I don't know if LB Johnson really said this. If so, he hit the nail on the head!

[syringis]

[SCantiGOP]

1. That is a real quote from LBJ

And growing up in the South it was something I understood from a very young age. You could be the most worthless, immoral and untrustworthy white guy in town, but you were, by definition, better than a black doctor or scientist.
That belief system, along with the fact that everyone was hyper-racist in private but never used that language in polite settings like church or discussions with strangers, is what made me realize the racist worldview that I was being force fed had serious logical and moral flaws.

[syringis]

3. Hi SCantiGOP

In my opinion, in view of a rather general knowledge about LB Johnson, I admire his national policy more than his foreign policy. I am quite skeptical of his action in Vietnam.

Internally, he was a strong advocate of racial equality, championed for education for all, and put in place several very progressive aid programs. However, I never understood why he rejected the Kerner Commission's recommendations ?

[SCantiGOP]

7. syringes:

I started college in 69-70, the year of Kent State. LBJ was probably the most despised political figure on campuses because the War was the all-consuming issue. You had to have been 21 to vote in 68, but I didn’t know anyone who had voted for Humphrey. People wrote in McCarthy or Timothy Leary or whatever, which is part of how we ended up with Nixon.
As I have learned more history and perspective, I have come to think of
Johnson as second to FDR in making meaningful, progressive changes in our society in the last century. Without the Voting Rights and Civil Rights bills that he forced through Congress there could never have been a President Obama.

[TimeSnowDemos]

2. He said it

And he said it because he knew a LOT about racism first hand was more than a little racist himself, for years.

He also was an integral part of passing the civil rights act... So... Mixed bag.

[empedocles]

4. LBJ passed the civil rights act!

No one else, then or since, could twist the powerful southern chairman arms to get the civil rights act through. Boom times helped some.

[former9thward]

15. Except that is not what happened.

Southern Democrats opposed it to the end. It only passed by a coalition of Northern Democrats and Republicans.

By party

The Senate version:

Democratic Party: 46–21 (69–31%)
Republican Party: 27–6 (82–18%)

The Senate version, voted on by the House:

Democratic Party: 153–91 (63–37%)
Republican Party: 136–35 (80–20%)

By party and region

The original House version:

Southern Democrats: 7–87 (7–93%)
Southern Republicans: 0–10 (0–100%)
Northern Democrats: 145–9 (94–6%)
Northern Republicans: 138–24 (85–15%)

The Senate version:

Southern Democrats: 1–20 (5–95%) (only Ralph Yarborough of Texas voted in favor)
Southern Republicans: 0–1 (0–100%) (John Tower of Texas)
Northern Democrats: 45–1 (98–2%) (only Robert Byrd of West Virginia voted against)
Northern Republicans: 27–5 (84–16%)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964

[syringis]

5. Hi TimeSnowDemos

I didn't know he was once racist. I think you brought me a light about his rejection of Kerner's report recommendations.

[SCantiGOP]

6. Just about everybody in the South was racist

If you go back to pre-60s. My grandfather was a Democratic official in Tennessee in the FDR days. He said he was one of the few who wasn’t a member of the Klan. He said 80% of the Democratic Party leadership were also the leaders of the local Klan.
Basically, he said a liberal was someone who didn’t want to lynch black citizens for registering to vote, while a radical was anyone who actually wanted to allow the vote.

[Blue_true]

11. You are right, racism was endemic among southern White society during Johnson's early and middle

career. If a White person talked of equality for Blacks, that person could have his or her house burned down, they would not necessarily get shot, because even with Whites that supported rights for Blacks, the abuse stopped at some level. Wealthy White southerners didn't seem to know or care that Black people existed, although they loved their Black housekeepers, nannies, groundskeepers. It was a fucked up society then, and in some places here, still is.

[former9thward]

13. And people in the North weren't?

Let's see what Martin Luther King has to say:

MARTIN LUTHER KING: [IN CLIP] This is a terrible thing. I’ve been in many demonstrations all across the south, but I can say that I have never seen – even in Mississippi and Alabama – mobs as hostile and as hate-filled as I’ve seen here in Chicago.

http://indiana.nbclearn.com/portal/site/k-12/flatview?cuecard=49466

[Blue_true]

9. No, he understood southern White people.

LBJ was a southern politician of his era, he used racial animus among mostly White men to his political advantage, once he saw times were changing, he changed. Even with his warts, he is among the greatest of our modern Presidents for what he achieved.

The great awakening for southern politicians was 1970, with the great class of southern governors (Jimmy Carter in Georgia, Reuben Askew in Florida, Dale Bumpers in Arkansas, the governor of South Carolina), they were men who had spoken against segregation when that was politically and physically risky, and they came to power and caused change to happen in their states.

[TimeSnowDemos]

10. What's the distinction?

The only pretended to be racist when it suited him politically, and then stopped when it didn't?

He contributed a lot, but I'm not sure that retroactively makes his previous racism not racism.

[Blue_true]

12. I am not trying to justify him. All I can say is that was the way it was.

Even some grocery chains here did not let Black people shop for groceries in them (how stupid is that?). That was how it was, Black and White society simply did not mix. Today is much better in my area, I see two or three kids, Black and White, they are best buddies because they have the most in common, that is the way it should be.

[SCantiGOP]

14. Johnson was a school teacher when young

He taught Mexican-American children at a segregated school. He said it changed his view of society, and caused him to question the racism that was hard-wired into the culture.

SC’s last Dem Senator, Fritz Holings, said his view changed when he saw a group of soldiers bring a work crew of German POWs into a small town restaurant for lunch. The white soldiers and Nazi prisoners sat in the dining room, while the black soldiers had to be served out the back door and eat on picnic tables. He said the ridiculous implications of that could not be reconciled in his mind, so he was forced to rethink his acceptance of the rules that society that had taught him.

[jalan48]

8. There is a lot of truth to this. As long as some poor whites have someone below them they

will be fine with the order of things. It's like our version of the caste system.