General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: LBJ: "If you can convince the lowest white man that he’s better than the best colored man, he ..." [View all]George II
(67,782 posts)....poor people, both black and white. Look at the two excerpts:
The one presented above:
"If you can convince the lowest white man that he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket."
The entire paragraph:
During a motorcade, the President spotted some ugly racial epithets scrawled on signs by a few plain, he called them homely, white women on the edge of the crowd. Late that night in the hotel, long past midnight, he was still going on about how poor whites and poor blacks had been kept apart so that they could separately be fleeced-. ''I'll tell you what's at the bottom of it," he said. "If you can convince the lowest white man that he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll even empty his pockets for you."
As posted, it gives the impression that LBJ was saying something like "if you want to take advantage of poor people, do this", when in fact he was making an observation of how OTHER people take advantage of the poor. At least that's how I read it, and feel the entire paragraph would have been more appropriate than pulling out a single sentence.