"Put the bottom rail on top" nghĩa là gì?

"Put the bottom rail on top" = đặt thanh dưới lên trên -> nghĩa là cải tổ phân cấp sao cho những người trước đây ở cấp dưới được lên cao, và ngược lại.

Ví dụ

I'm working on an young adult novel called Lily's Ride, Saving her Father from the Ku Klux Klan that's set in 1870s North Carolina. There's an expression the racist/white supremacists/Democrats (the three are the same) of that day use over and over again. Giving black people the same rights as whites was, they warned, "setting the bottom rail on top."

“Wherever there are great masses of an inferior race closely associated with a superior, the fittest must survive and exercise supervision and control over the unfit. This is an inflexible and irrevocable decree of mankind in all ages and in all lands, reinforced and uniformly supported by natural law throughout the entire kingdom of living things; a law superior to ordinary interpretations of justice … The development of political institutions and the growth of mankind are under the operation of law, as controlling as the laws of the natural world around us, and no interference of any power can permanently put “the bottom rail on top.”

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