4 ms·

Lee Atwater, former chairman of the Republican National Party ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Atwater https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Atwater ) literally

by freen 9y ago

Lee Atwater, former chairman of the Republican National Party ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Atwater https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Atwater ) literally said that the key to republicans winning in the south was couching racism in more palatable euphemisms. https://www.thenation.com/article/exclusive-lee-atwaters-infamous-1981-interview-southern-strategy/ https://www.thenation.com/article/exclusive-lee-atwaters-inf... North Carolina's GOP was sanctioned by the Supreme Court for actively attempting to disenfranchise black people: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/07/north-carolina-voting-rights-law/493649/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/07/north-c... Then you've got this: https://twitter.com/KFILE/status/943864121497473026 https://twitter.com/KFILE/status/943864121497473026 People can be former racists, hell, the prior pope was in the Hitler Youth! That said, if you want to argue Robert Byrd presence in the party, who has a 100% rating from the NAACP ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Byrd https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Byrd ) somehow indicates that the Democrats are institutionally racist, you are operating with some substantially motivated reasoning. (edited because it's likely SOME Democrats are racist, but not the political party itself as an institution, unlike the GOP)

0xcde4c3db 9y ago
> literally said that the key to republicans winning in the south was couching racism in more palatable euphemisms Where did he literally say that? I read it as part of an argument that political racism was going to fade away as the ties between policy positions and race became more and more diffuse or abstract. Notably, the following portion was omitted from the pull quote on that The Nation page: > 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.
AnthonyMouse 9y ago
> Lee Atwater, former chairman of the Republican National Party ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Atwater https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Atwater ) literally said that the key to republicans winning in the south was couching racism in more palatable euphemisms. What he literally said was this: > 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, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.” But think about what that is. It's a strategy for destroying racism by abstracting it into non-existence. You have these racists who hate black people because they think they're inferior subhumans, and then a bunch of regular middle class people who don't care about race at all and just want their tax dollars to pay for their own kid's school instead of some stranger's kid, but they end up together in a majority coalition. If you strip off the second group of people and give them what they want directly without any racial component then the first group loses all their political power. They go from 60% of people you can't ignore to 0.2% of people you can ignore. And you can't pretend the outcome is the same either. A person can't change their skin color the same ways they can change their finances.
- nl 9y ago
  It's a strategy for destroying racism by abstracting it into non-existence. Do you really believe that? Not many do - most think it is a deliberately racist strategy, and most see that quote as an explanation of it.
  - AnthonyMouse 9y ago
    > Do you really believe that? Not many do - most think it is a deliberately racist strategy, and most see that quote as an explanation of it. How is it racist to remove the racist component from a policy? It's literally the exact opposite of that. That's what optimizing to reduce the amount of racism looks like -- you find things that are partly desired and partly racist and replace them with something to achieve the desired objective without discriminating based on race.
    - nl 9y ago
      Wow. I genuinely never realised people could think this. You understand that they didn’t remove the racist component at all, right? He literally explained how to implement racist policies without making it explicit. Like you said: replace them with something to achieve the desired objective without discriminating based on race. But note that the desired objective is to discriminate on race, and it is only an attempt to hide the appearance.
      - AnthonyMouse 9y ago
        > But note that the desired objective is to discriminate on race, and it is only an attempt to hide the appearance. No it isn't, that's the whole point. Most people have no real interest in discriminating based on race. They just want their tax dollars to go to their own interests instead of to somebody else. They don't care if the somebody else is black, white or polka dot. They want to pay $5000 in taxes and get back >=$5000 in government services, not pay $6000 and get back $3000. Listen to more of the interview. It isn't that most people want to discriminate based on race and economic policies are a way to do it, it's that people want particular economic policies and direct racial discrimination was historically a way to do that. The point isn't to use economics as a proxy for race, it's to stop using race as a proxy for economics. The two things have some similar effects, because "affects poor people" and "affects black people" are similar when poor and black correlate, but they're not actually the same and the exact difference is what makes it racism or not.

by freen 9y ago

0xcde4c3db 9y ago

> literally said that the key to republicans winning in the south was couching racism in more palatable euphemisms Where did he literally say that? I read it as part of an argument that political racism was going to fade away as the ties between policy positions and race became more and more diffuse or abstract. Notably, the following portion was omitted from the pull quote on that The Nation page: > 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.

AnthonyMouse 9y ago

> Lee Atwater, former chairman of the Republican National Party ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Atwater https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Atwater ) literally said that the key to republicans winning in the south was couching racism in more palatable euphemisms. What he literally said was this: > 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, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.” But think about what that is. It's a strategy for destroying racism by abstracting it into non-existence. You have these racists who hate black people because they think they're inferior subhumans, and then a bunch of regular middle class people who don't care about race at all and just want their tax dollars to pay for their own kid's school instead of some stranger's kid, but they end up together in a majority coalition. If you strip off the second group of people and give them what they want directly without any racial component then the first group loses all their political power. They go from 60% of people you can't ignore to 0.2% of people you can ignore. And you can't pretend the outcome is the same either. A person can't change their skin color the same ways they can change their finances.

nl 9y ago
It's a strategy for destroying racism by abstracting it into non-existence. Do you really believe that? Not many do - most think it is a deliberately racist strategy, and most see that quote as an explanation of it.
- AnthonyMouse 9y ago
  > Do you really believe that? Not many do - most think it is a deliberately racist strategy, and most see that quote as an explanation of it. How is it racist to remove the racist component from a policy? It's literally the exact opposite of that. That's what optimizing to reduce the amount of racism looks like -- you find things that are partly desired and partly racist and replace them with something to achieve the desired objective without discriminating based on race.
  - nl 9y ago
    Wow. I genuinely never realised people could think this. You understand that they didn’t remove the racist component at all, right? He literally explained how to implement racist policies without making it explicit. Like you said: replace them with something to achieve the desired objective without discriminating based on race. But note that the desired objective is to discriminate on race, and it is only an attempt to hide the appearance.
    - AnthonyMouse 9y ago
      > But note that the desired objective is to discriminate on race, and it is only an attempt to hide the appearance. No it isn't, that's the whole point. Most people have no real interest in discriminating based on race. They just want their tax dollars to go to their own interests instead of to somebody else. They don't care if the somebody else is black, white or polka dot. They want to pay $5000 in taxes and get back >=$5000 in government services, not pay $6000 and get back $3000. Listen to more of the interview. It isn't that most people want to discriminate based on race and economic policies are a way to do it, it's that people want particular economic policies and direct racial discrimination was historically a way to do that. The point isn't to use economics as a proxy for race, it's to stop using race as a proxy for economics. The two things have some similar effects, because "affects poor people" and "affects black people" are similar when poor and black correlate, but they're not actually the same and the exact difference is what makes it racism or not.