Why is it always the race card?

[old timey villain]

Yeah, but the issue is often brought up by Republicans not as an effort to start a thoughtful dialogue but as a means to divide white against black, at least in the south. And the hyperbole they seem to use about people on welfare doesn't help the situation either.

In 1976 Ronald Reagan gave a stump speech about a woman on the south side of Chicago (obviously black) who was the ultimate welfare queen.

"She has eighty names, thirty addresses, twelve Social Security cards and is collecting veteran's benefits on four non-existing deceased husbands. And she is collecting Social Security on her cards. She's got Medicaid, getting food stamps, and she is collecting welfare under each of her names. Her tax-free cash income is over $150,000."

This kind of rhetoric only stokes fear in white people about black people on the welfare system. Somebody who is uneducated might think that all people on welfare live like this and game the system, not understanding that she is an extreme exception.

So when a Republican decides to talk like an adult about welfare instead of trying to scare people then I'll change my mind. But in today's GOP the topic is pure race bait.

[old timey villain]

Well, campaigning on welfare is basically how the GOP played its southern strategy and stoked racist fears. Welfare and race are inherently intertwined in people's minds. That's why.

The Southern Strategy was not meant to stoke racist fears through code words or otherwise.  According to Pat Buchanan, the architect of the Southern strategy, it was an attempt to convince Southern moderates who were pro-civil rights to vote Republican as a protest against the racists and segregationists in the Democratic Party:
 http://www.wnd.com/2002/12/16477/

A few Republicans like Ed Gurney and Jesse Helms may have pandered to racists, but the vast majority did not.  Furthermore, it would have made no sense for Nixon to do that in the '68 campaign because of Wallace's independent candidacy.  As Theodore White wrote in his 1968 campaign edition of The Making of the President, Nixon automatically conceded racist voters to George Wallace (p. 424, quoted in Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party's Buried Past).  But anyway, back to the main point: I think the reason that Democrats use the race card so effectively is because they have done such a good job of hiding their party's shameful, 150+ year history or racism (including support for slavery, lynching, Jim Crow laws, the Ku Klux Klan, and segregation) from the public and smear Republicans, the party that was founded to end slavery and fight for greater freedom and equality for all races (especially blacks) as racist using phony evidence of racism in the Southern strategy (including an oft-cited but never verified quote from Lee Atwater) and claiming that the segregationist Dems all became Republicans (when, in fact, the only high-profile segregationist to do so was Strom Thurmond.)  Simply put, they know that charges of racism and race-baiting are taken very seriously by the public and that they can get away with it.

Oh, so Pat Buchanan said that? Well it all makes perfect sense then, never mind.

[old timey villain]

Yeah, but the issue is often brought up by Republicans not as an effort to start a thoughtful dialogue but as a means to divide white against black, at least in the south. And the hyperbole they seem to use about people on welfare doesn't help the situation either.

In 1976 Ronald Reagan gave a stump speech about a woman on the south side of Chicago (obviously black) who was the ultimate welfare queen.

"She has eighty names, thirty addresses, twelve Social Security cards and is collecting veteran's benefits on four non-existing deceased husbands. And she is collecting Social Security on her cards. She's got Medicaid, getting food stamps, and she is collecting welfare under each of her names. Her tax-free cash income is over $150,000."

This kind of rhetoric only stokes fear in white people about black people on the welfare system. Somebody who is uneducated might think that all people on welfare live like this and game the system, not understanding that she is an extreme exception.

So when a Republican decides to talk like an adult about welfare instead of trying to scare people then I'll change my mind. But in today's GOP the topic is pure race bait.

There are a lot of Irish Catholics on the south side of Chicago too.  He was talking about people who abuse the system, not blacks (as not all blacks are on welfare and not all of them who are abuse it).  If he was trying to pander to racists, it apparently didn't work very well, because after he lost the nomination to Gerald Ford, he endorsed him in the general election, and Ford lost every Southern state except Virginia and Oklahoma.  (Incidentally, Ford did carry Illinois, and he was more of a moderate Republican, but whether Jimmy Carter and the Democrats would have carried the South with Reagan as the GOP nominee is anybody's guess.)

This is why it's called the dog whistle. When politicians make these kinds of charges, they never explicitly single out black people, so if they're accused of racism, they can defend themselves by saying they never mentioned race. Yet many people understand the context clues and it gets the message across to the right people. It's a brilliant strategy, really.

In 1980, Reagan also gave a high profile speech in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where 3 civil rights workers were killed, and talked about states' rights (another dog whistle term). That year he won every state in the deep south except Georgia. So yeah, Reagan knew exactly what he was doing.

[old timey villain]

Yeah, but the issue is often brought up by Republicans not as an effort to start a thoughtful dialogue but as a means to divide white against black, at least in the south. And the hyperbole they seem to use about people on welfare doesn't help the situation either.

In 1976 Ronald Reagan gave a stump speech about a woman on the south side of Chicago (obviously black) who was the ultimate welfare queen.

"She has eighty names, thirty addresses, twelve Social Security cards and is collecting veteran's benefits on four non-existing deceased husbands. And she is collecting Social Security on her cards. She's got Medicaid, getting food stamps, and she is collecting welfare under each of her names. Her tax-free cash income is over $150,000."

This kind of rhetoric only stokes fear in white people about black people on the welfare system. Somebody who is uneducated might think that all people on welfare live like this and game the system, not understanding that she is an extreme exception.

So when a Republican decides to talk like an adult about welfare instead of trying to scare people then I'll change my mind. But in today's GOP the topic is pure race bait.

There are a lot of Irish Catholics on the south side of Chicago too.  He was talking about people who abuse the system, not blacks (as not all blacks are on welfare and not all of them who are abuse it).  If he was trying to pander to racists, it apparently didn't work very well, because after he lost the nomination to Gerald Ford, he endorsed him in the general election, and Ford lost every Southern state except Virginia and Oklahoma.  (Incidentally, Ford did carry Illinois, and he was more of a moderate Republican, but whether Jimmy Carter and the Democrats would have carried the South with Reagan as the GOP nominee is anybody's guess.)

This is why it's called the dog whistle. When politicians make these kinds of charges, they never explicitly single out black people, so if they're accused of racism, they can defend themselves by saying they never mentioned race. Yet many people understand the context clues and it gets the message across to the right people. It's a brilliant strategy, really.

In 1980, Reagan also gave a high profile speech in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where 3 civil rights workers were killed, and talked about states' rights (another dog whistle term). That year he won every state in the deep south except Georgia. So yeah, Reagan knew exactly what he was doing.

Terms like "states' rights" and "welfare queen" may have been code words at one point, but probably not in 1980.  By then, racism was no longer widely accepted by society (as evidenced by the firing of Howard Cosell from ESPN three years later after he infamously called a black football player a "little monkey.")  Even now, you could reform welfare and give states all the rights you want, but slavery and segregation are never coming back, and rightly so.  It's also worth mentioning that most of the closest Reagan states in 1980 were in the South.  To assume that all Southerners are racist (either at that time or now) simply because of the actions of their ancestors is wrong.  Also, Reagan initially supported the Civil Rights Act of 1964, stating he thought "it should be enforced at gunpoint if necessary." (A Call to America, p. 304)  He also was the president who made Martin Luther King Jr. Day a national holiday.  (He may have initially opposed it, but so did Dr. King's family.) 
Oh, and about states' rights: it was never a legitimate argument for segregation in the first place because the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment states that Congress may pass any legislation necessary to ensure equal protection under the law.

So you really think that there was no strategic reasons for the way Reagan campaigned? I don't believe that Reagan was racist, but he knew what he had to do. Yes, in that election, states in the south were the closest, so they were the most important for Reagan and Carter to win. His speech in Mississippi was a means to tap into white resentment over the civil rights movement that was still lingering in the region.

It's pretty disingenuous to believe that racism was wiped out only 15 years after the Civil Rights Act was passed. Legislation changes laws, not the way people think and feel. And if you live in the south, it becomes crystal clear that resentment between white and black still exists.

[old timey villain]

Ahh the age old defense...

I can keep being racist because black people are racist too! Who wants ice cream???

[old timey villain]

Ahh the age old defense...

I can keep being racist because black people are racist too! Who wants ice cream???

I didn't say anything racist you fiend!

It was more of a general statement