Do you or any of your friends live next door to a negro–why should we have them pushed down our throats?
As a citzen and a taxpayer I was very upset to hear about ‘TITLE IV’ of the so-called civil rights Bill S. 3296. This is not Civil Rights. This takes away a person’s rights. We too are people and need someone to protect us.
We designed and built our own home and I would hate too think of being forced to sell my lovely home to anyone just because they had the money.
This post by Rick Perlstein documenting how people became Republicans because of racism is an excellent post. Everyone else is linking to it, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t too.
The Edge of the American West 
13 comments
June 6, 2008 at 6:33 am
eric
Yes, it really is a big deal that we have a black, major-party nominee for president.
June 6, 2008 at 7:26 am
The Modesto Kid
Wow, that just moved Nixonland way, way up my to-read list.
June 6, 2008 at 7:57 am
Vance Maverick
I’ve often thought the fear of a fall in the value of one’s house had a kind of local rationality to it — that through it, the invisible hand works to amplify and distribute the effects of prejudice. But reading this, it’s impossible to retain even that glimmering of fellow-feeling.
June 6, 2008 at 7:59 am
Vance Maverick
Amplify the effects, that is, and distribute the workings, giving non-bigots a non-bigoted reason to do things indistinguishable from bigotry. But again, that doesn’t hold up.
June 6, 2008 at 8:06 am
eric
the fear of a fall in the value of one’s house
There was a piece in, I think, Life that quoted a guy saying something like, “He’s probably a nice guy, but every time I look at him I see $2000 drop off the value of my house.” I.e., I‘m not bigoted, but everyone else is.
June 6, 2008 at 10:11 am
Geschichte Grad
One of the reasons I’m glad Obama is in the nominee: racists won’t be able to hide behind the language of law-and-order and property values. We’ll get a pretty good show of hands: how many Americans just don’t like black people. Not that everyone who votes for McCain is a racist–but the inevitable “How important is race?” poll question will be revealing.
Perlstein’s book sounds great. Add it to Lassiter’s The Silent Majority, and you’ve got yourself a pretty nuanced understanding of Republican racism.
June 6, 2008 at 10:38 am
drip
every time I look at him I see $2000 drop off the value of my house So stop looking at him. Bada bing.
The topsy turvy world of invidious racialism and bigotry had an effect on the late 1960’s. The phrase “Your Home is your Castle” in one of the letters Pearlstein quotes was the slogan of George Mahoney, the democratic nominee for Governor of “staunchly democratic” and liberal Maryland in 1966. His opponent was the unknown, forlorn, and hopeless, Spiro T. Agnew, thought to be, as his name suggests, a sacrificial lamb. Shockingly, Agnew won because he appeared to be the liberal in the race. Cambridge, Maryland on the Eastern Shore exploded in race riots in 1967; Baltimore reacted to the assassination of ML King with huge fires in April, 1968. Nixon then picked Agnew (allegedly as northeastern moderate) as his VP. Maryland almost went for Wallace in 1968, despite Agnew’s place on the ballot. Rapp Brown was tried in Cambridge for, among other things, sedition and Maryland ended up under federal supervision for its failure to integrate its schools with deliberate speed.
June 6, 2008 at 3:23 pm
AWC
Perlstein is indeed great, as is the post.
But I worry he is a bit too eager to blame the white working class, who largely continued to vote Democratic despite their overt racism.
1) He overstates the GOP takeover in Illinois. The US Senators from Illinois remained split between the parties for most of the period 1950-1980. Yes, Percy beat Douglas in 1966, but Stevenson won Dirksen’s old seat in 1970. The Chicago House delegation was overwhelmingly Democratic throughout this period, showing no turnover in 1966.
2) I’d be interested in seeing the figures comparing the GOP votes in Bridgeport (white working class) and the Chicagoland suburbs. My guess is that the Dems actually continued to do pretty well among the former, despite the battle over open housing. It was the suburbs where the GOP became increasingly dominant.
But this is picky stuff. Perlstein’s right about the broader trend.
June 6, 2008 at 3:28 pm
eric
You know, I’m always a little curious about analyses of the shift toward Republicanism in this period that use geographical areas as the unit of analysis. Because a lot of people moved in response to integration/busing/housing policies, right? “White Flight”?
So the shift toward the GOP in the suburbs might have reflected the move of certain people out of the city, yes?
June 6, 2008 at 3:31 pm
andrew
Isn’t there a story about George Wallace going on a national speaking tour, looking at the crowds that came out to see him, and saying something like “The whole United States is Southern!”?
June 6, 2008 at 3:34 pm
andrew
To answer my own question: not quite. This is what I was thinking of:
June 6, 2008 at 3:53 pm
AWC
White flight is definitely a factor.
Another factor is that suburbanites lacked the basic institutions which kept the Democratic machine viable in the city, such as labor unions.
Off to dinner.
June 17, 2008 at 12:03 am
Variable 666. « The Edge of the American West
[…] up where the Democrats left off in courting bigoted whites, in the South and elsewhere. Hence Rick Perlstein’s observations; hence Reagan’s pilgrimage to Philadelphia, Mississippi; hence Lee Atwater explaining that […]