Systemic racism

Systemic racism is a phenomena that exists in many large American cities and police departments that have been controlled by Democrat mayors and city councils since passage of the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965.

Origins

The first victims (yellow line) were Republican carpetbaggers; once they were driven out the Democrats turned on Blacks (blue line).
Source: Historical Statistics of the U.S., and is based on the 1952 Negro year Book.

See also: Civil service system

While the Democratic party lost the Civil War, it won the battle to control the United States Civil Service bureaucracy. Since the end of Reconstruction in 1876 and passage of the 1882 Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act, the Democratic party is no longer dependent on the spoils system and winning elections to maintain its power.

With the defeat of the Democrats and the South, to the victors went the spoils. Republicans immediately stripped white males who engaged in rebellion against the United States of the vote, and gave it to Blacks. Newly freed Blacks held local, state and federal elected and non-elected positions as Republicans. The white males who were deprived of the vote were also barred from holding any civil service position and were universally Democrats. This disenfranchisement created enormous resentment among Democrats, so they formed the Ku Klux Klan to engage in voter intimidation and suppression.

By 1876, the situation had become ungovernable for Republicans. The Republicans had been able to pass the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments which guaranteed Blacks basic equality and civil rights, but eventually had to declare an amnesty for whites who engaged in rebellion. Reconstruction ended, and Republicans withdrew from social engineering which had divided the country so deeply and stirred up such bitterness and hatred among Democrats toward both Blacks and Republicans. Reconstruction earned Republicans the undying hatred of Democrats.

African Americans in the South were left to the mercy of increasingly hostile state governments dominated by white Democratic legislatures; neither the legislatures, law enforcement or the courts worked to protect freedmen. As Democrats regained power in the late 1870s, they struggled to suppress black voting through intimidation and fraud at the polls. Paramilitary groups such as the Red Shirts acted on behalf of the Democrats to suppress black voting. From 1890 to 1908, 10 of the 11 former Confederate states passed disfranchising constitutions or amendments, with provisions for poll taxes, residency requirements, literacy tests, and grandfather clauses that effectively disfranchised most black voters and many poor white people. The disfranchisement also meant that black people could not serve on juries or hold any political office, which were restricted to voters; those who could not vote were excluded from the political system.

Cleveland was the leader of the Bourbon Democrats, the bourgeois wing of the party. They represented business elites, supported banking and railroad goals, promoted capitalism, opposed the annexation of Hawaii, fought for the gold standard, and opposed Bimetallism. They strongly supported ending Republican spoils with the Civil Service Reform Act and opposed corruption of city bosses, leading the fight against the Tweed Ring. The leading Bourbons included Samuel J. Tilden, David Bennett Hill and William C. Whitney of New York, Arthur Pue Gorman of Maryland, Thomas F. Bayard of Delaware, William L. Wilson of West Virginia, John Griffin Carlisle of Kentucky, William F. Vilas of Wisconsin, J. Sterling Morton of Nebraska, John M. Palmer of Illinois, Horace Boies of Iowa, L.Q.C. Lamar of Mississippi, and railroad builder James J. Hill of Minnesota. A prominent intellectual was pro-segregationist Woodrow Wilson. The Bourbons were in power when the Panic of 1893 hit; it was a deep depression and they took the blame. A fierce struggle inside the party ensued, with catastrophic losses for both the Bourbon and agrarian factions in 1894, leading to the showdown in 1896.

Segregation

See also: Plessy v. Ferguson

Taking advantage of a deep split in the GOP, the Democrats took control of the House in 1910 and elected the Northern segregationist Woodrow Wilson as president in 1912 and 1916. In his first year in office, Wilson permitted his Treasury and the Post Office to begin efforts to segregate the federal workforce, particularly in the Columbia District. It was often carried out surreptitiously. Yet Wilson condoned it and tried to duck its implications in a manner we would describe today as slimy. Wilson ordered Jim Crow segregation in all federal government facilities in Washington DC, wiping out 50 years of social progress that African-Americans made under Republicans. No longer could blacks and whites work together in government offices, eat in the same cafeterias, our use the same bathrooms. The Wilson administration went a step further. Through the Treasury Department's Office of the Architect, the bureau charged with construction and maintenance of federal buildings, federal buildings throughout the nation were ordered to furnish segregated bathrooms, even in Northern states were practices as such were virtually unknown.

Wilson also curtailed minority appointments to executive, diplomatic, and judicial positions. Those latter numbers weren’t large — about 30 — but they were posts traditionally reserved for black Americans. The signal was terrible, even if it’s unclear that those black appointments would have met approval from a Senate controlled by Southern Democrats. Estimates reckon that between 15,000 and 20,000 black civil service employees, 6% of the federal workforce, were impacted by the administration’s actions. Wilson successfully led Congress to a series of Progressive laws, including a reduced tariff, stronger antitrust laws, the Federal Reserve System, hours-and-pay benefits for railroad workers, and outlawing of child labor, raising wages for adults. Furthermore, constitutional amendments for prohibition and woman suffrage were passed in his second term. In effect, Wilson laid to rest the issues of tariffs, money and antitrust that had dominated politics for 40 years.