Yes, Virginia, It Is about Race: Decoding Conservative Racism

When Virginia's Republican governor, Bob McDonnell, recently endorsed a "Confederate History Month" for April, he initially neglected to mention slavery as a part of that Confederate legacy. Defending McDonnell against widespread criticism, Mississippi's governor Haley Barbour accused critics of making "a big deal of something that doesn't amount to diddly."

Thus the question: Why do political conservatives, particularly Republicans, tolerate and often endorse racism? The question requires a couple of clarifications. First, I am admittedly painting with a broad brush. Not all conservatives tolerate racism, but the movement as a whole does -- and we can analyze why. We should add that even those who despise racism but do not speak out against it are complicit because they benefit from its use (as we'll see).

Second, some will protest that there's nothing particularly racist about conservative politics, particularly the Tea Party movement. Unfortunately for that argument, we're now facing hard data that demonstrates the role of race in the Tea Party movement. For example, separate polls from the University of Washington and CBS News/The New York Times demonstrate that Tea Partiers hold opinions on race-related issues that differ widely from the general public. Thus, people who believe "that blacks don't try hard enough, use slavery as an excuse, and ... have received more than they deserve" are 37 percent more likely to join the Tea Party than are the rest of the population (Leonard Pitts, quoting Christopher Parker of the University of Washington). In the UW study (according to Diversity Inc), among white Tea Partiers 35 percent perceive blacks as hard-working, 45 percent see blacks as intelligent, and 41 percent view blacks as trustworthy. As fivethirtyeight.com puts it, white Tea Partiers' views on race are well beyond the norm in comparison to other whites.

Since it appeals to part of their base, it's no coincidence when Republicans or conservatives play the reverse race card. Rush Limbaugh recently praised the Tea Party as "the first time" that "ordinary citizens" have "risen up ... since the Civil War." Pat Buchanan's group America's Cause, which holds a restrictionist view on immigration, has hired a new executive director who in 2007 accidentally bumped into a black woman on the street, then unaccidentally called her the N-word and slapped her in the face. Admittedly, the guy was drunk, but to give him responsibility in the area of immigration? Never be surprised what conservatives do around the topic of race.

So why do conservatives resort to racism? I can offer two reasons.

• First, demographics. The Republican Party is largely a white movement, and its conservative wing consists largely of older whites. (Over half of Limbaugh's audience is over 65.) That demographic is on the decline. By 2050, whites will no longer represent a majority in the US. Demographic shifts so favor Democrats that Republicans are working hard to maintain and to activate their base. That means that they must connect with whites, even the racist ones, and motivate them to vote. Thus, some conservative and Republican activists appeal directly to racist voters, while most others either ignore the problem or minimize it. ("It's just a few individuals.") The Republican Party cannot afford to alienate racist voters.
• There's a second reason for conservatives' tolerance for racism, and I call this strategy "using the edge." Here's how it works, and it's been enormously successful for conservatives since the Clinton administration. Conservative activists, particularly in media such as radio and the internet, put out extreme right positions. No one votes for them, so they can say what they want. More "moderate" Republicans, especially elected officials, do not respond to the most incendiary remarks. (In fact, they invite the racists to their fundraisers and other events.) This strategy not only appeals to racists and other extremists, it also moves public perception. The "edge" is so far to the right that the perceived "center" moves rightward. This is how Republicans use Limbaugh, Savage, Hannity, and so forth: they make mildly crazy conservativism sound relatively reasonable.

There's a long history to Republicans' embrace of racism. The segregationist South was almost exclusively Democrat, but Lyndon Johnson's embrace of civil rights legislation put an end to that. Since the Civil Rights Movement, once Republican New England has become almost entirely Democrat territory, while the "Solid South" has switched to the Republican Party on national elections. This is a result of strategy, not accident. Lee Atwater, advisor to Presidents Reagan and Bush (41), put it this way in a 1981 interview:

You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968 you can't say "nigger"—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigger, nigger."

As one Republican activist told John Avalon (author of Wingnuts, p. 93): "Let's face it -- the base is racist."

Christians should be especially keen to observe the strategies that attend such race baiting. One can no longer openly advocate racism, but as Atwater observed, code language can communicate racism for the base while maintaining a veneer of deniability to the speaker. Here are some examples.

• Notice the new emphasis on "states rights" and "secession." Obviously, the touchpoint for such terms is the South's response to the election of Abraham Lincoln -- and its continuing resistance to federal pressure to abolish Jim Crow. "States rights" is the language of Jefferson Davis and George Wallace. Now it's the language of the Tea Party, including those who want Oklahoma to build its own state militia (never mind the National Guard) and the governor of Texas. It is no coincidence that Ronald Reagan announced his presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, the site of one of the most infamous murders during the Civil Rights Movement. And guess what? Reagan talked about states' rights that day.
• What about Sarah Palin's campaign description of the "real America" in terms of small towns? The "real America" does not include the diversity represented in major cities on the two coasts, does it?
• And what about the fear we hear among Tea Partiers that they are "losing our country" and "taking the country back"? Losing it to whom? They've only begun saying this since a black man has been elected president, haven't they? When I was born, white people did pretty much own the country. To a large extent, they/we still do. But things have changed, they are changing, and the change will accelerate. What country do people want back? The one from 1950, with legalized segregation? For a hilarious take on the "losing our country" fear, see Larry Wilmore's send-up on The Daily Show.