Right-wing politics rearticulated white supremacy into code words rather than overt racism

Evidence

Instead of defending segregation, institutionalized discrimination, and white supremacy, the new right invoked the code words of “Jaw and order”; instead of advocating for systemic patriarchy and justifying male chauvinism, it upheld “family values”; instead of justifying yet again the duplicitous and unpopular war in Vietnam (which, after the April 1968 Tet offensive and the massive anti-war demonstrations of Fall 1969, the U.S. was now clearly losing), the Nixon administration now claimed to be seeking “peace with honor.” These were the early days of racial rearticulation, when white supremacy was in the process to be steered away from the racist past whose repressive and indeed despotic policies had been discredited. — Michael Omi, Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States, 191

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the vault’s moral-panic and coded-language claims about race and politics. — connects to: White politicians shifted from racial slurs to coded language after civil rights — Philip S. Gorski and Samuel L. Perry, The Flag and the Cross: White Christian…, 89; Reagan used racially coded language that racists understood without spelling out — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the…, 148