George Schuyler Quotes
It is not surprising ... that democracy has worked better in this country than elsewhere. This belief in the equality of all white folks–making skin color the gauge of worth and of citizenship rights–has caused the lowest to strive to become among the highest. Because of this great ferment, America has become the Utopia of the material world; the land of hope and opportunity. Without the transplanted African in their midst to bolster up the illusion, American would have, unquestionably, been a different place; but instead the shine as served as a mudsill upon which all white people alike can stand and reach toward the stars.... Here is the gift par excellence of the Negro to America.
George Samuel Schuyler, 1895–1977, Author, Journalist & Social Commentator, Satirist & Science Fiction Writer, New York State Conservative Party Nominee for U. S, Senator, Black No More
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Newsletter of the United Sons of Confederate Veterans
This quotation explains why so many of the Southern poor so actively supported the racist Slavery system even though they could not afford slaves and received no direct benefit from slavery or the discrimination against free Blacks. The poor were not at the bottom of the totem pole, and therefore had a dignity and social status, that the poor in a racially integrated society never possessed.
It was indeed the first government that was ever founded on that fallacious principle. In retrospect, it was amazing that more Southerners did not question why no other government in the history of the world based a society on that principle. The Southern hubris was a great failing for them.
In a campaign speech in Charleston, Illinois where there were a large proportion of settlers of Southern extraction he said the following which was at variance with sentiments he had expressed weeks before in a speech in Chicago:
Charleston was in the Southern part of the state where most people supported slavery. Douglas made an unequivocal pitch for the racist vote {600060} and forced Lincoln to take a stand. Like many politicians today, Lincoln decided to give the audience what they wanted to hear. It is not clear whether or not he ever believed this statement or was just pandering in a political campaign. He had never said this in the Northern part of the state of before. Lincoln’s views on race changed and matured over the years, culminating in the Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln lost the Senate seat to Douglas.
This was the first of the famous Lincoln-Douglas Debates. The men were contesting for the U. S. Senate. Douglas won the election.
Incredible as it seems today, no Black person had ever dined in the White House as a guest of the President. African American servants were common. And Abraham Lincoln had received many Black visitors as had Presidents after him. But no president had ever had a Black person to dine as a social equal. The photo, reproduced here, illustrates the parity. But that was the worst thing a President could do so far as Tillman and his fellow racists were concerned. They had, since the end of the Civil war, used violence and terrorism to murder, maim and/or intimidate the Negro population to remain in an economic and socially inferior position. In Tillman’s state over these decades they had more lynchings than legal executions and there were plenty of them. Newspapers over the South riled up the whites and there was a wave of terror to be sure that the President’s importune action would not be taken as an endorsement of the Negro’s right to any equality or even dignity. This dinner essentially wedded all the Blacks to the Republican Party and all the Southern Whites to the Democratic Party. This would remain the political situation for over 60 years until the Democrats passed the LBJ Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Republicans decided to solicit the Southern White racists who accepted the invitation and within a few years, there was a complete reversal of party loyalty of most Blacks and most Southern White Racists.
He is wrong about his facts. At the time of the adoption of The Constitution, there were in the North some free Negroes who owned land and were able to vote—see Benjamin Banneker for one notable counter example. Another is Alexander Hamilton, one of whose parents were Black.
Grady, a Georgian, prompted himself as a spokesman for the “New South” and while he did no advocate slavery and the brutality that had been inflicted on Southern Negroes, he was a strong white supremacist as this quotation demonstrates. He was only “liberal” compared with the total revanchist racists. However, when in the North he spoke kindly about the Negro. See Quotation 643652.
The rich whites won the class war by splitting the poor and working class with race hatred and then coopting one half—the poor whites so that neither the poor whites or blacks obtained much and even into the 21st century the poor of the American South were the worst off of all the poor in America.
George Samuel Schuyler was an African-American author, journalist, and social commentator known for his conservatism after he had supported socialism.
