The American Progressivism commenced the beginning of the end of American racism. It has been charged with the betterment of eugenics, and with mainstreaming practices like housing segregation, sterilization of unfit, and exclusion of immigrants on racial grounds. Considering this, if the progressives were such racists, why do the Afro-Americans and other people of color supported self-proclaimed political candidates?
While examining the progressives on race, it is very difficult to distinguish the views they have inherited from people who have developed it. The rise of progressivism has corresponded with the death of racism, which has been taught in American Universities since long time back. Eugenics, those who attempted to use genetics and mathematics to validate racist claims, is it's last. One of the notable things about the progressives is that they have brought scientific racism to an end.
One of the powerful characteristics of the progressives that they hold on to till day is its attentiveness to science. When the era of progressiveness was forming, genetic racism was the scientific model during that time. Non-progressives were just as racist as progressives and some significantly more. The progressive period lay completely within the southern era of Jim Crow legislated segregation, making it impossible to identify the racial attitudes in the new south as progressive.
Progressives believed in a more active state, and racism supported by an activist legislative agenda, which can be uglier than racism that can be tolerated. The southern states actively regulated racial exclusion by statute. All of the racial zoning laws at times lead to progressives that were passed in previously slaveholding states. Whatever the ideological or scientific sources of these laws are, they were supported by ardent anti-Progressives. The same thing is the same for sterilization laws.
Third, the one place where a difference came between progressives and their various opponents was in the rejection of genetic racism in favor of many environmentalist, nurture-based models of human nature and development. Most of the environmentalist views started to take hold in the social sciences in the 1910s and 1920s and started to change legal thinking in the 1940s. They found expression in a Supreme Court which was almost unanimously Democrat and self-acknowledged progressive. The result was the gradual emergence of a division that has faced to this day, with progressives largely appearing as promoters of racial inclusion and diversity. This is a thorough explanation on, The Progressives: Racism and Public law
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