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The "Southern Strategy" and Reagan's Five Pillars of Racism


In the 1960's, as the civil rights struggle heated up, the Republican party developed what came to be known as the "Southern Strategy."

The Southern Strategy was designed to get the support of Southern whites who were upset that Democrats had led the effort to protect the civil and voting rights of African Americans.

Race would be used as a wedge issue, and racial polarization would produce white votes for the Republicans.

Richard Nixon was the first to employ the southern strategy in a presidential campaign.

The existence of the Southern strategy is something you should never let a right-winger deny. You can quote some prominent right-wingers themselves.

The late Lee Atwater was the grandpappy of all the Republican dirty campaign, dirty tricks, vicious-politics-of-personal-destruction campaign strategists. Karl Rove was a disciple of Lee Atwater.

As a member of the Reagan administration in 1981, Atwater gave an anonymous interview to political scientist Alexander P. Lamis. Part of this interview was printed in Lamis' bookThe Two-Party South, then reprinted in Southern Politics in the 1990s with Atwater's name revealed. Atwater talked about the GOP's Southern Strategy and Ronald Reagan's version of it:

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Atwater: As to the whole Southern strategy that Harry Dent and others put together in 1968, opposition to the Voting Rights Act would have been a central part of keeping the South.

You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968 you can't say "nigger"—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like 'forced busing', 'states' rights' and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites. 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, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigger, nigger."

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This brings us to Ronald Reagan's racism. How many times have you been speaking to a right-winger, and they will bring up how wonderful Ronald Reagan was? He did this and he accomplished that. He had these principles and those principles. Why, you would think that the right-winger has an altar to Ronald Reagan set up in his or her own house.

Sean Hannity proudly declares on virtually every show, that he's a Reagan conservative.

Let's address the questions: Was Reagan a racist? Did he follow the Southern Strategy?

Most definitely and most definitely again.

Here are Reagan's Five Pillars of Racism, showing him beyond doubt to be a racist:

Number one:

Right wing icon Ronald Reagan opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Huh? Who except the Ku Klux Klan or its fellow travelers would oppose such a measure? What kind of a human being would say it's okay for a restaurant to refuse to serve someone because of their race? To deny a person the right to check into a hotel, because they were African-American? To refuse to hire someone, because they are of a race different than your own?

Ronald Reagan, apparently.

Remember, I don't know what was in Reagan's heart. But I can and will tell you what actions he took, and what the effects were. And if Ronald Reagan's opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Act had become the majority position in Congress, well then, restaurants, hotels and employers would have been able to continue their discriminatory policies.

Maybe, a right-winger will argue, there was something in the wording of that particular piece of legislation, the 1964 Civil Rights Act, that Reagan didn't like. He really wasn't opposed to civil rights for all.

Sorry, not so.

Because the very next year, Reagan opposed the other major piece of civil rights legislation of that era, the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

It prohibited the use of literacy tests, poll taxes and the like to deny an American citizen the right to vote because of their race. This had been standard practice throughout the South.

Again, I ask you, what kind of a person would oppose such a law? What kind of a person would want African-Americans to continue to be disenfranchised?

Apparently again, Ronald Reagan. There's his second pillar of racism.

You know, I can already hear right-wingers offering another lame excuse: maybe Reagan was wrong back then, but by the time he became president, he had stopped advocating racist positions.

Again, you can easily prove the right-winger, wrong.

Your third pillar of Ronald Reagan's racism skips forward in time to 1980, when he began his presidential campaign.

Reagan chose to give a campaign speech -- some say it was the kickoff speech to his campaign -- outside of the town of Philadelphia, Mississippi.

At that time the ONLY thing Philadelphia, Mississippi was known for, was the brutal murder outside that town in 1964 of three civil rights workers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner. They had gone there to help African-Americans register to vote.

Did Reagan express sorrow for their deaths when he spoke outside of Philadelphia, Mississippi? After all, the FBI's investigation was still open. The case had drawn international attention. What better way for Reagan to erase the stain on himself for having opposed both the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act?

No, Reagan was not there to mend his ways, to ask for forgiveness, to do the right thing. He was there to further the GOP's Southern Strategy.

He didn't mention the murders of Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner at all. That alone speaks volumes. And it gets worse.

Reagan also didn't apologize for his opposition to the Civil and Voting Rights Acts. But that's still not the worst of it.

Worst of all, Reagan told the nearly all-white crowd, that "I believe in states' rights." Remember what GOP strategy guru Lee Atwater said about that term?

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By 1968, you can’t say ‘nigger.’ That hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like…states’ rights…

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Reagan was giving a "Dixie Dog Whistle" to all the racists in the South. At the very place where civil rights workers were murdered. And where that white community was still protecting the murderers.

Reagan's horrifically racist behavior did not go unnoticed at the time.

Andrew Young had been a stalwart of the civil rights movement, a colleague and friend of Dr. Martin Luther King. He would later become a Congressman, Mayor of Atlanta, and Ambassador to the United Nations.

At the time, he was a campaign aide to Reagan's opponent, President Jimmy Carter.

Let me read you Andrew Young's impassioned words from 1980:

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[W]hen you go to Philadelphia, Mississippi, where James Chaney, Andy Goodman, and Michael Schwerner were killed — murdered — by the sheriff and the deputy sheriff and a government posse protecting states' rights, and you go down there and start talking about states' rights, that looks like a code word to me that it’s going to be all right to kill niggers when he’s President.

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Hey, Mr. or Ms. Right-Winger, are you still so proud of your hero, Ronald Reagan?

So much for Reagan changing his ways.

And there's more. Reagan kept it up.

Here's the fourth pillar of Ronald Reagan's racism:

In the early 1980's, the campaign to make Martin Luther King's birthday a national holiday was coming to a head. You can imagine, I'm sure, what type of person was supporting such an effort, and what type of person was in opposition. And yes, there he was, the Gipper, in all his Southern Strategy glory, opposing making Martin Luther King's birthday a national holiday.

Once a racist, always a racist, at least with some, it seems.

Ok, for the fifth pillar of Ronald Reagan's racism, we go international. In the 1980's, the entire world community was uniting in opposition to the South African government's racist apartheid policy. An international boycott of South Africa was launched to pressure the South African government to allow its black citizens to vote, and otherwise to dismantle apartheid.

Guess who was not on board? Yup, Ronald Reagan opposed the international boycott of South Africa. Instead, Reagan insisted that quiet diplomacy would work. He called his policy "constructive engagement." Bull. You know what it was.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu was one of the main leaders of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. After he won the Nobel Peace Prize, Archbishop Tutu addressed the U.S. Congress and had some choice words for Ronald Reagan. According to a contemporaneous news account, Tutu said apartheid

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...is evil, is immoral, is un-Christian...
In my view, the Reagan Administration's support and collaboration with it is equally immoral, evil and totally un-Christian.
You are either for or against apartheid, and not by rhetoric. You are either in favor of evil, or you are in favor of good. You are either on the side of the oppressed or on the side of the oppressor. You can't be neutral.

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Bishop Tutu then concluded with this broadside, telling the lawmakers that Reagan's policy of "constructive engagement"

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... has encouraged the white racist regime into escalated intransigence and oppression.

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Immoral, evil and totally un-Christian. Ronald Reagan's policies.

Encouraged the white racist regime into escalated intransigence and oppression. Ronald Reagan's policies.

And it's all of a piece, isn't it, with Reagan's opposition to the Civil Rights Act, his opposition to the Voting Rights Act, Reagan's lauding of "states' rights" where civil rights workers were murdered, and his opposition to honoring another Nobel Prize-winning man of African descent, Dr. Martin Luther King.

Any one of these alone and I would say, this person is a racist. There's no other explanation besides prejudice combined with the intent and power to injure -- denying rights or recognition, or stirring up others to be prejudiced and to take action to injure.

But all five taken together?

My goodness, could it be any more plain?

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