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Originally Posted by Flash Walken
American citizens voted racial segregation back in after sacrificing half a million americans to end the formalized practice.
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How many people who fought for the Union felt they were fighting to end racial segregation in the South? As you point out, racism wasn't confined to the American South.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Flash Walken
This would be like the nazi's losing the second world war and then 10 years later Germans decided to vote the nazis back into power. Southern States were only able to do this because of the weakness of the Federal government and the court system referring uncomfortable problems back to the states.
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Yes, it would have been better in many respects if the federal government has imposed harsher terms on the South. Just as it would have been better if the victorious Allied armies in the Great War pushed on to Berlin, occupied Germany, and left no doubt as to who lost the war in the field.
However, that's ignoring popular sentiment at the time. There simply wasn't a lot of enthusiasm in the North to treat the South like a conquered enemy and impose harsh and enduring terms from Washington. It wasn't only in the South that Americans were extremely wary of entrusting the federal government with such power.
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Originally Posted by Flash Walken
There has been a single party that has fomented this political attitude in our living memory. It's the same party that wants to restrict voting rights of citizens based on their skin colour, wants to remove regulatory restrictions from financial institutions to return to the good old days of banking restrictions based on skin colour and now finally are tapping back into organized labour's unseemly history of restricting employment along racial lines as well.
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Pretty sure the Dixiecrats are within living memory. The South didn't go Republican until the 60s.