Shines: Of Course There Is Systemic Racism in America and It’s in the Democratic Party

A chalkboard at the Harvest Moon Grille shows a the Democrat's symbol of a donkey on Septe
BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/GettyImages

Bishop Aubre Shines writes in the Washington Times about systemic racism in America, which he attributes to the historical Democrat Party dating back to the post-Civil War era, the Jim Crow laws, and their enforcer: The Ku Klux Klan:

These past couple of weeks have been some of the saddest I’ve seen in my lifetime as an African-American. It began with the tragic, needless, death of George Floyd, but then quickly escalated into some of the most vicious, violent rioting our country has seen in decades.

The Democratic Party, true to form, never lets a crisis go to waste. It has seized on what should be a time of healing and instead made the conversation more divisive by lecturing us all about how systemic racism is supposedly rampant in the United States. The great irony here is that yes, there’s plenty of systemic racism in our country; it’s all wrapped up in the history of the Democratic Party.

The rot goes deep, back to the post-Civil War era. Former slaves and their children were forced for decades to endure the cruel, wretched Jim Crow laws that kept them from advancing in the South. And who was all too happy to keep those laws in place? The Democrats.

The Republican Party had planks in its party platforms addressing the rights of African-Americans in the early 20th century. The Democrats, meanwhile, used the KKK as their stormtroopers, lynching and terrorizing blacks in the South beginning just after the Civil War and continued this practice for a century.

Read the rest of the editorial here.

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