Genteel racism made modern conservatism’s racist undertones politically viable

Evidence

Reagan was exactly the kind of president that allowed white America to be secure in its commitment to the value gap. His smile, his down-home charm, exuded exactly the opposite of the vitriol of loud, southern bigots. Reagan’s was genteel racism and, politically, he knew exactly what he was doing: playing on the fears and hatreds of some white people, especially in the South, the West, and the suburbs, for political gain. Throughout his career, Reagan subtly exploited the resentments of white Americans who resisted the black freedom movement of the sixties and seventies. In 1966, in his race for the California governorship, he denounced open housing and civil rights laws. In his 1976 campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, he invoked the image of the “welfare queen” who bilked the federal government out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. What happened in Neshoba County was not a political misstep, but a tactical decision by Reagan and his operatives to exploit racism for political purposes, and it reveals how that decision, along with a host of other choices, gave modern conservatism its dark, racist undertones. This is the soil in which Trumpism grows. — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Begin Again, 490

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘value gap’ framing connects directly to the reader’s argument about the lie — white security in racial hierarchy as the soil of the after times and of Trumpism. — connects to: Conservative strategists deliberately coded racial appeals to evade egalitarian norms — Rachel Wetts and Robb Willer, Who Is Called by the Dog Whistle?…, 3; Contemporary right-wing politics elevate performativity and white supremacy in schools — James D. Kirylo (ed.), Reinventing Pedagogy of the Oppressed:…, 922; National anti-welfare conservatism channeled prior racial resentment — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 587 (+1 more)
• SEED: Contrarian essay angle: Reagan’s racism was not anomalous but the founding tactic of modern conservatism — ‘genteel racism’ as a political technology.