2016 March 24^th

Today we examine Dr. Thomas Sowell’s revisionist view of history. In his column this morning Dr. Sowell writes, “During the heyday of the progressive movement in the early 20^th century people on the left were in the forefront of those promoting doctrines of innate genetic inferiority of…people from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe…” Then he continues contrasting “Racist” President Wilson with presumably non-racist Calvin Coolidge “whose wife invited the wives of black Congressmen to the White House.” He tells us that “Later, when the civil rights act of 1964 was sponsored by Democrats a higher percentage of… Republicans voted for it than did …Democrats.”

Sowell apparently believes that he can get away with this nonsense; he should be smart enough to know that he can’t. When the 1964 Civil Rights act was passed the South opposed it, as they had opposed anything resembling civil rights for black citizens since the Civil War. (President Lincoln, after all, had been a Republican so, of course, most Southerners were Democrats.) Obviously the Civil Rights Act of 1964 got precious few votes from Southern Democrats. Once the Act passed these bigots all became Republicans. President Johnson said the Democratic Party would lose the South for a generation. He was wrong because the South is still, after 50 years, solidly Republican. It should not be necessary to cite all of the egregious obstructionism of the newly minted Southern Republicans to civil rights, so I won’t.

Whether “people on the left were in the forefront of those promoting genetic inferiority of the peoples of Eastern Europe” I cannot say unless Sowell would like to define “forefront.” What I can do is to call Sowell’s attention to some Congressional Acts designed to exclude these folks from coming to America. In 1921 Congressman Dillingham, a Republican, sponsored a bill to limit the immigration of Europeans to just 3 percent of those who were residents here in i890. The Bill essentially stopped Asian immigration (Except of course for the Philippines whose citizens were considered Americans.) This Republican sponsored Bill was vetoed by President Wilson as too restrictive (which is not to deny President Wilson’s well documented racism).

Subsequently, in 1924, we have another Republican-sponsored bill designed to be even more restrictive than Dillingham’s; this is the Johnson-Reed Bill. These Republicans changed the Dillingham Bill so that only 2 percent of the 1890 origin residents could be admitted. President Coolidge, a Republican, had no trouble signing this into law. It is obvious the restrictive immigration was enthusiastically supported by Republicans. Perhaps Dr. Sowell should leave revisionist history to someone else.