by Reid Fitzsimons (note this article was first published at the American Thinker: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2026/01/progressives_give_them_just_enough.html)

Affluent progressives have the ongoing challenge of maintaining their wealth and status while keeping up appearances of benevolence and compassion. Regarding race, in post-WW2 America, as the old use of intimidation by Democrats to manage black people receded more subtle strategies were needed. These were mentioned by then Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson (LBJ, D-TX) who, in discussing the 1957 Civil Rights Bill with Sen. Richard Russell (D-GA) said: "These Negros, they're getting pretty uppity these days and that's a problem for us since they've got something now they never had before, the political pull to back up their uppitiness. Now we've got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference..."

To put it another way, Johnson and his peers had to find a way to keep black people disenfranchised while appearing to empower them, and ultimately ensure they voted Democrat in perpetuity. Fooling and manipulating a targeted demographic is certainly not unique in history and this progressive approach proved to work spectacularly: it remains ubiquitous almost 70 years later. Autonomous and competent people are not amenable to manipulation, hence it became necessary to make the targeted demographic embrace the opposite: helplessness, dependency, and victimization.