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Marjorie Taylor Greene compares Biden to FDR, LBJ. Thanks for the free campaign ad!
(www.usatoday.com)
this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2023
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Serious question. I'm not trying to be sarcastic or trolling. Are you judging him based on 2023 standards or the 1930s? Because it's almost like comparing apples to oranges -- it was almost 100 years ago, and things that are considered blatantly racist by today's standards were often considered progressive by many at the time.
You also have to consider the fact that any kind of race relations, for lack of a better term, would not have been anywhere near as acceptable as it is today. Had he invited Owens to the WH or granted scholarships to black people, it could easily have caused a scandal that could have brought an end to his career. I'm not trying to justify it; I'm just saying that this is the reality of our society back in the 30s. Acceptance of minorities as equals in everyday life simply wasn't a thing back then.
A lot of people look back at history through a modern lens and act as if "they should have known better", without a full understanding that progress is incrimental and takes time. They also don't understand that even if people from back in that time wanted to do what we would consider today as the right thing, the reality of society at the time very likely would have prevented them from doing so.
One thing I also wonder is, does it matter? Things have definitely improved for marginalized groups over time, but I can probably find texts from 2000 years ago that talk about discrimination over immutable traits being wrong. Discriminating as a head of state with presumably good access to information is equally wrong at any point in time.
It's always tricky isn't it? There's some beliefs that even as a product of the times you'd reject. The founding fathers who wanted to maintain slavery can be abhorred for it even today. At the same time you have someone like Lincoln, who said at one point that freed slaves should be sent to Liberia. We would certainly call that racist today.
I don't think there's a perfect, universal way to look at this, but it's helpful to look at other contemporary beliefs. You had anti slavery advocates at the founding of the country, so it wasn't impossible. This is difficult to do though when you have something like the New Deal that disproportionately helped white people, and no alternative to compare against.
What we can say with certainty is that interning Japanese Americans was wrong, and FDR had strong worker policies in spite of not being racially equitable.
The thing about discrimination is it isn't a passive act. You don't write a law that only applies to white people without explicitly excluding others. Hitler shook Owen's hand... HITLER for fucks sake. That guy that utterly hated jews and deplored non-aryans. FDR could have at least invited him in for a coffee.
Everything will be with the benefit of hindsight but the idea that turning away hundreds of thousands of Jews while you KNEW (had multiple intelligence reports and American news reporting the fact that jews were being put into concentration camps and murdered being reported for over 2 years by 1941.). He blocked jewish refugees from immigrating actively.
Segregation in the military was so insidious black servicemembers were pushed aside for NAZI POWs ....
This sort of thing was not the output of a great man by todays standards, nor of someone who honors those who served and put their lives on the line. His discriminating behavior was continuous and not representative of what I would call a great man. If he had had a deathbed lament of his behavior maybe I'd reconsider, but he died knowing he was a great man, and that includes that behavior.
Good thing he didn't do that then. Even in the darkest times of our country, this wasn't how it worked. The laws themselves applied to everybody. The application and enforcement of those laws were discriminatory. And yes, this includes his own discrimination as well. I fully acknowledge that he did some things that would be unacceptable at the very least today. But he did those things during a time when they were considered progressive by then-modern society.
Dude, seriously. There's never a reason to bring up Hitler. Doesn't matter what side of a discussion you're on.
We also know that North Korea keeps hundreds of thousands of political prisoners in concentration camps too. China is also known to not exactly be accomodating to ethnic minorities. Russia is currently trying to eradicate Ukraine.
There are probably hundreds of examples of other countries committing atrocities around the world. We still have diplomatic relations with them (Well, not North Korea, but you get the idea.). We still have economic relations with them. Some are even our military allies. What is happening in these countries is wrong. It was as wrong then as it is now. But this is the geopolitical reality of the world we live in; the fact that these countries may be committing atrocities within their borders has never shaped our foreign or immigration policies.
Again, this was the 1930s. Segregation was considered progressive back then, and was pretty much everywhere, so it shouldn't be a surprise we see it there too. But like I said, progress is incremental and takes time. And while we look back on segregation negatively today, it's still at least ahead of when they were only considered 3/5th of a person.
Assuming climate change doesn't kill us all first, I'm sure that people discussing this subject 100 years from now will consider some of the policies we espouse today as barbaric as well.
First, I'd be willing to bet that FDR didn't make that decision himself. Second, this is what I'm talking about: The application of the law is where the problem is, not the law itself. While this is only my own guess, I'd be willing to bet that the official instructions were that the veterans and POWs all took the same train, and whoever was in charge of seating or whatever decided that "the n*****s can sit in the back just like they're used to doing at home."
But again, you are judging a man who lived in the 1930s by 2023 standards. Many of the decisions that would be considered egregious examples of racism by today's standards were either considered minor transgressions at worst or the actually accepted practice of the time, even by some progressive (at the time) standards.
Churchill, FDR, Stalin and Hitler were contemporaries, we're talking about history and ideology. It is perfectly reasonable to speak to an example scenario where his contemporary whom he tried to draw stark contrast in public media did the opposite of him.
I would say that the writers of FDRs biographies have definitely biased his historiography to the point where he's a "Great Man."
I would say they underappreciate the capitulation he was forced into with regards to the New Deal, and how he essentially appointed socialists to his cabinet to stop what he perceived was a potential Bolshevik style revolution. The same thing is essentially what happened with the FEPC where he made an agency specifically to "eliminate discrimination in the defense industry" he perceived a very real threat of black men marching on the capital in protest if they weren't provided equal protections and it would affect the war effort.
When asked about the "jewish problem" his plan to "spreading the jews thinly" across the world was arguably advocating for cultural genocide.
You could really look at most of what he did and see it does increase the non-segregated races average income, and thinks like infant mortality... these were all great, and things he wouldn't have even considered if he didn't think they would starve out the oncoming violence.
You can look right at one of the first things he did during his administration for this pattern of capitulating to what he perceived as dangerous political movements:
The first people to hear about the announced CCC jobs and available positions were the Bonus Army camp in Washington, D.C. It worked so well it basically ended the entire movement. Congress later (3 years) did it anyways, despite him vetoing it, but it's pretty clear he didn't consider their request. It's basically the very essence of the current Conservative "work for food" mentality with welfare programs.
So While I see that some of the historiography likes to paint him as a Great Man for some of the things he did, I would say he was a Great Politician, and a very average upper-class rich man for his time.
People in 1930 understood that racism and antisemitism was wrong. This "judge them by the standards of the day" is just an excuse.