The Republican Southern Strategy and Reagan's Racism

POSTED BY: Kwicko
UPDATED: Monday, July 27, 2026 17:00
VIEWED: 1226
PAGE 1 of 1

KWICKO

Friday, April 9, 2010 12:02 AM

Excerpted from Jack Clark's "Blast the Right" podcast:

Quote:

---

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:

Quote:

---

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."

---

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

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME