Battleground - Race in America: The Southern Strategy
Race in America: The Southern StrategyHow Republicans went from whispering racism to saying the quiet part out loud.
This is the first of a two-part series on American race relations in the latter half of the 20th century. Much of our current understanding of Black History ends at the Civil Rights Movement. Its imperative to reflect on race in American history after that moment to understand how we got to where we are today. Today’s piece will focus on White Americans who inflamed racial anxieties to attain political power. Tomorrow’s piece will focus on the same time frame from the perspective of Black Americans and the ways in which they organized to combat oppression. Topline Takeaways
The “Solid South” (1867-1964)From the end of Reconstruction in the late 1800s until the presidential election of 1968, most former states of the Confederacy (and a couple border states) were dubbed the “Solid South.” It reflected these states’ unwavering commitment to the Democratic Party, spurred by white Democrats who held a laser-focus on preserving white supremacy in the face of racial progress. The Democratic party of the early 1900s more closely resembled the Republican party of today: state legislators across the South passed a bevy of laws that made it more difficult for Black people to vote. This included procedures like poll taxes, literacy tests and onerous residency requirements. These restrictive voting laws helped keep white legislators in power as much of the Black electorate was prevented from casting a ballot in elections. Barry Goldwater: The Trump PrototypeBarry Goldwater’s 1964 presidential campaign shares many similarities with Trump’s path to the nomination in the 2016 presidential election. Barry Goldwater, an heir to his family’s department store chain, emerged as a frontrunner candidate in the Republican Party due to his rough-edged, hard-line rhetoric. His campaign was supported by Southerners and Midwesterners who felt sidelined by the more moderate, metropolitan wing of the party (symbolized by primary challenger Nelson Rockefeller). What propelled Goldwater to the nomination was his relatively extreme political positions in the face of a moderate Republican party (primary challengers cast him as an “extremist” and “ignorant”). His political ideals were deliberately formed to court white voters in the South, clearly signaled by his opposition to emerging civil rights legislation. While serving in the Senate in 1964, Goldwater voted against the Civil Rights Act, claiming that the law amounted to federal overreach and that states should be able to control their own laws without federal intervention. Many within the party picked up on the racist undertones of the statement and voters did too. While Goldwater lost in a landslide election to Lyndon B. Johnson, Republican political observers took note on exactly how Goldwater cracked the Solid South. Richard Nixon Perfects The “Dog Whistle”
Richard Nixon watched Barry Goldwater’s campaign closely. While he saw the benefits from capitalizing on the racial anxiety of Southern white voters, he also saw the perils of saying the quiet part out loud. In his attempt to court the Democratic-leaning Southern states, Goldwater clearly alienated the rest of the country. In his 1968 presidential campaign, Nixon mirrored Goldwater’s strategy: using terms such as ‘state’s rights’ and ‘law and order’ to slyly signal his opposition to African American progress. The key difference for Nixon was the presence of an even more radical primary candidate who was yelling the quiet part through a megaphone. The 1968 election also saw the candidacy of George Wallace, a nakedly racist third-party candidate who stole several states in the Deep South away from both Nixon and the Democratic party. The presence of a clearly extremist candidate helped Nixon cast himself as a moderate: his campaign operatives were able to downplay his more covertly racist rhetoric by instead focusing on the more brash and appalling style of his opponent. By the time Nixon ran for re-election in 1972, he won every state except Massachusetts, proving that “dog-whistle” tactics provided an avenue for Republican success across the country. Ronald Reagan’s Mythical ‘Welfare Queens’After a decade of dog-whistles, racial justice advocates were beginning to call out Republicans’ insidious rhetoric on race. That forced the party to innovate:
Ronald Reagan waged a war against the “welfare state” since his stint as California’s governor in the early 1970s. Then in 1976, he started telling the story of a woman from Chicago who used fake names and addresses to collect illegal welfare payments. While he never racialized her or even used her name, this one woman’s story was used to generate clear racial animus against African Americans. The face of welfare recipients in the media at the time was undeniably Black, therefore Reagan was able to capitalize on voters’ internal biases without ever explicitly mentioning race. The tactic proved to be a little too covert for voters as Reagan failed to capture the nomination in his first primary campaign. Enter the “welfare queen.” It wasn’t until Reagan’s winning campaign in 1980 that he uttered the phrase “welfare queen” on the campaign trail and the imagery directly influenced his policies once in office. In his inaugural address, he lamented the amount of fraud in government programs and his administration oversaw $25 billion in cuts to welfare benefits. By the end of the 1980s, public opinion on racial progress was mixed. Polling showed progress on integration amidst widespread intolerance. The percentage of white Americans living in all-white neighborhoods dropped from nearly half (47%) to almost a third. Yet at the same time, more than half of White parents living in mixed neighborhoods cited an unwillingness to let their children play with children of other races. More than half of White Americans continued to believe that issues faced by Black people “were caused by Blacks themselves.” Meanwhile, a majority of African Americans agreed that they saw more racial progress in the 1970s than in the 1980s. (No wonder Reagan’s approval rating averaged about 25% among Black voters.) “Take Trump Seriously, Not Literally”The election (and re-election) of the country’s first Black president contributed to a false sense of progress among the American public. For many, the existence of a Black president was in itself a sign that the country had finally overcome its racist history. Democratic moderates lauded the emergence of a new “post-racial society.” The Republican Party acknowledged how it was being held back by an inability to invite a more diverse coalition of voters. While this was intended to be a launching point for continued social change, it was used to bolster arguments on the far-right that racism had gone extinct, meaning legislation protecting racial justice was largely unnecessary.
Actions across all levels of government in the last decade underscore the precarious state of racial justice progress:
Continued evolution of the Southern Strategy is what allowed this slow rollback of progress to take place. In 2016 we were told to “take Donald Trump seriously, not literally.” To decipher his ramblings, we were forced to wade through the bigly covfefe of it all to hear the messages his supporters received. From states’ rights to “shithole” countries, Donald Trump trafficked in traditional racist dog whistles and even created a few new ones of his own. When challenged, conservatives point to his Black predecessor and lean on the post-racial myth that many moderates still believe in today. This convinces some to carve a path forward that avoids confronting racism directly and inspires them to lean into supposed “race-blind” policies that simply erase the pervasiveness of racism. It grows the GOP tent just-barely-big-enough to allow Republicans the power to stymie any further progress. It also lays bare as to why Critical Race Theory is the ultimate boogeyman for the party in 2022. CRT: Countering The Southern StrategyCritical Race Theory forces us to reckon with history and exposes the rhetorical games bad actors have played for decades. Without this background, “race-blind” policies sound laudable, even compassionate to some. ‘How could this possibly lead to racism if they’re trying their hardest to ignore race?’ Retracing our steps through history proves how Americans readily avoid confronting racism directly and politicians take advantage of that squeamishness. The Southern Strategy plainly seeks to answer the question: how can we benefit from stoking racial anxieties without explicitly saying that’s what we’re doing? When we pull states’ rights, welfare queens and ‘shithole’ countries out of their contextual vacuums and place them squarely beside our country’s historical patterns of racism and power; it lays bare the ways politicians can take advantage of America’s chronic racial denialism. The strategy allows politicians to sidestep race issues by making oppressed people appear as though they’re creating their own problems. It even affords voters plausible deniability when dubious political intentions lead to clearly harmful impacts. Most importantly: the Southern Strategy gives Americans an ‘out’ from meaningfully confronting the scraps of white supremacy left on our plate. Because most of us simply won’t admit to ourselves that we’re willing to tolerate racism as long as it’s served with a wink and a smile. Leftover Links
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