Monday, August 9, 2010

The Proud Racist History of Labor Unions

David Henderson at EconLog quotes Morgan Reynolds today:

I do have an answer to this positive question: what is the origin of national origin labels? In the United States, it's labor union racism. Here's what Morgan Reynolds wrote in his Concise Encyclopedia of Economics article, "Labor Unions":


Economist Ray Marshall, although a prounion secretary of labor under President Jimmy Carter, made his academic reputation by documenting how unions excluded blacks from membership in the 1930s and 1940s. Marshall also wrote of incidents in which union members assaulted black workers hired to replace them during strikes. During the 1911 strike against the Illinois Central, noted Marshall, whites killed two black strikebreakers and wounded three others at McComb, Mississippi. He also noted that white strikers killed ten black firemen in 1911 because the New Orleans and Texas Pacific Railroad had granted them equal seniority. Not surprisingly, therefore, black leader Booker T. Washington opposed unions all his life, and W. E. B. DuBois called unions the greatest enemy of the black working class. Another interesting fact: the "union label" was started in the 1880s to proclaim that a product was made by white rather than yellow (Chinese) hands.


As Jonah Goldberg has noted, people on the left have a short memory. They are also usually the first ones to claim racism. Sphere: Related Content

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Some unions have spotty histories with racism although parts of that quote are hilariously misleading, but capitalists and the right wing are still proud of their blatant ignorance and racism today as they were 200 years ago. It seems like you're trying to mask your own racism by making a straw man argument about a group that is generally speaking trying to be progressive and support civil rights. The centrist and even some of the radical left (particularly during the turn of the 20th century)have certainly had their fair share of issues and hypocrisies, but nothing like conservatives comparatively.

It's cute that you chose to cite DuBois, a socialist while spouting pseudo-history about the left.

Citysburg said...

So you answer a charge full of examples by providing one void of any? I say that is rather brilliant, just avoid it, it might go away. I have an idea, do a little further research about this "phony history of the left" if you have the balls and the open mind you hypocritical idiots brag so much about. See for yourself that you are in fact responding to fact, with assumption and that ALWAYS makes you appear the fool. Try again to convince us that it's the right-wing that's racist, be specific and this time provide examples pointing to racism on the left. Such as Democrats, the party that fought tooth and nail to continue slavery (are you educated enough to know who the abolitionist party was that eventually won blacks their freedom?), the party of segregation, the party of Jim Crow Laws, the party of segregation, the party of Woodrow Wilson who re-segregated the Army after its segregation by a Republican during the Civil War, George Wallace Bull Conner Lester Maddox Robert Byrd, the party of Manifest Destiny, the party of American internment camps during WW2, the party that fought against civil rights during the 60's, and the party of the KKK. My question to you is are you a simple moron or do you make a conscious choice to disregard any fact you observe that goes against your DEEPLY devout ideology? Because the history of the Democrat Party, Progressivism, Socialism, etc is not just shitty but so full of evil and death that it has to require equally religious (Progressivism) dishonest professors inside of discriminatory universities to actively attempt to rewrite history by publishing works that "prove" racism is a right-wing disease by relying on concocted interpretation rather than historical records from the source. You know your political beliefs are in trouble when you have to have people actively trying to rewrite history to remove your blemishes. Ah, but you're an ideologue and perception is stronger than truth. Progressive like yourself will either get their way, thus eventually killing millions of people from starvation due to the ignorance and arrogance of centralized governments and exterminating those who don't support the ideal (the ideal is to important to be threatened, just look at how hard you defended it blatantly ignoring the truth presented and immediately dispersing your baseless accusations in order to protect the perception),or progressives will fall short of implementing their idea and the right will be there to clean up the mess made by the ones who swore they were smarter. Seriously anyone who still identifies as being a progressive should be talked down to like a fucking adolescent who keeps getting arrested for doing drugs. Ever time I encounter one, like right now, I'm going to expose their ignorance, hypocrisy, and their devote devotion to a failed ideal and I'm going to watch them respond predictably. Either they will start name calling, attack grammar on an internet post site to keep from addressing the issues at hand, just spout off nonsense based on absolutely nothing like Anonymous just did, attempt to sound intelligent by posting something they either read in an obscure book written by some loser Socialist professor or that they found on Slate and again based on opinions from like minded individuals (And the ones that resort to this type of response are desperately attempting to appear intelligent to convince themselves and others because the importance of this perception for progressives is paramount)or ignore completely. Anonymous which defense are you going with?