Did Reagan run on racism?

[Negusa Nagast 🚀]

Given his statements on "state's rights" and that woman from Chicago...

States Rights =/=racism.

True, it's more than that: homophobia, sexism, and classism as well.

[Oswald Acted Alone, You Kook]

Given his statements on "state's rights" and that woman from Chicago...

States Rights =/=racism.

True, it's more than that: homophobia, sexism, and classism as well.

And there are also legitimate states rights issues that have nothing to do with things like that.

[Rockefeller GOP]

Yes, every Republican since Nixon has run on the New Jim Crow platform of gutting welfare and locking up minorities.

H-Y-P-E-R-B-O-L-E.

Not really.

New Jim Crow?!  I'd like to hear how.

I'm also starting to believe our token three communists are all the same poster, LOL...

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Uh, there's a reason "Reagan Democrats" were a thing.

Not that "Reagan Democrats" were all that much of a thing, but did it ever occur to you that blue collar whites might be motivated by something other than racism?

[Sol]

Yes, every Republican since Nixon has run on the New Jim Crow platform of gutting welfare and locking up minorities.

H-Y-P-E-R-B-O-L-E.

Not really.

New Jim Crow?!  I'd like to hear how.

I'm also starting to believe our token three communists are all the same poster, LOL...

Racialized enforcement of the War on Drugs has been the most prominent example of this. African-Americans and Latin@s are extremely more likely than non-hispanic whites to get arrested for minor drug offenses despite high rates of drug usage regardless of race. And the school to prison pipeline has been a much more prominent factor in communities of color.

Add to this Republican rhetoric about welfare and crime, both of which where and are extremely racialized in the public discourse. The White community, in general, in the 60s-80s still retained most of its old-fashioned racist ideals[1], (see no majority support for interracial marriage until the 1990s) which in the Northeast and Midwest in particular entailed a certain degree of paranoia about rising crime rates, which were concentrated in the mostly minority, poor inner cities.

Additionally, the racist tint to the GOP can be seen on the state level quite clearly as well. This is most salient regarding transportation and urban policy, another issue which tends to be quite racially tinged. A lot of this dates back to sundown town policies/redlining. These, along with other forms of unofficial but de facto segregation, were the norm in American suburbia well into the 1990s[2]; the few places which did not maintain this generally experienced massive white flight.

[1] As opposed to the more recent unpleasantness.
[2] The South is generally a bit different though no less virulent in its bigotry; but residential segregation was less of an aspect of that.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Uh, there's a reason "Reagan Democrats" were a thing.

Not that "Reagan Democrats" were all that much of a thing, but did it ever occur to you that blue collar whites might be motivated by something other than racism?

Yes, because 25 percent of Democrats voting for a Republican isn't "much of a thing".

It depends on how it is meant. Most Reagan Democrats were also Nixon Democrats, and often Goldwater Democrats and/or Eisenhower Democrats. Every Republican candidate in the 2nd half of the 20th century, even those who lost, won a large number of Democratic votes. Reagan certainly made further inroads into traditionally Democratic communities, but the image of Reagan Democrats as being of a certain type can be misleading, and the gains made were on the margins rather than wholesale.

[All Along The Watchtower]

In addition to what posters in this thread (including myself ) have already said, I would add that the race-based appeals were part of a broader Republican political strategy of conservative populism- a populism that was (and is) targeted to middle-class and working-class white voters, many of whom had previously supported the Democratic Party. Along with anxieties over race and crime were concerns about changing gender roles and sexual norms, resentment of liberal intellectual elites, and a growth in nationalistic sentiments regarding foreign policy and immigration. These factors are all interrelated and tended to reinforce each other.

[Adam Griffin]

That's stretching pretty pathetically thin to say "reducing spending" is racial code. Might as well just say being a Republican automatically makes you a racist.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_8E3ENrKrQ

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

That's stretching pretty pathetically thin to say "reducing spending" is racial code. Might as well just say being a Republican automatically makes you a racist.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_8E3ENrKrQ

" And, subconsciously, maybe that is part of it. I’m not saying that. But I’m saying that if it is getting that abstract and that coded then we’re doing away with the racial problem one way or the other, you follow me?"

Atwater was saying one way or another, racism was not relevant in the 1980 campaign.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/martin-bashir-broadcasts-misleading-edit-of-lee-atwater-quote-to-portray-gop-as-racist/

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

Given his statements on "state's rights" and that woman from Chicago...

States Rights =/=racism.

True, it's more than that: homophobia, sexism, and classism as well.

And there are also legitimate states rights issues that have nothing to do with things like that.

Historically, the people who argue for "states' rights" fit into two main categories:

1) Whichever party lost the last presidential election
2) Racists

I'll agree that states' rights in theory has nothing to do with racism, but its naive to suggest that there is no connection between the two.

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

Reagan in a real sense ran on being all things to all people within the context of groups whose support he thought would be valuable. One of these groups was racists, yes.

Also, 'Reagan Democrats' were people like David Lynch (the real person David Lynch, not a David Lynch character), not people like Archie Bunker.

[Adam Griffin]

That's stretching pretty pathetically thin to say "reducing spending" is racial code. Might as well just say being a Republican automatically makes you a racist.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_8E3ENrKrQ

" And, subconsciously, maybe that is part of it. I’m not saying that. But I’m saying that if it is getting that abstract and that coded then we’re doing away with the racial problem one way or the other, you follow me?"

Atwater was saying one way or another, racism was not relevant in the 1980 campaign.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/martin-bashir-broadcasts-misleading-edit-of-lee-atwater-quote-to-portray-gop-as-racist/

I don't feel like that is being said by him in a genuine context. It comes across to me more like a half-hearted absolution of his role in it. He's not saying "We didn't do that"; he's saying "So what if we did that? It's better than the alternative".

Spoiler alert: it totally isn't. The old kind you can blatantly call it as you see it. The new kind becomes so entangled in base social and economic philosophy that vast segments of the population don't even realize it and therefore pitch a fit when you try to separate it from the policies that were designed to covertly encase them.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

And, Shua, I am excruciatingly embarrassed to see a poster whom I usually respect defending Atwater's remarks as evidence that the 1980 campaign was not largely about race.

I'm saying Atwater said it was not about race.  I don't know how someone can fairly come to any other conclusion that he was arguing anything else, unless there's some sort of deconstructionist hermeneutic involved. Maybe he's just justifying himself retroactively, I don't know, but if you quote Atwater as an authority on the subject, then don't take his remarks out of context and twist them around to try to make it sound like he supported the very argument he was criticizing. 

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

And, Shua, I am excruciatingly embarrassed to see a poster whom I usually respect defending Atwater's remarks as evidence that the 1980 campaign was not largely about race.

I'm saying Atwater said it was not about race.  I don't know how someone can fairly come to any other conclusion that he was arguing anything else, unless there's some sort of deconstructionist hermeneutic involved. Maybe he's just justifying himself retroactively, I don't know, but if you quote Atwater as an authority on the subject, then don't take his remarks out of context and twist them around to try to make it sound like he supported the very argument he was criticizing. 

I don't know what a "deconstructionist hermeneutic" is, but how exactly are you connecting that ominous Atwater line about "doing away with the racial problem one way or the other" to the claim that racism wasn't relevant to the 1980 presidential campaign?

He is taking the premise of this question:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

and accepting it for the sake of argument.
He is arguing that a campaign that might appeal to racists by pointing to other issues that might be subconsciously related to racism is going to leave racial politics behind anyway by focusing on those other, substantively nonracial, issues.  There's some weakness to that argument, but this is one of many things he is saying in defending against the charge that the campaign was racist.

[Oldiesfreak1854]

No (not a liberal hack).

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/18/opinion/18cannon.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/what-the-butler-gets-wrong-about-ronald-reagan-and-race/2013/08/29/5f6aa21e-0e87-11e3-8cdd-bcdc09410972_story.html
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/01/17/michael-reagan-ronald-reagan-friend-blacks-obama/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0044075/

[Mr. Smith]

No (not a liberal hack).

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/18/opinion/18cannon.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/what-the-butler-gets-wrong-about-ronald-reagan-and-race/2013/08/29/5f6aa21e-0e87-11e3-8cdd-bcdc09410972_story.html
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/01/17/michael-reagan-ronald-reagan-friend-blacks-obama/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0044075/

Michael Reagan and Fox are void, and that "I have a black friend so I'm not racist" is  a very BS defense.

[bedstuy]

Ronald Reagan was a bit of a Nazi sympathizer too, right?

[Lief 🗽]

Ronald Reagan was a bit of a Nazi sympathizer too, right?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Su0Hvt6hTmA

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

No, no. It was just a funny coincidence that he gave a speech about state's rights a few miles away from the spot where civil rights activists were murdered.

At the launch of his campaign. All a funny coincidence.

[Rockefeller GOP]

And, Shua, I am excruciatingly embarrassed to see a poster whom I usually respect defending Atwater's remarks as evidence that the 1980 campaign was not largely about race.

I'm saying Atwater said it was not about race.  I don't know how someone can fairly come to any other conclusion that he was arguing anything else, unless there's some sort of deconstructionist hermeneutic involved. Maybe he's just justifying himself retroactively, I don't know, but if you quote Atwater as an authority on the subject, then don't take his remarks out of context and twist them around to try to make it sound like he supported the very argument he was criticizing. 

I don't know what a "deconstructionist hermeneutic" is, but how exactly are you connecting that ominous Atwater line about "doing away with the racial problem one way or the other" to the claim that racism wasn't relevant to the 1980 presidential campaign?

He is taking the premise of this question:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

and accepting it for the sake of argument.
He is arguing that a campaign that might appeal to racists by pointing to other issues that might be subconsciously related to racism is going to leave racial politics behind anyway by focusing on those other, substantively nonracial, issues.  There's some weakness to that argument, but this is one of many things he is saying in defending against the charge that the campaign was racist.

Good post.

[Mr. Smith]

He also has record of defending the practices real estate agents used to discriminate against minorities when running for Governor where housing is concerned.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

And, Shua, I am excruciatingly embarrassed to see a poster whom I usually respect defending Atwater's remarks as evidence that the 1980 campaign was not largely about race.

I'm saying Atwater said it was not about race.  I don't know how someone can fairly come to any other conclusion that he was arguing anything else, unless there's some sort of deconstructionist hermeneutic involved. Maybe he's just justifying himself retroactively, I don't know, but if you quote Atwater as an authority on the subject, then don't take his remarks out of context and twist them around to try to make it sound like he supported the very argument he was criticizing. 

I don't know what a "deconstructionist hermeneutic" is, but how exactly are you connecting that ominous Atwater line about "doing away with the racial problem one way or the other" to the claim that racism wasn't relevant to the 1980 presidential campaign?

He is taking the premise of this question:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

and accepting it for the sake of argument.
He is arguing that a campaign that might appeal to racists by pointing to other issues that might be subconsciously related to racism is going to leave racial politics behind anyway by focusing on those other, substantively nonracial, issues.  There's some weakness to that argument, but this is one of many things he is saying in defending against the charge that the campaign was racist.

I've never seen anyone maintain that explicitly racist language was a staple of Reagan's campaigns. What claim are you arguing against?

the claim that the Atwater interview was a confession that Reagan's campaign was intentionally race-baiting by talking about cutting spending.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Reagan in a real sense ran on being all things to all people within the context of groups whose support he thought would be valuable. One of these groups was racists, yes.

Also, 'Reagan Democrats' were people like David Lynch (the real person David Lynch, not a David Lynch character), not people like Archie Bunker.

I tend to agree with the first part (to be clear he certainly dabbled in race-baiting quite a bit).  That being said, David Lynch is more of a Libertarian IIRC.  I'd argue that Reagan Democrats did tend to be more blue-collar (although the extent to which this was the case probably gets exaggerated somewhat).  I think Reagan had a great deal of appeal to a large and diverse variety of Democrats (and especially independents) due in part to his mastery of political theater and his ability to use his charisma to make people feel like the sun would come up tomorrow.  His talents in both those areas rivaled even FDR's and as with FDR, they were both a core part of his appeal to those outside of his party.

[All Along The Watchtower]

Even if Reagan did not run on racism (just for the sake of argument), or use race-based stereotypes about "welfare queens" (which he indisputably did) or whatever, there were still plenty of good reasons for why black Americans were among the most likely groups to have negative views of him and his administration.

Putting aside the question of whether his campaigns didn't appeal to black people...his policies certainly weren't sensitive to the concerns of black Americans and other minority groups. If anything, the Reagan administration was often remarkably callous and antagonistic toward such groups.

And yet, the way Republicans talk you'd think that we can't ever call their heroes racist, because they weren't as bad as George Wallace or something. And being called a racist is the worst thing that's ever happened to anybody, obviously. Including racism.