George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography - Get a Free Blog

Bush was not reluctant to feature anti-black backlash themes in other parts of his political
repertoire. In the wake of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King in April, 1968,
large scale riots and looting broke out in Washington and other cities. Bush was quick to
introduce a bill which provided that any person convicted of breaking the law during civil
disorders would be henceforth prohibited from retaining or getting federal jobs. Bush
claimed that during the Washington riot that followed the murder of King, of the first 119
riot suspects brought to court, 10% said they worked for the federal government.[fn 15]
Bush's campaign autobiography and the authorized and adulatory campaign biography by
Fitzhugh Green make virtually no mention of these Congressional activities in the service
of racism, Malthusianism, and depopulation. Instead, Bush and his image-mongers prefer
to focus on the Congressman's heroic fight against racism as expressed in an April, 1968
opposition in Bush's district against the bill that was later to become the Fair Housing Act
of 1968. This bill contained "open housing" provisions prohibiting the discrimination in
the sale, renting, or financing of housing on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or
national origin. Bush decided to vote for the bill. "Letters from the district were
overwhelmingly against the bill. After I voted for it, the mail got heavier. And uglier," he
wrote later. "Threats were directed not only against me but against members of my staff."
As Bush tells it, he then decided to confront his critics at a rally scheduled to be held in
the Memorial-West section of his district. "The place was jammed. Judging from the boos
and catcalls when I was introduced, it was also seething. The tone was set by another
speaker on the program, who predicted that the open housing bill 'will lead to government
control of private property, the Communists' number one goal.'"
In order to reduce the seething masses to docility, Bush began by citing the British
Empire liberal, cultural relativistm, and theoretician of "organic change," Edmund Burke:
"Your representative owes you not only his industry, but his judgment," Burke had said.
Bush then recalled that blacks, Hispanics, and other minorities were risking their lives in
the Vietnam war. How could they be denied open housing? "Somehow it seems
fundamental that a man should not have a door slammed in his face because he is a Negro
or speaks with a Latin American accent." Open housing would be a ray of hope for blacks
and other minorities "locked out by habit and discrimination," Bush concluded. Bush says
he looked at the now silent faces of the audience, and then turned to thank the moderator.
""It was then that the applause began, growing louder until there was a standing ovation.
All the ugliness that had gone before seemed to wash away, and I sensed that something
special had happened." Conjuring up the vision of this alleged triumph in the late 1980's,
Bush had the gall to write: "More than twenty years later I can truthfully say that nothing
I've experienced in public life, before or since, has measured up to the feeling I had when
I went home that night." His sycophant, the mythograph Fitzhugh Green, adds: "Bush had
spoken from his personally held values. He clearly had found the decent core of those
who had heard him. Complaints against his vote on this issue slowed to a trickle. This
matter was another marker on his trail toward the acceptance of black Americans." [fn
16]