Woodrow Wilson

 Erik Loomis to the left of me on many issues, especially regarding economics. However, he has a series called "Erik Visits an American Grave" that's really very interesting, where he snaps a pic of the grave and provides a brief biography.  His most recent entry is Woodrow Wilson, and it really is worth a read.

Since 2016, there has been a strong schism between cultural liberals and economic leftists. The quasi-Marxist economic determinism of people like Bernie Sanders and, yes, Loomis, tends to let them elide troubling issues of culture, race and gender in favor of a broad examination of class. So maybe that leads Loomis to his conclusions on Wilson, but I don't think so.  Wilson has been uniquely targeted by those concerned with racial issues.  Loomis adeptly explains why that's probably misplaced.  Wilson was perhaps slightly more racist than most of the presidents from 1892-1932, but only slightly. 

As I've said many times, when examining racism in the past, it does not excuse racism by saying that it was the tenor of the times. Saying Wilson (or Teddy Roosevelt or Samuel Gompers or anyone from that era) was a "man of his times" is not to excuse racism but to contextualize it and point out how prevalent white supremacy was. This can help contextualize the current state of white supremacy in America.

We no long live in an America where Wilson's form of white supremacy can prosper. (Even Trump's white supremacy is veiled and coded.) But we live in an America that was shaped by the institutions that came out of the Progressive Era and all of its troubling racist ideas and programs. 

There was a Progressive case for Jim Crow, just as the progressive view on slavery in the early 19th century included the likely forced deportation of freed slaves. The assumption rested on the idea that a multi-racial society would tear itself apart in violence and no one would be hurt more than Blacks by this violence. The history of Colfax, Tulsa and Rosewood suggest this has actual merit as a concern. It neglects, of course, the wishes of Blacks themselves, which is also an important understanding of the problems of the time.

America continues to work on creating a multiracial society, but all the evidence suggests that it's an incredibly difficult task.  As Europe becomes more multiracial, white ethnonationalist parties are rising. Countries like Brazil have the same issues of race and class that the US has, maybe more so. 

This is not to say that multiracial societies are impossible. In fact, they are critical to the future stability of the world. They are, however, a relatively new thing and far too many people are struggling to accommodate the idea of one.  In Wilson's lifetime, very, very few people saw this as possible, much less desireable.