In light of recent attempts to clean up the historical account of Reagan's campaign kickoff in Philadelphia, Miss., Bob Herbert sets the record straight:
Everybody watching the 1980 campaign knew what Reagan was signaling at the fair. Whites and blacks, Democrats and Republicans — they all knew. The news media knew. The race haters and the people appalled by racial hatred knew. And Reagan knew.
He was tapping out the code. It was understood that when politicians started chirping about “states' rights” to white people in places like Neshoba County they were saying that when it comes down to you and the blacks, we're with you.
And Reagan meant it. He was opposed to the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, which was the same year that Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney were slaughtered. As president, he actually tried to weaken the Voting Rights Act of 1965. He opposed a national holiday for the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He tried to get rid of the federal ban on tax exemptions for private schools that practiced racial discrimination. And in 1988, he vetoed a bill to expand the reach of federal civil rights legislation.
Twenty-seven years later, the GOP is still dealing in code-words, which might be why right-wing pundits are on the defensive, attempting to moderate historical readings of Reagan's speech. That Tancredo ad I mentioned earlier is an example -- as Dana pointed out: it lets him vilify brown people without actually vilifying brown people. Today's model involves new codes for xenophobia and hatred -- "border security" and "protecting American jobs" among them -- but it's very similar in practice. It's meant to lump all of our fears into one message: "Brown people want to steal our jobs, ruin America, and possibly kill us."
--Kate Sheppard
