tax cuts for the wealthiest which will “trickle-down” to the poor.

  3. I think another important thing to consider is that not all racism is the same.

    The woman who clutches her purse when the black guy sits next to her on the bus isn’t the same as the KKK member who lynches a black teenager for talking to a white woman.

    In the same way some politicians may have been racist, but not necessarily to the point that they were deliberately trying to oppress african-americans (ex. with the Jim Crow laws).

  4. Did anyone ask D’Souza if he believes those who opposed the CRA and VRA were also “bigots” (or “racists”)?

  5. I think D’Souza is trying to cover up the mass migration of Southern Democrats to the GOP after the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964. The Nixon campaign successfully lured them by using the “Law and Order” and “Silent Majority” phrasing . In those days – these phrases were almost euphemisms for racist views. What are Christians- especially fundamentalist ones- aligning with this dark purpose trying to accomplish?
    The religious right and the corporate right are merged, and have been trying to shed this history for at least a quarter of a century.

      1. If you don’t want to scroll through Ken’s entire list (where a number of people on that list are not in the Southern racist category at all), here are a few selected ones that more closely fit what you are looking for:
        Jesse Helms
        Roy Moore
        David Duke
        James J. Kilpatrick
        Trent Lott
        John Connally

        And of course the point is not just individuals switching — it is also that most southerners with the racial attitudes of George Wallace and Strom Thurmond were Democrats 50-75 years ago, while those of their children and grandchildren with similar attitudes have found the recent Republican party of Goldwater and Nixon and Reagan and Trump and Steve King and Steve Bannon and Ann Coulter to be a much better fit.
        The fact that Lincoln was a Republican and many in the KKK 100 years ago were Democrats is irrelevant given the way the parties have evolved in the interim. Things are no longer configured like they were in 1920 or 1950 — in 2019 it is the Republican party that is much more welcoming to those with an ideology of white nationalism.

      2. There is no other reason the South became Republican territory. To attempt to blather one’s way through this thicket of facts is a risk to sanity. And in case you are really really stubborn about it- read Lee Atwater’s book.

        1. I am talking about specific party called Dixiecrats, whose official agenda was to promote segregation. Dixiecrats stand out from mainstream Democrats, whose views on race policies tended to differ as history shows. There were many Democrats and Republicans who were both racists and anti-racists. Likewise, they were different reasons why certain Democrats switched to the Republican Party, for some it was race, but for others it was for other factors, like social welfare programs. What was the reason why your dad switched his voting preference? Currently, people who vote Republican do it because they believe in protecting religious freedom/freedom of speech, smaller government, and support for Israel, but in order to discredit them, many leftist groups, like BLM, just blatantly accuse Republicans of being racist, and that’s insane.

          1. Currently, people who vote Republican do it because they believe in protecting religious freedom/freedom of speech, smaller government, and support for Israel

            I quibble with this. I still think it’s disingenuous to say Republicans are for “religious freedom/freedom of speech”, as if Democrats are not. I think the libertarian Republicans are for these things, sure. But, the Religious Right is generally against religious freedom for non-Christians. For example, read the many many quotes of Religious Right leaders claiming Islam is not a religion because it’s “a way of life”, so we can bar Muslims from public office or jobs or prevent them from building mosques and so on. You could also say Republicans want to restrict speech by preventing flag burning, preventing not saying the pledge, stopping public protests, and constantly framing unpopular positions as “treason”.

            The Democrats are for religious freedom just as much as Republicans. Freedom of speech is sometimes an issue with Democrats because many want to bring back the “Fairness Doctrine”. I see this as a reaction born of frustration from the constant misinformation being promoted on Fox News. But, at the same time, this is a very anti-free speech position and a terrible idea.

            Support for Israel, again, both parties generally support Israel. And the reason the Religious Right supports Israel isn’t out of some moral position. It has to do with religious prophecy. They believe all those people are going to hell anyway.

            “Smaller government” is just a marketing slogan. No one can define what it is. it generally means programs I don’t use personally. As soon you talk about eliminating any program people who use them personally protest. I should also point out, “Red States” generally take in way more Federal government money than they send out via taxes. The “Liberal” states are the one paying the burden to the “smaller government” state. So, there is much hypocrisy here.

          2. I think you are in general correct about both Republicans and Democrats, but I was addressing some activist groups who seem to have serious issues with the Republican Party.

          3. I’m pretty sure my mother is a Republican because of her homophobia. She was a Democrat her whole life until she found the need to hate gay people.

    1. Stop embarrassing yourself. Corporations are merged with global Trotskyism and atheistic progressive ideals, they abhor Christianity and they hate national sovereignty. Almost every corporation supports deviant homosexuality, gender and trans agendas, climate alarmism and gaia worship, required diversity and sensitivity training, unlimited fiat circulation, and on and on. You see how they all jumped aboard the BLM wagon (before they realized how much their customers hated the Marxist movement), and I don’t know any corporate boards having scripture readings and coming out against the abortion and murder of fetuses. This is nothing new, never forget it was Wall Street that funded Lev Bronstein and the Bolsheviks, and when you figure out why, you just might start to get into reality. Try to catch up Skippy.

      1. That is a perfect expression of Sayyid Qtub’s ideas, fundamentalist Christian xenophobia and homophobia stirred up with conservative American White Supremacy then , all rolled up in QAnon breadcrumbs. Perfect recipe for psychopathology.

    2. The only ones who thought “Law and Order’ and “Silent Majority” were euphemisms for racist views were anybody stupid enough to take the writings of Herbert Marcuse, Theodor Adorno, and the other JAC funded lunatics from the Frankfurt Institute seriously. What Christians have always objected to is Marxsim, because they understand all Marxism is (just as modern progressivism is) is a intellectual ruse to destroy Christianity, just as the seven generations of Talmudic Rabbi’s in the Marx family preached every day. They also saw what leftism/Marxism did to Orthodox Christian Russia and the deaths of 40 million Orthodox Christians in just 25 years under the likes of Kagonovich and Yagoda. The true “dark purpose” is the devotion to Satan, which leftism is, and one only has to look at the devastation of the Black families in just 60 years to realize what those hideous 1960’s laws were all about.

      1. Hey, fkup, just noticed in a little-used email account of mine that it had taken you four whole months to craft any rebuttals to my points on a post about census data and electoral maps over at 270toWin, and then the best you could do was to slip in lame ‘mother references’- really clever at your level of discourse I guess… nice. Also placed right before the comments section was closed, so obviously in addition to engaging in puerile ad hominem attacks, you don’t have the courage of your convictions in an open debate.
        Well, I’m used to the ranting, mindless cowards such as yourself online, so it was hard to gt surprised by what you’d spewed.

  6. Bigotry? I do not think that word means what you think it means, Mr. D’Souza—at least not in the context where you think it is appropriate.

  7. For the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the final total votes (both Representatives and Senators) were 153 Ds and 136 Rs in favor, and 91 Ds and 35 Rs against. https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/88-1964/h182

    For the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the final tally was 221 Ds and 112 Rs in favor, 62 Ds and 23 Rs against. https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/89-1965/h87

    Both acts enjoyed bipartisan support, made it through D-controlled committees (despite actual bigoted Dixiecrat resistance), and had the benefit of Democratic presidential support and signatures.

    I just don’t grok D’Souza’s thesis. Because Johnson was involved, the CRA and VRA were the product of bigotry? All those D and R senators and representatives who voted “aye” were either conspiring bigots or dupes? Were the Dixiecrats not bigoted for opposing the bills?

    To borrow a phrase from Wolfgang Pauli, D’Souza’s position is so baffling, it’s not even wrong.

  8. How DARE Klinker (or anyone else) question Dinesh’s authenticity or sincerity! /s

    To Dinesh, Barton, and other professional liars of their ilk, it’s always 1984.

  9. My first response, what has he been smoking? Second response, now besides Holocaust deniers we also have Jim Crow/Southern Black Discrimination deniers? Would he go so far as to deny lynchings in the south? Or, would that be some other kind of conspiracy against Republicans?

    1. Based on what he wrote in “End of Racism” he blamed the lynchings solely on the Democratic Party. I would assume, he’d be saying the same thing in this regard.

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