So it's the Negro, not the Jew. Change the slogan, Hans, to:
"Die Neger sind unser Unglueck."
Vorwaerts.

All yo' bases, dey be belongin' to us.

Well, obviously behind the Negro is the Jew. Then behind the Jew is the Freemason. And behind the Freemason is the Illuminati. And then, if I understand correctly, behind the Illuminati is the Negro again.

It's a circle?

It's a circle-jerk.
But after the end of ideology, you were expecting what?

When I worked with a fundraising canvass in Chicago in the early 1980s, we still couldn't go into Cicero with our whole staff. Black canvassers just met too much in the way of threats and abuse.

We canvassed the whole of the city, even NW except for a few hard-core racist precincts, and every other suburban town. Cicero was still impossible.

I wonder if it's still true.

You forgot the Catholics, busily storing guns in our basements for the inevitable call from Rome. We control all y'all.

It's a funny thing. The 19th century Popes, at least, did denounce democracy as anti-God in encyclicals, didn't they? Paul VI argued for the passing of laws against contraception, John Paul II opposed gay-rights and same-sex civil unions, and in the US Catholics have intervened against reproductive freedom many times. The Catholic Church isn't exactly a freedom-friendly organization. I know well that lay Catholics often diverge from Vatican positions, but those positions are still there.

There's a popular notion, held in common by both gay liberals and antigay bigots, that we only are entitled of human and civil rights if we're 'born this way.' If not, it's a choice, and the logical conclusion is that it's okay to harass and persecute people for their choices. (Another funny thing: that consideration has never been applied to blacks or women, that they shouldn't be discriminated against because they were born that way and can't help themselves.) The logical conclusion, then, is that it's okay to harass and persecute people for their religion, which is a choice, not an inborn condition. What do y'all think?

Nell, Wikipedia's got stats from the last census: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicero%2C_Illinois.

Duncan, most people pick up the religion their parents had anyway. Maybe there was a tacit acceptance of that at the time the First Amendment was written. Anyway, most Americans seem to believe it's okay to persecute Muslims anyway.

In the open-housing marches of the mid-60s in Chicago, King was planning a march into Cicero. Daley agreed to meet with him and the march was cancelled (a previous march into Marquette Park was terribly violent and scary.) I was never so glad about anything in my life as when that march in Cicero was called off, because I would have had to go, or not be able to live with myself. Of course Daley didn't give up anything to King, he never gave up anything to anyone, but Cicero is/was a name to strike fear into the hearts of all progressives and particularly blacks (maybe other minorities, too.)

It's funny that Perlstein is citing this as evidence how much the nation's attitudes have improved, whereas as I see it as showing how much racist resentment lies just below the surface...

RACISM IS THE POLITICS OF AMERICA AND BIGOTRY HER SOUL, and this cycle is no different. Keeping women held back, well, that's worldwide.

Thanks, StO. I see we were just a few years early, though life can't have been too easy for the Latino immigrants of the 1980s.