Racism continues to play a major role in politics, especially in presidential races. Amidst a global economic meltdown that had begun on George W. Bush’s watch, Obama began his presidency with Tea Party activists dominating airtime on Fox and filtering down to all the cable networks. Right-wing media blowhards claimed he was born in Kenya, was a marxist, and a “secret Muslim”. The disasters created by Dubya’s policies seemed to disappear before the spectre of a black president.
Donald Trump took advantage of this wave of racist sentiment aimed at Obama. In 2011, mulling over a presidential run, he launched a public pursuit of Obama’s birth certificate, announcing that he had sent private investigators to Hawaii. When Obama released the long-form version of his birth certificate in response to the uproar that Trump had caused, the braggart said that he was “proud of myself because I’ve accomplished something nobody has been able to accomplish.”
In recent days, Trump is following the Fox News script of voter fraud. He bloviates about the impending election being “rigged” or “stolen” while ignoring the fact that the republican party has made rigging elections a core priority through massive voter suppression policies, to prevent people of color from voting. Republican-controlled state legislatures’ recent attempts (some successful, some not) to pass voter-ID laws were designed to prevent minority voters from voting. Trump has also offered an answer for this fake voter problem: Supporters should monitor the polls and look for “suspicious” behavior, singling out cities like Philadelphia, Chicago and St. Louis. All have large African-American populations.
Trump’s racism against Mexicans and hispanics in general is perhaps even better known and more clearly articulated, e.g., his comments on Mexican “criminals and rapists” entering the United States and his criticism of a hispanic judge. The “change” Trump seeks to “make America great again” is to make it white or whiter again. The nostalgia he evokes is a restoration of white privilege lost as America has become an ethnically rainbow culture.
Analyzing racism in presidential politics starts with the South, which was solidly democratic for presidents in the twentieth century until president Truman came along. He concluded that segregation and racial segregation had to go. The United States emerged the most powerful World War II victor. It would be the height of hypocrisy, therefore, to command credibility as the Free World’s policeman and the righteous guardian of freedom-loving people everywhere — an essential if the U.S. ever hoped to win hearts and minds. Many agree that Truman was the first president since Abraham Lincoln to act explicitly on behalf of African Americans. The 1947 Committee on Civil Rights and its recommendations became epic. More important, the national party’s endorsement of Truman’s program would precipitate the famous walkout of Alabama and Mississippi delegates from the 1948 Democratic Convention.
Southern Democrats had become increasingly disturbed over President Truman’s support of civil rights, particularly following his executive order racially integrating the U.S. armed forces and a civil rights message he sent to Congress in February 1948. At the 1948 Democratic National Convention, Truman endorsed a strong civil rights platform, confirming the shift of the Democratic party from a Southern, white supremacist organization to a predominantly Northern, liberal party. Southern Democrats (self-termed as Dixiecrats) were so offended by the integration of the party that some walked out of the convention, led by Strom Thurmond. Though Truman was limited in his actual support of blacks, he strongly believed that the role of the federal government was to protect its citizens, of all races. Southern democrats objected strongly to Truman’s anti-racist stance and started their own political party, the States’ Rights Democratic Party, commonly known as the Dixiecrats, the party’s main goal was continuing the policy of racial segregation in the South and the Jim Crow laws that sustained it. Governor Strom Thurmond became the party’s presidential nominee and won Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and South Carolina and thus creating a split between northern and southern democrats, and eventually southern democrats defected to the republican party. The States’ Rights Democratic Party dissolved after the 1948 election, as Truman, the Democratic National Committee, and the New Deal Southern Democrats acted to ensure that the Dixiecrat movement would not return in the 1952 presidential election.
But the Dixiecrat movement did not really die. Republican Trent Lott spoke on December 5, 2002 at the 100th birthday party of Sen. Strom Thurmond. Lott said: “When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over the years, either.” This unfiltered revelation of ugly ideological truth led to Lott’s resignation as Senate Republican Leader on Dec. 20, 2002.
In 1964, republican presidential candidate, Barry Goldwater, won five deep south states. He stated: “A good many, perhaps a majority of the party’s leadership, envision substantial political gold to be mined in the racial crisis by becoming in fact, though not in name, the White Man’s Party.” Executing this veiled strategy, Goldwater campaigned in the south using phrases like “State’s Rights,” which was code for the southern states’ right to resist integration. He talked about “freedom of association,” which was code for white business owners’ right to exclude blacks. He sought to earn votes through racial appeals that were not racial on the surface. Although crushed in the election, Goldwater won five deep-south states that had been dominated by die-hard democrats. These victories illustrated that dog whistle appeals could convince die-hard democrats to vote republican.
Ever since Goldwater paved the way in 1964, every winning electoral candidate before President Obama has used coded racial appeals. In 1968, Nixon employed the “Southern Strategy”, welcoming the segregationist white South into the Party of Lincoln. That same year, George Wallace created a 3rd party, The American Independent, to run as a segregationist. Wallace had a huge impact on the 1968 election where republican Richard Nixon barely edged out democrat Hubert Humphrey, 43.42% to 42.72%. In numerous states it can be argued that Wallace, who won 5 deep south states, tipped to electoral scale to Nixon.
By 1968 Southern whites had left the democratic party with only 10% voting for Hubert Humphrey. Nixon’s “southern strategy” was effective. Wallace’s pursuit of a perpetual Jim Crow South helped the southern white flight from the democratic party. Journalist John Anderson summarized Wallace’s impact from the 1968 campaign: “His startling appeal to millions of alienated white voters was not lost on Richard Nixon and other GOP strategists. First Nixon, then Ronald Reagan and finally George Bush, Sr. successfully adopted toned-down versions of Wallace’s anti-busing, anti-federal government platform to pry low- and middle-income whites from the Democratic New Deal coalition. Historian Dan Carter added: “George Wallace laid the foundation for the dominance of the Republican Party in American society through the manipulation of racial and social issues in the 1960’s and 1970’s He was the master teacher, and Richard Nixon and the Republican leadership that followed were his students.”
With Goldwater and Wallace having paved the way for the white southern flight from the democratic party, Nixon had a landslide victory in 1972 with a solid south joining the rest of the nation seeking conservative solace from the 1960’s countercultural revolution and ultra-liberal George McGovern.
In 1980, Reagan launched his official campaign at a county fair just outside Philadelphia, Mississippi, the town still notorious in the national imagination for the Klan lynching of civil rights volunteers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner 16 years earlier. As New York Times columnist Bob Herbert concludes, “Reagan may have been blessed with a Hollywood smile and an avuncular delivery, but he was elbow deep in the same old race-baiting Southern strategy of Goldwater and Nixon.” He spoke of the Cadillac-driving welfare mother and minorities on food stamps buying steaks at the grocery while a hardworking white person could only afford hamburger. Republican candidates have used dog whistles (coded language for racists to communicate with each other) to earn middle class votes, win elections, slash taxes for the rich, cut social services, and help the wealthy gain control of regulation.
In 1988, Dukakis had a 17-point lead in the polls over George Bush, Sr. Lee Atwater, political hatchet man, created the famous commercials, attack ads, featuring African-American Willie Horton, who committed murder while on a weekend pass. Atwater’s racism-based approach helped Bush Sr win the White House. His effective usage of white fear of black criminals helped to create the attack ad strategy that dominates political advertising to this day.
There is no doubt that racism has played an enormous role in republican presidential politics for many years. Racism is at the core of Trump’s presidential ambitions and strategies going back to 2011 when he played the birther card on Obama. Trump’s base is uneducated white people and, like any republican candidate, he needs the south and red states with the highest concentration of non-hispanic caucasians. His lack of policy details matters not to those sharing his desire to making America whiter again.
References:
The Great Melding: War, the Dixiecrat Rebellion, and the Southern Model for America’s New Conservatism by Glenn Feldman
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/donald-trumps-history-raising-birther-questions-president-obama/story?id=33861832
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixiecrat
http://blogs.mcgeorge.edu/lawandpolicy/2015/02/22/dog-whistle-politics-coded-racism-and-inequality-for-all/
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-election-debate-voting-commentary-idUSKCN12K0AQ
http://www.salon.com/2014/01/11/the_racism_at_the_heart_of_the_reagan_presidency/
wikipedia entries on the presidential elections from 1948 to 1980