[Snowman]

Originally Posted by todeen

I'm not well read on Cobb. But the supposition that education decreases racism is flat wrong. It is not based in fact, especially for Gilded Age America. Academics supported and bred racism throughout US higher education. Our college elite often focused on maintaining white hierarchy. There is a reason we have Historically Black Colleges in this country. Further, academics ate hook-line-and-sinker the overt lie of Social Darwinism. My US History MA thesis was about a turn of the century artist who found his direction at the 1914 World's Fair in SF. There, Blacks were publicly battling overt racism not only in the Fun Zone, but also in academic buildings where they were pushing Social Darwinism as well as eugenics. These concepts were Coast to coast.

In 1917, our elite were scared to intermingle blacks and whites in the US Army. West Point graduates were scared to give blacks guns. They sent black soldiers to France to dig ditches and drive horses. The French, taking massive losses, asked to use the black soldiers and US leaders were OK with that suspecting they would die. But many survived and displayed extraordinary heroism, and some earned the equivalent of the Medal of Honor in France. When they came home, they came home to find that their efforts in France were buried and forgotten by the US media. Many of the leaders of the national media were college graduates.

Today, many people believe colleges are liberal bastions. Maybe they are. But let's not reflect our modern lens onto a completely different era that operated under completely different social orders.

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Just wanted to say thanks for the great post