How the GOP Became the White Man's Party

[Vernon Windsor]

In this excerpt from Texas Tough: The
Rise of America's Prison Empire, Robert Perkinson shows how the Right
embraced racial animus as a political strategy

Publisher's Note: In the latter third of the twentieth century, the United States built the largest penal system in the history of democratic governance.
This exceptional prison buildup had surprisingly little to do with crime and a
great deal to do with politics, particularly racial politics. Texas Tough
traces the entwinement of race, crime, and punishment all the way back to slavery.
It
argues that mass incarceration developed in the backlash against civil
rights,
just as Jim Crow took hold in reaction against emancipation and
Reconstruction.
On the national stage, the punitive turn in U.S. criminal justice
policymaking
gained forced in the second half of the Johnson administration, just as
the
civil rights movement cemented its historic gains. Leading the way were
two
arch-conservatives, a canny southern demagogue from Alabama and a
belligerent
anti-communist from Arizona. Not only did they help construct a prison
nation;
they polarized and racialized America's politics in ways that are still
thwarting the task of governing two generations later.



No one understood the politics of backlash better than Lyndon Johnson, Texas's most legendary politician since Sam Houston and the White House's most
determined
champion of civil rights since Ulysses S. Grant. Although Johnson had
started
out as a segregationist, as president, his social programs extended the
New
Deal and went further toward alleviating economic inequality than any
policy
regime before or since. His deployment of federal power in the interest
of
civil rights retraced the footsteps of Reconstruction and for the first
time
gave genuine credibility to the age-old American credo, equal justice
before
the law. "I'm going to be the President who finishes what Lincoln
began,"
Johnson pledged -- and to a certain extent he was. Even as his Great
Society
ushered new voters into the Democratic Party, however, Johnson
increasingly
antagonized his traditional white southern base. After the passage of
the Civil
Rights Act in 1964, he confided to Bill Moyers, "I think we just
delivered
the South to the Republican party for a long time to come."



The Great Society's fiercest critics indeed came from Johnson's own section of the country, often from his home state. In 1960, he and Lady Bird had been
jostled
and spit on by a right-wing mob in Dallas. After the passage of the
Civil
Rights Act, J. Evetts Haley, a wealthy rancher and far-right rabble
rouser,
denounced the president as a "traitor" to the South whose policies would
result in "race and national suicide."



By the mid-1960s, however, neo-Confederate obstructionists were in retreat. A strong majority of white poll respondents nationwide said they accepted the
basic
justice of civil rights demands; even whites in the South were no longer
responding to racial venom with the same fervor they once had. Critics
of the
Johnson administration, therefore, had to refine and redirect their ire.
Anticommunism remained at the ready, but with the president dispatching
hundreds of thousands of combat troops to Vietnam, red baiting was
losing its
zing. A fresh issue on the home front, however, held unusual promise.
Not only
might it allow the right to tap into smoldering fears and frustrations
without
resorting to outmoded racist demagoguery, but it suggested a way to
reclaim the
populist mantle from redistributionist liberals. The issue was crime,
and after
1964, it became one of the most divisive forces in American politics.



Since crime had traditionally been a mayoral or at most gubernatorial concern -- with the notable exception of Prohibition -- Johnson was slow to grab hold. "A
visitor coming to America for the first time might have been forgiven
for
assuming that the President of the United States commanded all the city
police
departments and that control of the courts was his personal
responsibility," he explained "[But] crime is a local problem. … The
federal government has little or no power to deal with the problem … nor
should
it have." From the mid-1960s, however, Johnson's foes increasingly
ignored
his civics lesson. As the president himself was sabotaging his
experiment in
social democracy by diverting resources and attention to Southeast Asia,
the
New Right began ravaging it from within in the name of public safety and
just
desserts.



A pioneer in this effort was George Wallace, the sharp-tongued segregationist who ran four times for president between 1964 and 1976. When first elected governor
of
Alabama in 1962, he epitomized southern demagogy. In his first inaugural
address, he lambasted federal enforcement of civil rights by invoking
the Civil
War. "From this cradle of the Confederacy, this very Heart of the Great
Anglo-Saxon Southland," he thundered, "I draw the line in the dust
and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation
now,
segregation tomorrow, segregation forever." As most Americans
accommodated
themselves to legal equality, however, Wallace was one of the first
Dixiecratic
firebrands to figure out how to talk about race without hurling racial
epithets.
Instead of "White Man's Government," he championed states' rights,
public order, and perceived white victimhood. Crime proved to be
especially
fruitful terrain, as it enabled him to stoke subterranean fears of
integration
while assailing what he called the fanciful theories of liberal elites.
"If a criminal knocks you over the head on your way home from work,"
he complained, "he will be out of jail before you're out of the hospital
and the policeman who arrested him will be on trial. … Some psychologist
will
say, well, he's not to blame, society is to blame."



...

(Read the full article)

http://www.alternet.org/rights/147004/how_the_gop_became_the_white_man's_party

[Madhatterat60]

One of the things I found most shocking when I visited the south was the number of "private" school. Seems they grew like mushrooms after the desegregation laws, and especially busing, went into effect...private schools that were free to pick and choose....or not.

I see the GOOP, in its present incarnation, shifting so radically to the right that now, should intelligent adults step forward, they'd be better off forming their own party and leaving these whackadoodles to marginalize themselves deeper into the dust bowl of history.

[brujo]

Yeah, I cheered too, but I was 13. I always found it interesting that by 1979, George publicly stated that he'd been wrong and those days were rightfully gone forever.

I know, once the bell is rung, it can't be unrung. The South does have a legacy of racism, but in all fairness, racism isn't just a southern thing. Or even a white thing for that matter. Racists, by and large, always feel they have good reasons for the way they feel. I believe they're wrong, but what can you do?

[Vernon Windsor]

It's called education.

[Daniel Blattenbauer]

I have noticed that a large number of US Senators and Representatives who are so against Obama are from the south even today. Wonder how much skin color has to do with this "Party of NO" being against everything Obama wants, including bills they themselves sponsored? Looks to me as though we have a LONG way to go in this country when it comes to equality.

[P.A.]

I live in the South and we are not all knuckle dragging evolutionary throwbacks. Oh sorry, most Southerner don't believe in evolution. There are intelligent and wise people here we are just currently outnumbered by the nut cases. We shall overcome this too.