Slavery Not As 'Hard To Survive' As LBJ's Great Society

U.S. Senator from South Carolina Tim Scott speaks throughout the second Republican presidential main debate on the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California on September 27, 2023. | Supply: ROBYN BECK / Getty

The lone Black candidate collaborating within the second Republican presidential debate stated Wednesday in no unsure phrases that whereas he thought slavery had no redeeming qualities, the lingering opposed outcomes from the enslavement of Black individuals in America had been nothing in comparison with the racial penalties from a landmark federal social welfare program within the Sixties.

South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott was responding to a query about Florida’s controversial faculty curriculum educating college students that slaves benefited from slavery. However whereas Scott criticized Florida’s academic requirements, he additionally managed to ship a backhanded slap to Black America.

“Black households survived slavery! We survived ballot taxes and literacy checks,” Scott, 58, lectured the viewers on the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, earlier than including: “We survived discrimination being woven into the legal guidelines of our nation.”

Up till that time, Scott was onto one thing. However then he took it there and resorted to the broadly debunked right-wing speaking level that Black fathers are absent – a false impression he trumpeted as reality whereas and attributed it to President Lyndon B. Johnson’s “Nice Society” welfare program. Scott stated the Nice Society was “arduous to outlive” for Black households in comparison with slavery.

Sure, actually.

“What was arduous to outlive was Johnson’s “Nice Society,” the place they determined to place cash– the place they determined to take the Black father out of the family to get a examine within the mail,” Scott concluded with none information to again up his hole level.

It was fairly the take from Scott, who additionally throughout the debate on Wednesday evening in California vehemently reiterated his perception that the US shouldn’t be a racist nation.

What’s the ‘Nice Society’?

On Jan. 4, 1965, Johnson addressed that nation to unveil his “Nice Society” plan that he stated “rests on abundance and liberty for all… [and] calls for an finish to poverty and racial injustice.”

The City Institute explains:

Over the subsequent a number of years, this imaginative and prescient was embodied in a sequence of bold federal legal guidelines and applications aimed toward breaking down the obstacles blocking full and truthful entry to alternative and prosperity. The Nice Society laws ranged broadly throughout the social and financial coverage panorama. It included landmark civil rights laws, the creation of Medicaid and Medicare, new methods for tackling city blight and neighborhood misery, job coaching initiatives and growth of minimal wage protection, and assist of early childhood training.

The “Nice Society” was additionally designed partially to offer “assist for unemployed dad and mom getting ready to enter the workforce,” Historical past.com reminds us.

Which will have been what Scott was falsely alluding to throughout the debate in a disingenuous comparability that prompt the above social applications had been “arduous to outlive” for Black households in relation to slavery, which, in fact, tore aside Black households in probably the most ruthless and inhumane methods.

However Johnson’s successor, former President Richard Nixon, went on to popularize the now-reliably Republican speaking level that the “Nice Society” was nothing however authorities handouts that disincentivized coming into the workforce – the identical rationale Republicans in 2023 cite for opposing authorities applications just like the expanded youngster tax credit score, whose expiration final 12 months has led to rising youngster poverty.

Regardless of all the above, Scott would nonetheless have individuals viewing the controversy Wednesday evening suppose that Johnson’s “Nice Society” social welfare program was more durable for Black households “to outlive” than slavery, a demonstrative societal scourge that’s all however the foundation for the continued systemic racism that contributes to societal scourges just like the racial wealth hole that retains widening practically 158 years after slavery was abolished.

The reality is that Scott, who’s operating in a distant sixth place amongst all candidates looking for the Republican presidential nomination, doubtless deliberate that anti-Black soundbite concerning the “Nice Society” in an effort to energise his base and entice new supporters to his fledgling marketing campaign.

In any case, current polling means that white individuals prefer it when Scott downplays racism.

That is America.