White fear of Black criminality became a political resource after the Civil Rights era

Evidence

Reagan and other officials quickly realized there was a political gold mine in white fear. Identifying African Americans as criminals, “thugs,” and “mad dogs” and as an imminent threat to white communities, white lives, and white prosperity allowed the racialized “public safety” policies of Jim Crow to survive in the post–Civil Rights era. It drove election campaigns steeped in the rhetoric of “law and order” and successfully fueled “soft on crime” charges leveled against opponents. In this political environment, where Black people were the threat, the violence that rained down on them seemed justified. Self-defense was not. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 819

Categorization

• XREF: Directly parallels the ‘Complaints About Immodesty’ article’s insight that moral panics function as class/identity signaling — here race displaces class, and ‘law and order’ is the signaling vehicle. — connects to: Racial dog whistles replaced explicit slurs after the civil rights movement — Philip S. Gorski and Samuel L. Perry, The Flag and the Cross: White Christian…, 89; Political and economic crises are resolved through manufactured fear of racialized criminals — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 81; Segregationist warnings framed growing black voting power as the threat — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 94