I have long had a theory: every time some Democratic pol or left-wing pundit utters the phrase "southern strategy," Democrats lose another 10,000 voters. At least half of them for good, and most of them in the south. They also make race relations just a teensy bit worse everywhere else in America.
For those who don't know, this phrase, the so-called "southern strategy," originally came into play in 1968, when Richard Nixon made a play for conservative voters in the south with a strong law-and-order theme. Crime and civil unrest were a major problem back then, with a lot of rioting in cities with large black populations--primarily in northern cities and places like California, by the way. Yes, some racists were responsive to messages promising a crackdown on rioting and looting, especially because some of the campaign commercials showed some black people (and some white people) rioting. But for the most part, the so-called "southern strategy" was about law and order, fighting communism, and traditional mores.
Once in office, Nixon expanded civil rights laws, social spending in black communities, and Affirmative Action programs. Despite all this, those evil racist southerners voted for him again, in even greater numbers, in 1972. This should have showed anyone who was paying attention what the "southern strategy" really was, and that it really was not about race. But the critics said that this was all fake, and that it was "really" about racism after all. Some people even still insist that if you hate communism, oppose abortion, like the idea of prayer in the schools, or want to be tough on crime, then you are "truly" racist in your heart, because that's what those ideas are "really" rooted in.
The sinister phrase "southern strategy" has thus been used by some political types (and some innocents who don't know any better) for decades now to suggest that Republicans are regularly seeking the support of racist white voters. But when left-wingers make this suggestion, about how that's what those values "really" mean, make allusions about how they are "code words," most southerners see that--CORRECTLY--as a vicious smear against them. Sure, sure, a few southerners internalize it, and cringingly apologize. But most see it as a case of people throwing stones while living in glass houses; there hasn't been a major race riot south of the Mason-Dixon line in decades, and any time you think of where race is constantly an issue in modern politics, you think first of places like Detroit, Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago, not the south. To talk about the south's bad record on race, you have to go back to before 1964.
Poll after poll of southern attitudes show that the vast majority of people, black or white, want racial harmony and decent treatment for all. There hasn't been a major race riot down there in decades. Of the shrinking number who were even around when segregation still existed--and remember, it's been gone for almost 30 years now--most are embarassed by that legacy and are glad it's over. Some who are old enough to remember those days were among the millions of southerners who fought to end it. (What? White southerners who opposed segregation? No, no, couldn't be!)
Let's not even get started on the sneering, haughty assumptions much of the country is still willing to make about the stupidity and backwardness of southerners.
The more that Democratic political leaders let these kinds of smears slide, the more southerners are repelled by Democrats and everyone left-of-center. And why shouldn't they be? This kind of arrogant, holier-than-thou, "I know all about what you stupid, backward, uncouth people really think, regardless of what you say" stuff is vulgar, is repellant, and is insulting.
Democratic Senator Zell Miller has often talked about how this kind of elitism has virtually destroyed his party in some of the most important and populaced states in the Union. I recently learned that he's got a book out about it. I plan to read it. Every time I've heard him speak on this subject, or read an article about it, I've only been able to say, "right on, Zell! Your party needs more people like you!"
I hope a lot of Democrats read it, and think about it, and take its message to heart. Bill Clinton got it, but I'm not sure anybody in the top rungs of that party gets it anymore. Instead they're happy to put up with mantras about "the southern strategy" and "code words," and to watch those votes just keep slipping away.
If they keep it up, they deserve their fate.
* Update 9/21/03 * A strange troll who seems to think he's Sid Blumenthal Jr. has recently been attacking me over this article and another one I've written about racism and the south. My response to his irresponsible smears can be found here, for anyone who's interested.)
Well there was a time when a race riot would have ment the death of any number of black people and o court in the south would have convicted anyone.
The first weekend my wife after moving to Georgia in 1994, we went for a long dive in the country on a spring afternoon and we stumbled into what I can only describe as a KKK picnic. There were all kinds of people dressed in their pointy hat Halloween costumes. The thing that really disturbed us is little kids running around in their own pint sized sheets. We freaked. We thought this kind of thing was totally underground. Later I would find out that 1994 was the fist year that the annual cross burning on the top of Stone Mountain was canceled.
I agree that the vast majority of whites want racial harmony as I also discovered that my neighborhood was much more integrated then any neighborhood in my area that I left in suburban Detroit. But the south is full of contradictions and to make blanket statements that an undercurrent of racial enmity is over is naively premature even if it’s among a decided minority.
Excellent post, Dean. The "southern strategy" line has always irritated me, particularly given the truly disgusting racist pandering the Democrats have indulged in the last few decades.
To reinforce your point, other recent race riots: Cincinnati and Benton Harbor, MI. Again, in the north.
Rick, how can you say anything bad about the south if you came from Detroit? Detroit has more racists than any other city I've ever seen; most of them just happen to have dark skin. There wasn't a problem in Detroit that wasn't blamed on "the suburbs" -- code for whites.
Of course, its not racist to run adverts in the South on Black radio stations implying that a Republican victory would see a return of segregation and lynching. This happened in the 2000 elections.
Having lived in the south I can tell you as a black man that the southern strategy is dead. I can also tell you that it has been supplanted with other strategies that are more sophisticated. It is true that you cannot say 'law and order' and expect that you will attract white voters at the expense of black voters, but you can run successful campaigns like current governor Sonny Perdue's.
Nobody is so dumb that they use 30 year old strategies. Anybody want to talk about redistricting in Texas? Hmm?
Cobb has a point. Look at the fight over the GA flag. The confederate battle flag was put there in 1956 for anti-desegregation "Screw you ni@@ers!" symbolism. That “Confederate Heritage" crap doesn’t hold water with the battle flag. The KKK stole the battle flag before the turn of the century, and it wasn't the official flag of the CSA. The Confederate battle flag was stolen as a symbol for racism just as the Swastika was. Who can blame black folks for hating it?
Dean, there are STILL rednecks protesting over the changes (GA Govs.) Roy Barns and then Sonny Purdue made. Every redneck in GA voted for Purdue to "get" Barns after he removed the confederate battle flag from the GA State flag, and they were mighty peeved that Purdue changed it again to the official CSA 3 bar flag, but not the racist battle emblem. Don't underestimate the power of motivated stupidity. Incidentally, I am a son of the Confederate Veteran, and have lived in the South my whole life.
But you and Zell are right, Dean. Making fun of the hillbillies is not going to win votes for Democrats. Yankees have a tendency to thinks that all Southerners are all stupid, shoeless racists, and woe be to the Yank stupid enough to show that prejudice. (Please note that redneck and hillbilly are not interchangeable terms!!!)
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Here is something funny about the South:
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If you are from the Northern states and planning on visiting or moving to the south, there are a few things you should know that will help you adapt to the difference in lifestyles:
The North has sun-dried toe-mah-toes.
The South has 'mater samiches.
The North has coffee houses.
The South has Waffle Houses.
The North has dating services.
The South has family reunions.
The North has double last names.
The South has double first names.
The North has an ambulance.
The South has an amalance.
The North has Indy car races.
The South has stock car races.
The North has Cream of Wheat.
The South has grits.
The North has green salads.
The South has collard greens.
The North has lobsters.
The South has crawdads.
If you run your car into a ditch, don't panic. Four men in a four-wheel
drive pickup truck with a tow chain will be along shortly.
Don't try to help them, just stay out of their way. This is what they live
for.
Don't be surprised to find movie rentals and bait in the same
store...(Don't buy food at this store!)
Remember, "Y'all" can be singular, "All y'all" is plural and "All y'all's" is plural possessive.
Get used to hearing "You ain't from round here, are ya?"
Don't be worried at not understanding what people are saying. They
can't understand you either.
The proper pronunciation and grammar you learned in school is no longer
proper.
Be advised that "He needed killin" is a valid defense down here.
"It don't make me no nevermind" is just another way of saying "I don't
care".
"She's hard-favored" means "that girl is unattractive". "She's all ate up
with the uglies" needs no further explanation. Same for "He's all ate up
with the stupids".
If there is the prediction of the slightest chance of even the smallest accumulation of snow, your presence is required at the local grocery
store. It doesn't matter whether you need anything or not. You just have to go there.
When you come up on a person driving 15 mph down the middle of the road,
remember that most folks learn to drive on a John Deere and that is the proper speed and
position for that vehicle.
Do not be surprised to find that 10-year-olds own their own
shotguns, they are proficient marksmen and their mammas taught them how to aim.
AND REMEMBER:
A Yankee comes to the South, spends his money and then goes back up North.
A damn Yankee comes to the South and just stays. If you do settle in the
South and bear children, don't think we will automatically accept them as Southerners. After all, just because the cat had kittens in the oven don't make 'em biscuits.
And if, in fact, Nixon's 1968 "southern strategy" had been about attracting southern white voters to the Republican party? So what?
You want to tell me black Democrat political operatives don't chase the votes of blacks, or that latino Democrat political operatives don't chase the votes of latinos or that asian Democrat political operatives don't chase the votes of asians? Or that the Democrat party in Calfornia, for example, goes so far as to enact legislation to issue state drivers licenses to illegal aliens from Mexico, with an eye to capturing their votes?
And do any one of you want to deny there's a "black caucus" in the US Congress and in every state legislature in which more than one black elected representative sits?
And if all the above is in fact true, then tell me -- with logic, fact, impartiality and calm demeanor -- why there should not be a white caucus and why white Americans should not vote along racially conscious lines?
Or do you want a society in which there are political privileges for each of the minority races, but humbug for the majority whites?
I support the concept of color-blind justice and liberties for all law-abiding citizens. But if someone in a minority community wants to start his own ethnically or racially-defined tong or mafia, in or outside a legislature, then the rest of us have the right to stick close to the brotherhood or sisterhood of our own choice. And of our own skin.
You can have it one way. Or you can have it the other. But not both at once.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
I've spent my life in the small-town south (East TX, southwesternish VA) except for two years at the beginning and this last year.
But I don't quite qualify as a southerner, "y'alls" notwithstanding, so I'd appreciate someone's answering a question for me:
did southerners abandon the Democratic Party over race, or did the Democratic Party abandon southerners on every other issue that mattered to them?
Arnold, please be specific and name names. This is history after all.
I'll name two. Strom Thurmond who broke ranks from the Democratic party to create the 'Dixiecrats' and Barry Goldwater who broke ranks from the Republican Party and President Eisenhower to specifically argue against the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Two more things to remember, labor unions have never been able to organize in the south primarily because it would have meant that employers would have had to pay blacks the same as whites who would have to work side by side with equal work for equal pay. Yes segregation was that strong that whites would shoot themselves in the foot to keep a leg up on blacks.
The second thing to remember is that all the private schools in the south were founded just after the Brown decision, and public schooling in the south is the weakest in the nation. Did I just say that whites would shoot themselves in the foot to keep a leg up on blacks?
Some Historical Background:
The southern states—where blacks had been virtually barred from voting since the end of the post-Civil War Reconstruction period in 1876—began to break with the Democratic Party in 1948. Strom Thurmond’s Dixiecrat campaign carried South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana, winning margins of up to 80 percent in the all-white electorate. In the next three presidential elections, the southern states largely returned in the Democratic camp, as the two major bourgeois parties vacillated over the civil rights question.
In 1956, for instance, Republican President Dwight Eisenhower won a landslide reelection, but six southern states, including the four that had voted for Thurmond, backed Democrat Adlai Stevenson, who was considered more sympathetic to the maintenance of Jim Crow. Eisenhower had nominated Earl Warren, a liberal Republican from California, as chief justice of the Supreme Court, and Warren was the principal author of the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision outlawing segregated schools.
In the 1964 election, with Johnson as president after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the Republican presidential nominee Goldwater came out openly against the passage of the Civil Rights Act, which a majority of his own party in Congress had supported. Goldwater’s far-right campaign was overwhelmingly rejected at the polls, but he carried five states in the Deep South: the four carried by Thurmond in 1948, plus Georgia.
In 1968 Alabama’s segregationist governor George Wallace mounted an independent presidential campaign, which carried four of the five Goldwater states—Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia—as well as Arkansas. But in a sign of things to come, South Carolina followed the lead of Senator Strom Thurmond, who abandoned the Democratic Party, switched to the Republicans, and held the state for Nixon.
The Republican Party took up the long-time political methods of the southern Democrats, using racial demagogy to tie impoverished white workers and small farmers to the ruling aristocracy. In many cases—Thurmond was the forerunner for hundreds—Democratic politicians simply changed party labels while maintaining the same political orientation.
Arnold, you already have the right to "stick close to the brotherhood or sisterhood of our own choice. And of our own skin.” Ever heard the term white flight? “Why there should not be a white caucus and why white Americans should not vote along racially conscious lines?” Again they already do Arnold on both counts. Except in its not called the “White Caucus,” it’s called a “Good Ole’ Boy Network.”
PG, The Dems left the South. Lots of "yellow dog" Dems have switched sides recently including GA Gov. and long time State Senator, Sonny Purdue. Thanks Cynthia McKinny!! She sure drove off white voters. She was a well known as a rabid racist, and so was her Dad.
Cobb, "long-time political methods of the southern Democrats, using racial demagogy to tie impoverished white workers and small farmers to the ruling aristocracy” I never thought of it that way before but you are right. All that Heritage BS is a way of making these buffoons feel that they are part of the "Gone With the Wind" gentry. When in actuality their Forefathers were Sharecroppers too. How tempting it is for the downtrodden to cast someone down lower than they are. However, the cry of "racism" every time the obviously racist system of Affirmative Action is questioned is a hollow argument, and diminishes the credibility of actual acts of prejudice.
Cobb,
Certainly there was (and perhaps still is in a small way) an element of anti-equal rights in the deluge of white Southerners voting for the Party of Lincoln - but you are forgetting the most important thing:
As the Southern gentleman said when asked why he was fighting, "I'm fightin' cause yer down here!". Never, ever underestimate the loathing of people for someone outside of their locality coming in and telling them what to do.
Given that you call the two major parties the bourgeois parties shows a certain...shall we say "leftist"? orientation to your political thinking on the matter. Therefore its no surprise that you should completely ignore what is really going on.
The world is really not a morality play of the downtrodden fighting a never-ending battle against the Evil Oppressor. Out here in Nevada, I want to protect all of my fellow Nevadans from the dictates of DC - thus I support the ranchers and farmes of Jarbridge, the Indians who are fighting to be able to graze their cattle where they have grazed them for a century, the developers who want to build houses in my local area, the hunters who want to hunt the lands they've hunted on for a century...in every instance where Uncle Sam is coming in and telling us how we shall live, I am backing my fellow citizens...I don't even care if the Federal government is right and my people are wrong; these are issues for us to decide on our own. We are fully capable adults and if we screw up, we'll fix it on our own, thank you very much.
It is in local particularism that we find the wellsprings of human liberty. Sometimes, of course, local particularism can be egregiously wrong and in direct violation of clear US Constitutional prescription...this is the time for Uncle Sam to step in. But such stepping in should be very rarely done and only when its absolutely clear that the local authorities are incapable or unwilling to enforce US Constitutional strictures.
This is what the Great Debate is all about - and its why the GOP is rolling up ever larger majorities not just in the South, but everywhere outside of a few urban enclaves.
Cobb,
As a regular Republican, I want our party to win elections all across the country. That means in Mississippi as well as in my own state of Wisconsin. I really don't give a damn where or how my people have to go chasing for votes in order to get this accomplished. Besides, as I wrote in my earlier comment on this thread about Nixon's southern strategy: "So what?" Charges of white racism do not embarrass me amid an ocean of black racism, latin-American racison, asian racism. Even if it isn't the way the world ought to be, it's the way the world is.
Mark,
I too like local particularism finding its way into law in all except one kind of consideration.
Forty-five states now have concealed carry laws in effect. The latest is Missouri, with the overturn of the governor's veto of their concealed carry bill that state by the state legislature late last week. Three other states preceded them this year alone. Our state, Wisconsin, is one of the five holdouts. But concealed carry bills are shortly to be voted on by our state senate and assembly, and are slated to pass overwhelmingly. If our Democrat governor neglects to veto the joint bill, or if there are enough votes to override, it becomes law. If not, we will be back again next year in greater force.
One of the messy details of these state bills, I notice, is that each state defines slightly different exclusions of places where one can or cannot a concealed weapon. This is the sort of thing that gets confusing to interstate travels who have permits from another state recognized in states through which they are passing. And confusion among concealed carry permit holders is a factor that turns otherwise law-abiding and well intentioned citizens into paper felons.
Therefore, it might be advisable for some sort of national standard to be set up, establishing reciprocity as well as guideposts about specific exclusions for carrying concealed weapons.
(I would have no exclusions at all. Reason: All permit-holders with pistols on their persons, before going into such a facility, will be removing their guns and stowing them in their vehicles. Which means auto thieves will have added reason to use nearby parking facilities as fishing grounds. One would presume that a stolen firearm sold on the black market may bring almost as much cash as the stolen auto in which it was found. Therefore, maybe it would be more in the public interest to let people just carry their firearms rather then leaving them sit around where they can be stolen.)
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Arnold,
Hmmm...good point; but would that be covered under the full faith and credit provision?
I didn't write the 'bourgie stuff' for some reason, the blockquote tag doesn't work well here. I just googled up the facts which were easy to come by. History is history, and Nixon's southern strategy was predated by Thurmond and Goldwater. I'm an Eisenhower & Teddy Roosevelt Republican and a Right Libertarian on international issues. So don't waste your breath trying to tar me as a liberal socialist.
I know nobody here is interested in parsing the amount of racism in Affirmative Action or anything else. I can tell by the shallowness of the associations. But the point is that you can't have it both ways. You simply have to admit that appeals to white solidarity are taking place in southern politics TODAY, which disables Dean's wishful thinking on the subject.
I don't doubt, Mark, that local politics is local. That doesn't make it not racial too. The GOP is doing and continues to do a superior job in getting local grass root participation, but they've done so in violation of principles that make the Republican party attractive to folks like me who prefer principles over populism.
Attract Americans to the party, but not by any means necessary. Americans are lots of things, so what is the 'white' issue?
Cobb,
Its been my experience that those who call themselves "Roosevelt Republicans" are liberals who don't want to be associated with the Democratic Party....this is wise, but liberalism is still all wrong, regardless of label.
There is no "white" issue the GOP runs on - there was no attempt to tempt racists into the GOP...there was, however, an early realisation that the Democrats were cutting themselves off from the American middle class which, as it happens, is by a large majority white.
What would be the point of a Southern racist voting for the GOP? A higher percentage of GOPers votes for the Civil Rights act than Democrats did...Goldwater was hot in his condemnations of Jim Crow; Nixon positioned himself to the right of Democrats and to the left of Wallace.
You have to believe that the United States was not just racist, but that white America is ineradicably racist in order to believe that there is a racial angle in the GOP's appeal to Southern white people these days. This is absurd.
Cobb, your criticism of Strom are fine (though those racists Ernest "Fritz" "I put the Confederate Battle Flag on the SC State Capitol" and Robert "I don't regret having joined the KKK in my youth/ White niggers" Byrd seemed ok with staying in the Democratic Party), but you're completely wrong about Goldwater.
Goldwater was a member of the Urban League who had fought against segregation and restrictive housing convenants in Arizona. He completely supported earlier Civil Rights Law. He completely supported the aspects of the 1963 Civil Rights Act that applied to the government. However, given his libertarian beliefs, he opposed the more coercive aspects of the 1963 Act on private businesses.
He correctly feared that the act, as written, would be interpreted as mandating quotas and Affirmative Action. (Hubert H. Humphrey notably vowed to eat the entire text of the Act if it were ever taken as requiring such a thing.) He attempted to amend it, but to no avail.
Yes, Goldwater's position, honorably and consistently taken, gained him support for racists who saw him as better than the alternative. But slandering him as racist is NO BETTER and NO MORE ACCURATE than slandering honest pacifists as terrorist sympathizers.
I have yet to hear one cogent argument against the Civil Rights Act. If you know of one, I'm all ears. I'm willing to be wrong about Goldwater's details as I come to understand more about some details such as those presented by Thomas Wood.
I'm saying if you say that your constituency is white, then you appeal to them as whites. What does that mean to you? How do you appeal to whites without doing so at the expense of non-whites? Explain this to me. Here. Now. It apparently seems very obvious to you that this what Republicans are doing, so explain it to this black man. I say it's doubletalk. What is it that is so alienating to whites that is not also alienating to blacks and how exactly did the Republican party illustrate this? While you're at it, explain the Willie Horton campaign and why Christie Whitman hugged Al Sharpton. Why did Lee Atwater invent the term 'Welfare Queen'?
I personally don't care if 100% of American racists were Republican. I'm willing to both believe it and discount it and I've said as much. That means, however that those who are not racists, must fight against those who are, and they must win. But you don't fight through denial.
I don't believe that whitefolks are irredeemably racist. I know them to be insufficiently anti-racist and politically indifferent to the distinction. So what passes for intelligent discussion on race is far from it, and turns into apologia for what is distasteful at best. I'd say it takes a rather extraordinary individual to parse the difference and make a principled stand on the matter and of course those are people I'm ready and willing to stand with. But what I hear is wishy-washy relativism and 'look at the Democrats'.
As for Eisenhower and Roosevelt and Earl Warren, it takes balls hanging over your right leg to call them liberals. But then again maybe those are the kinds of people who have hijacked the party - people who have nightmares about Hillary Clinton and see evil communist taxes behind every closet door.
I'm going to quote the Washington Post, that liberal sanitary napkin about 1988. Note that the rest of this post should be in blockquote, which doesn't work here:
I'm a Democrat and there's a lot of truth to your post, Dean. Are you familiar with Randy Newman's nearly 30 year-old tune, "Rednecks?" Saw him do it before an audience that had never heard it before in Harvard Square during the 70's busing crisis. It first set the crowd to roaring with laughter, then completely silenced the house.
Hayes' comment is great. I'm one of those "damn Yankees," at least sort of, since I was born in border state MO. Race remains one of the most dominant issues in America, but the South has probably done more to deal with it than the rest of the country. There's still a long way to go everywhere.
FYI, I know I'm late to the party, but the folks who were pissed at Barnes & voted for Perdue because of the flag were primarily middle & southern Democrats (the county-by-county voting patterns brought that out) who went to the GOP for the first time during 2002.
And it'd be kinda strange for Perdue to go after the anti-black vote, since he adopted a black kid (a beautiful little girl) several years ago. However, that wouldn't cause race hustlers any hesitancy....
Check out www.southerndemocrats.org.