David Duke Quotes
What we really want to do is to be left alone. We don't want Negroes around. We don't need Negroes around. We're not asking - you know, we don't want to have them, you know, for our culture. We simply want our own country and our own society. That's in no way exploitive at all. We want our own society, our own nation....
Duke, David. Interview by Evelyn Rich, 1985. Cited in Zatarain, Michael. David Duke: Evolution of a Klansman. Pelican Publishing, 1990.
He was advocating separation of the races.
On the day of the March on Washington the Congress of Racial Equality asked Levitt if he would change his policies on discrimination against Negroes. This quotation, perhaps more than any, other illustrates why legal discrimination was so pernicious. Any builder who tried to break down the housing color barrier would pay an economic penalty and the moral issue became economic. In trying to change America’s attitude on race the people who is the way would then be punished economically. This is why both the black-and-white leadership who wanted desegregation realized that it had to be done by legislation, and not by a process of education and persuasion. In housing a persuaded convert could not act alone without severe penalty. Even after housing discrimination was made illegal, the builders who desegregated suffered somewhat for many years because so many people found ways to evade the law, and government officials at all levels were reluctant to enforce the law.
This classic quotation illustrates several things. First, the degree of racism that existed in 1944 in West Virginia. Second, not how young Robert Byrd immediately leaped from the possibility of integrating our fighting forces to interracial sex. That has been typical of white racism in America—a preoccupation with race and sex. Last, Byrd who became a member of the KKK, completely changed his mind over the year and ended up supporting the things that, as a youth were worse than the demise of the nation. He matured and grew on the race issue as much of the country did and ended as a strong supporter of equality and civil rights—including affirmative action.
Wilson has been accused of being one of the most racist Presidents since Reconstruction. Even before he was a Governor and a President and presumably had to cater to Southern racist members of Congress, he was a committed racist. Prior to his Presidency, the Federal Government had been making steady progress in hiring African Americans. Under Wilson there was a wholesale firing of a large proportion of them. Some apologists argue that his League of Nations and other major aspirations required the votes and cooperation of Southern Senators who insisted that many of the blacks be terminated. At the same time, the KKK was near the zenith of its membership and political power and was an intimidating force. Wilson’s home state of New Jersey not only had a large KKK membership but there were lynching of Blacks in his own state and when Governor and President he never asked for any anti-lynching legislation.
Interestingly, before 1705, there was no legislative prohibition against Indians and Free Negroes being full citizens including holding public office and voting. This act prohibited them from holding public office, but did not prohibit them from Voting provided they met the general voting requirement of being a landholder. However, 18 years later, voting by these minorities was no longer allowed. See Quotation 643588.
David Ernest Duke is an American neo-Nazi, antisemitic conspiracy theorist, far-right politician, convicted felon, and former grand wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. From 1989 to 1992, he was a member of the Louisiana House of Representatives. His publications and politics are largely devoted to promoting conspiracy theories about Jews, such as Holocaust denial and Jewish control of academia, the press, and the financial system. The Anti-Defamation League has described Duke as "perhaps America’s most well-known racist and anti-Semite".
