From the Claremont Institute:
The point of all this is not to deny that Richard Nixon may have invited some nasty fellows into his political bed. The point is that the GOP finally became the region's dominant party in the least racist phase of the South's entire history, and it got that way by attracting most of its votes from the region's growing and confident communities—not its declining and fearful ones. The myth's shrillest proponents are as reluctant to admit this as they are to concede that most Republicans genuinely believe that a color-blind society lies down the road of individual choice and dynamic change, not down the road of state regulation and unequal treatment before the law. The truly tenacious prejudices here are the mythmakers'.(emphasis mine).
That's something that makes me think. What are we to make of the Southern Strategy. Glenn Loury? Help us out here bro.
Why call on an economist when you've already got a political scientist?
This analysis is wrong on a number of levels. It ignores the way the deep south worked politically (how many parties actually operated in the deep south?). It ignores the experimental research that shows persuasively that "principled republicans" are railing against racial policies for racist reasons. It ignores the racialized construction of "the middle class".
You've got to do better than this.
Maybe more later.
Posted by: Lester Spence at April 21, 2004 05:47 PM