Republicans have been long been masters at demanding that prominent Democrats apologize for some obscure person’s offensive comment. Today the Black Hawk County Republicans used this tried and true technique to score a story by the Des Moines Register’s chief politics reporter. In a now-deleted post on the Black Hawk County Democrats’ Facebook page, a volunteer shared a graphic comparing Presidents Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama. Among other things, the graphic described Reagan as a “white supremacist.”
Jennifer Jacobs’ story leads with a Republican press release and includes an apology from the chair of the Black Hawk County Democrats for this “unfortunate” and “unacceptable” post. However, nowhere does Jacobs hint at why anyone would think to apply this label to Reagan in the first place. Maybe she’s playing dumb, or maybe she’s too young to remember.
Sad to say, the U.S. has had more than a handful of white supremacist presidents. I don’t think Reagan was one of them. But I recommend the following reads on his use of racially charged language to win support for his political agenda.
Ian Haney-Lopez provides a good overview of how Reagan “used coded racial appeals to galvanize white voters.”
During the 1980 presidential campaign, Reagan traveled to Philadelphia, Mississippi, site of the most notorious murders of the civil rights movement, to deliver this speech declaring his support for “states’ rights.” (full transcript) As Bob Herbert wrote many years later, “Everybody watching the 1980 campaign knew what Reagan was signaling at the fair. Whites and blacks, Democrats and Republicans – they all knew. The news media knew. The race haters and the people appalled by racial hatred knew. And Reagan knew.”
David Love chronicles Reagan’s “troubling legacy” on race. Not only did he oppose the Voting Rights Act of 1965, during the 1980 campaign he criticized that law as “humiliating to the South.”
In 1981, Reagan White House aide Lee Atwater gave a remarkably frank interview about the GOP’s “Southern strategy.” He described how overtly racist political rhetoric evolved into conservative slogans about busing or economic policies that hurt black people more than whites.
Peter Dreier reminds us that Reagan’s “indifference to urban problems was legendary” and notes that his administration “failed to prosecute or sanction banks that violated the Community Reinvestment Act, which prohibits racial discrimination in lending.”
On a related note, Reagan’s riff about “welfare queens” is perhaps the most famous example of how he used racial code words. Josh Levin published a fascinating profile of the con artist who inspired that part of Reagan’s stump speech.