This simple rule for ruling works every time
Published by marco on
“I’ll tell you what’s at the bottom of it. If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”
—Lyndon B. Johnson
According to the article Did Lyndon B. Johnson Say This About The ‘Lowest White Man’ and ‘Best Colored Man’? by David Emery (Snopes), it was a then-young Bill Moyers himself to whom Johnson said this, presumably in the 60s. Moyers quotes him as having said it in response to “ some ugly racial epithets scrawled on signs [he’s spotted during the motorcade.]” So, it seems that he was not describing a recipe he’d planned on using, but simply the power of the idea of racism.
The article states further,
“One of the secrets of his success was the ability to speak the racially insensitive language of his fellow Southerners. He understood them. He understood their reluctance and in some cases downright refusal to tear down the walls of racial segregation. He knew racism from the inside, and he knew well the role the rich and powerful played in promulgating it.”
To balance this just a bit, I also found this other quote from good ol’ boy Lyndon B. Johnson,
“I’ll have those n**gers voting Democratic for the next 200 years.”
This is the same man who turned up the heat on the Vietnam War to the temperature that would end up cooking at least two million Vietnamese, whom he considered to be “hordes of barbaric yellow dwarves”.