A few interesting points on race...

When Democrat Barack Obama was the first black man to be elected President of the United States, Democrats and liberals all over America and the world claimed it as a victory over the racist Republicans. Whenever conservatives criticise Obama or his policies, they are held up as racists. President Bush was apparently a racist, according to Democrats. Black Americans are told by the media and by corrupt "community leaders" such as Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson that Republicans hate blacks, to the point that the black community in America votes almost en masse for the Democrats, who continue to pretend that they have always been the party of racial unity. I don't quite know how this happened, especially as anyone who studies history knows it to be bullshit. Here are a few facts that I have learned in recent studies of the history of the Civil Rights movement in America:

• President Abraham Lincoln freed black slaves in 1863 with the Emancipation Proclamation and later abolished slavery with the 13th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. President Lincoln was a Republican.

• When the Emancipation Proclamation was announced in 1863, the Democrats used it to stir up an anti-war movement to try and force a settlement with the Confederacy.

• In 1864, the Democrats ran an election campaign based on peace with the Confederacy, the scrapping of the Emancipation Proclamation and the continuation of slavery.

• Both the President and Vice-President of the pro-slavery Confederate States of America during the Civil War were Democrats.

• Senator Robert Byrd of West Virgina, who has been a Senator since 1959, was a member of the Ku Klux Klan and held the rank of Exalted Cyclops (whatever that means). Senator Byrd is a Democrat.

• President Woodrow Wilson supported the Jim Crow segregation laws in the Southern United States and sanctioned racial segregation within Government departments. He was also quoted in the infamous Ku Klux Klan film Birth of a Nation, describing the KKK as "a veritable Empire of the South, to protect the Southern country." President Wilson was a Democrat.

• President Ulysses S Grant signed Bills to criminalise the Ku Klux Klan and crack down on their activities. He also signed Bills to afford voting rights to black Americans and had this enshringed into the Constitution with the 15th Amendment. He also passed legislation demanding equality in public accomodations and jury selection. President Grant was a Republican.

• When Presidents Kennedy and later Johnson, both Democrats, tried to get the 1964 Civil Rights Act passed, the Chairman of the House Rules Committee, Howard Smith, stated that he intended to keep the bill "bottled up indefinitely." Howard Smith was a Democrat from Virginia.

• When the 1964 Civil Rights Bill went to the Senate for debate, an attempt was made to fillibuster it by a bloc of Southern Senators led by Richard Russell of Georgia who said "We will resist to the bitter end any measure or any movement which would have a tendency to bring about social equality and intermingling and amalgamation of the races in our states." Senator Russell was a Democrat, as were many of his supporters.

• Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, who as we have already noted is both a Democrat and a former member of the Ku Klux Klan, opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act and spoke for over 14 hours as part of the fillibuster attempt.

• George Wallace, the Governor of Alabama who tried to enforce segregation in the South despite the US Supreme Court and ruling against it and who said at his Gubanatorial inauguration "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever" was a Democrat.

It's a little hard to see how, based on all that history (and more) the Democrats can position themselves as the party of black Americans, but somehow they've done it. Perhaps the GOP should start teaching the American people a bit of history and let them make up their own minds...