In its Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship, the USCCB lists racism as intrinsically evil, something that can never be supported. We don’t talk about this enough in Catholic circles. For sure, some would argue that it is not on the table precisely because it is not a pertinent issue in American politics. No serious political candidate supports racism or overtly racist policies. But I think we need to dig a little beneath the surface, especially give the appalling history of racism in the United States, where up until a few decades ago it was considered the norm for blacks to be treated as inferior. Segregation, discrimination and lynch-mob “justice” defined the south, despite the end of slavery. Remember that as recently as 1957, the respectable National Review was proclaiming that “the white community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas where it does not predominate numerically” given the ”cultural superiority of white over Negro”, and the fact that the white race is the advanced race. That was only 50 years ago.
Have things changed so much that the intrinsic evil of racism is really off the table? I do not think so. For what was once overt in political and social discourse still lurks in the background, but remains covert, only rearing its ugly head occasionally– think of the Jena 6 scandal, Trent Lott’s fetish for the old segregated South, or even George Allen’s laughable “macaca” incident. This all begs an important question: if racism is real, but not overt, does this make it any less evil? Does this diminish proximity or culpability? I think not. For there is strong evidence that the modern Republican party in particular has exploited racial issues in a highly subtle way– surely this is cooperation with evil?
Paul Krugman has been discussing this issue in a number of recent columns. His central thesis is that the rise of the modern Republican party owes much to race-based politics in the South, beginning with Nixon’s now-famous “Southern strategy”. He quotes Thomas Shaller (author of Whistling Past Dixie) to the effect that “Despite the best efforts of Republican spinmeisters to depict American conservatism as a nonracial phenomenon, the partisan impact of racial attitudes in the South is stronger today than in the past.” Plus, as political scientist Larry Bartels notes, 40 percent of non-Southern white men voted Democratic in 1952; the same percentage voted Democratic in 2004. What changed is that white southern men became strongly identified with the Republican party.
I’ve noted before that the evangelicals, based predominantly in the South, embraced abortion as a political issue relatively late in the game, having been early supporters of Roe v. Wade. What incensed them were issues with racial undertones, including the rise in crime and disorder, desegregation and integration, the growing welfare state, and busing. I believe strongly that abortion was seized upon as an overarching moral issue, to hide the darker underlying agenda. Basically, many (but clearly not all) in this movement opposed an intrinsically evil act overtly while covertly supporting another intrinsically evil act.
Examples are legion. As Krugman points out, “since the days of Gerald Ford, just about every Republican presidential campaign has included some symbolic gesture of approval for good old-fashioned racism.” He especially singles out Ronald Reagan, who– for some peculiar reason– seems to have earned a secure place in the pantheon of right-wing gods. In a somewhat sarcastic post, Krugman notes the following:
“When he went to Philadelphia, Mississippi, in 1980, the town where the civil rights workers had been murdered, and declared that “I believe in states’ rights,” he didn’t mean to signal support for white racists. It was all just an innocent mistake.
When he went on about the welfare queen driving her Cadillac, and kept repeating the story years after it had been debunked, some people thought he was engaging in race-baiting. But it was all just an innocent mistake.
When, in 1976, he talked about working people angry about the “strapping young buck” using food stamps to buy T-bone steaks at the grocery store, he didn’t mean to play into racial hostility. [as The New York Times reported: ‘The ex-Governor has used the grocery-line illustration before, but in states like New Hampshire where there is scant black population, he has never used the expression “young buck,” which, to whites in the South, generally denotes a large black man.’] But the appearance that Reagan was playing to Southern prejudice was just an innocent mistake.
Similarly, when Reagan declared in 1980 that the Voting Rights Act had been “humiliating to the South,” he didn’t mean to signal sympathy with segregationists. It was all an innocent mistake.
In 1982, when Reagan intervened on the side of Bob Jones University, which was on the verge of losing its tax-exempt status because of its ban on interracial dating, he had no idea that the issue was so racially charged. It was all an innocent mistake.
And the next year, when Reagan fired three members of the Civil Rights Commission, it wasn’t intended as a gesture of support to Southern whites. It was all an innocent mistake.
Reagan opposed making Martin Luther King Day a national holiday, giving in only when Congress passed a law creating the holiday by a veto-proof majority. But he really didn’t mean to disrespect the civil rights movement – it was just an innocent mistake.”
Is this too much coincidence, I wonder?
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