States’ rights rhetoric signals resistance to federally-enforced racial equality.

Evidence

Reagan’s invocation of states’ rights in the bowels of the South called up a complex racial history where big government was aligned with demands for racial equality that threatened “the southern way of life,” and implicitly harkened back to the Dixiecrat Revolt of 1948. — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black, 286

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the coded racial function of ‘states’ rights’ rhetoric that Glaude treats as a recurring feature of the value gap.
• XREF: connects to: Massive resistance ironically aided desegregation by threatening federal judicial supremacy — Derrick A. Bell, Jr., Brown v. Board of Education and the…, 115; American contention runs on claim-making governed by constitutional rights and state protection. — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 379; One segregation-era judge framed resistance as justifying policy through race-neutral socioeconomic language. — Matthew D. Lassiter, The Suburban Origins of “Color-Blind”…, 102