"I fully recognize and appreciate the many substantial contributions of black Americans and other minorities to the creation and preservation and development of our great nation"
About this Quote
The line carries a sweep of patriotic inclusion, naming black Americans and other minorities as co-authors in the making, defending, and advancing of the United States. The cadence of creation, preservation, and development compresses the national story from founding through survival to growth, and the phrase our great nation extends an invitation to shared ownership. It is generous on its face, a public act of recognition that echoes the civic ritual of thanking those whose labor and sacrifice have long been minimized.
Coming from Strom Thurmond, the words hum with historical tension. He emerged on the national stage as the 1948 Dixiecrat presidential candidate, vowed to resist civil rights expansion, and later set the record for the longest Senate filibuster while trying to block the 1957 Civil Rights Act. For decades he stood as a symbol of Southern resistance to desegregation. That history cannot be separated from the statement, because its very warmth reveals a late-career repositioning: the language of appreciation without embracing the remedies that civil rights activists demanded.
By the 1970s and 1980s, Thurmond adopted a more conciliatory tone, hired black staff, and framed his politics in colorblind terms. The sentence fits that arc. It widens the circle rhetorically while sidestepping an account of exclusion, discrimination, and the struggle that made such recognition possible. The catch-all other minorities folds diverse communities into a single category, affirming belonging but also flattening distinct histories, while the focus on contribution avoids the politics of redress.
The statement thus works on two levels. It affirms a truth long attested by historians: the United States was built and sustained by people of many backgrounds, including those forced to labor under bondage and those who fought to expand the promise of liberty. And it signals the conservative adjustment to the civil rights consensus, embracing symbolic inclusion and national unity even as debates over structural change continue. Against Thurmonds own biography, including the later revelation of his biracial daughter, the line reads as both recognition and a measure of unresolved contradiction.
Coming from Strom Thurmond, the words hum with historical tension. He emerged on the national stage as the 1948 Dixiecrat presidential candidate, vowed to resist civil rights expansion, and later set the record for the longest Senate filibuster while trying to block the 1957 Civil Rights Act. For decades he stood as a symbol of Southern resistance to desegregation. That history cannot be separated from the statement, because its very warmth reveals a late-career repositioning: the language of appreciation without embracing the remedies that civil rights activists demanded.
By the 1970s and 1980s, Thurmond adopted a more conciliatory tone, hired black staff, and framed his politics in colorblind terms. The sentence fits that arc. It widens the circle rhetorically while sidestepping an account of exclusion, discrimination, and the struggle that made such recognition possible. The catch-all other minorities folds diverse communities into a single category, affirming belonging but also flattening distinct histories, while the focus on contribution avoids the politics of redress.
The statement thus works on two levels. It affirms a truth long attested by historians: the United States was built and sustained by people of many backgrounds, including those forced to labor under bondage and those who fought to expand the promise of liberty. And it signals the conservative adjustment to the civil rights consensus, embracing symbolic inclusion and national unity even as debates over structural change continue. Against Thurmonds own biography, including the later revelation of his biracial daughter, the line reads as both recognition and a measure of unresolved contradiction.
Quote Details
| Topic | Equality |
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