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it's been politically advantageous for the Dems to keep minorities in a victim mentality
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I don't think refusing to whitewash history is evidence of any "victim mentality." The great racial crisis the parties faced in the twentieth century was the civil rights movement. The Republican Party staked out the wrong side of that issue in the 1960s, resulting in great political benefits they still reap. Opposition to civil rights may not be the reason that white people in the South are overwhelmingly Republican today, but it is the issue that turned the tide and launched a regionwide reversal of party affiliation that's stronger than ever. You don't have to have a "victim mentality" to care about that history, or to expect a real repudiation of it from the Republican leadership that has never come. (Reagan launched his 1980 campaign talking about states' rights in Philadelphia, Mississippi, which was a not-very-veiled pitch to those who had opposed civil rights. You don't hear about this when people in either party praise Reagan.)
I don't view the Democrats as any kind of Great White Hope, but the Republican Party earned the skepticism they face in the black community. It's up to them, not the Democrats, to earn that trust back.
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