Progressives Give Blacks Just Enough
Affluent progressives have the ongoing challenge of maintaining their wealth and status while keeping up appearances of benevolence and compassion.
Reid Fitzsimons | January 7, 2026
Affluent progressives have the ongoing challenge of maintaining their wealth and status while keeping up appearances of benevolence and compassion. Regarding race, in post-WW II America, as the old use of intimidation by Democrats to manage black people receded, more subtle strategies were needed. These were mentioned by then Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson (LBJ, D-TX) who, in discussing the 1957 Civil Rights Bill with Sen. Richard Russell (D-GA) said: "These Negros, they're getting pretty uppity these days and that's a problem for us since they've got something now they never had before, the political pull to back up their uppitiness. Now we've got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference..."
To put it another way, Johnson and his peers had to find a way to keep black people disenfranchised while appearing to empower them, and ultimately ensure they voted Democrat in perpetuity. Fooling and manipulating a targeted demographic is certainly not unique in history and this progressive approach proved to work spectacularly: it remains ubiquitous almost 70 years later. Autonomous and competent people are not amenable to manipulation, hence it became necessary to make the targeted demographic embrace the opposite: helplessness, dependency, and victimization.
An important step was for the establishment (white) Democrat powers to choose emissaries to black culture in the form of black “leaders” who would reliably promulgate the desired message, i.e. you are helpless, dependent, and can't be held responsible because you are victims. At this point it's necessary to mention the premier black leader of the time, Martin Luther King, Jr, along with his relationship with LBJ. Today MLK's name is exploited by the racialist black elite as that of Jesus is by corrupt televangelists: they need them to legitimize their behavior but also need to marginalize these towering figures because what they stood for is at odds with their personal lust for power, money, etc.
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https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2026/01/progressives_give_them_just_enough.html
