The Fantasy Years

This so true, as my book The Fantasy Years shows. Race in America…it really doesn’t even have to be verbalized. It doesn’t have to be articulated. Since the end of Jim Crow, political correctness and the rebuke of a progressive society have together dashed their words of racists and constricted their ability to demean and intimidate with overt words. Instead, the language is couched. It’s coded. And so much is understood ‘in other words.’ And it all comes down to fear of The Other. See later chapters of the book.

Republicans and Race
By Paul Krugman

Over the past few weeks there have been a number of commentaries about Ronald Reagan’s legacy, specifically about whether he exploited the white backlash against the civil rights movement.

The controversy unfortunately obscures the larger point, which should be undeniable: the central role of this backlash in the rise of the modern conservative movement.

The centrality of race — and, in particular, of the switch of Southern whites from overwhelming support of Democrats to overwhelming support of Republicans — is obvious from voting data.

For example, everyone knows that white men have turned away from the Democrats over God, guns, national security and so on. But what everyone knows isn’t true once you exclude the South from the picture. As the political scientist Larry Bartels points out, in the 1952 presidential election 40 percent of non-Southern white men voted Democratic; in 2004, that figure was virtually unchanged, at 39 percent.

More than 40 years have passed since the Voting Rights Act, which Reagan described in 1980 as “humiliating to the South.” Yet Southern white voting behavior remains distinctive. Democrats decisively won the popular vote in last year’s House elections, but Southern whites voted Republican by almost two to one.

The G.O.P.’s own leaders admit that the great Southern white shift was the result of a deliberate political strategy. “Some Republicans gave up on winning the African-American vote, looking the other way or trying to benefit politically from racial polarization.” So declared Ken Mehlman, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee, speaking in 2005.

And Ronald Reagan was among the “some” who tried to benefit from racial polarization.

True, he never used explicit racial rhetoric. Neither did Richard Nixon. As Thomas and Mary Edsall put it in their classic 1991 book, “Chain Reaction: The impact of race, rights and taxes on American politics,” “Reagan paralleled Nixon’s success in constructing a politics and a strategy of governing that attacked policies targeted toward blacks and other minorities without reference to race — a conservative politics that had the effect of polarizing the electorate along racial lines.”

Thus, Reagan repeatedly told the bogus story of the Cadillac-driving welfare queen — a gross exaggeration of a minor case of welfare fraud. He never mentioned the woman’s race, but he didn’t have to.

There are many other examples of Reagan’s tacit race-baiting in the historical record. My colleague Bob Herbert described some of these examples in a recent column. Here’s one he didn’t mention: During the 1976 campaign Reagan often talked about how upset workers must be to see an able-bodied man using food stamps at the grocery store. In the South — but not in the North — the food-stamp user became a “strapping young buck” buying T-bone steaks.

Now, about the Philadelphia story: in December 1979 the Republican national committeeman from Mississippi wrote a letter urging that the party’s nominee speak at the Neshoba Country Fair, just outside the town where three civil rights workers had been murdered in 1964. It would, he wrote, help win over “George Wallace inclined voters.”

Sure enough, Reagan appeared, and declared his support for states’ rights — which everyone took to be a coded declaration of support for segregationist sentiments.

Reagan’s defenders protest furiously that he wasn’t personally bigoted. So what? We’re talking about his political strategy. His personal beliefs are irrelevant.

Why does this history matter now? Because it tells why the vision of a permanent conservative majority, so widely accepted a few years ago, is wrong.

The point is that we have become a more diverse and less racist country over time. The “macaca” incident, in which Senator George Allen’s use of a racial insult led to his election defeat, epitomized the way in which America has changed for the better.

And because conservative ascendancy has depended so crucially on the racial backlash — a close look at voting data shows that religion and “values” issues have been far less important — I believe that the declining power of that backlash changes everything.

Can anti-immigrant rhetoric replace old-fashioned racial politics? No, because it mobilizes the same shrinking pool of whites — and alienates the growing number of Latino voters.

Now, maybe I’m wrong about all of this. But we should be able to discuss the role of race in American politics honestly. We shouldn’t avert our gaze because we’re unwilling to tarnish Ronald Reagan’s image.

BUT RUSH’S OUTRAGE, UNDERSTOOD SO VISCERALLY and completely his fans the Dittoheads, certainly didn’t resound with everyone. Most who disagreed tuned him out. That was part of freedom too: the freedom to tune out. Occasionally, however, a special someone tuned in to Rush because they disagreed with him. One of those special someones was Don Atwood.

Don listened to Rush and Don answered back as he drove the wide highways and access roads of Dallas and Fort Worth.
“I don’t know what you’re saying,” Don said, over his steering wheel to the world beyond his cracked and contracting plastic dashboard. To the bumpers of racists pick-up trucks and gigantic tractor trailers that threatened to merge into his Ford Taurus unless he leaned on the horn. Don spoke to the racist billboard signs with their images of beautiful idealized whiteness portrayed everywhere.

Don drove and he said to Rush’s voice on the radio: “Don’t know what world you’re living in Mr. Limbaugh. Rush. What kind of name is Rush? Don’t know where you’re living, Rush, where you see the world like that. No, I don’t trust people like you. White people coming at me with a bunch of answers to a bunch of questions I haven’t asked. Nope. Don’t trust the white talk radio hosts.”

The customer has to be educated, Jenny thought. That was part of her job. And that’s something she could bring, as a mother, as a valued employee, to the position. No different than explaining something to Jakob and Joshua. Except of course, if her boys ever talked to her the way the customers sometimes did, she would throw them over her knee and spank them before marching them to the sink and washing their mouths out with a bar of soup. But aside from that, it was the same thing. Education. Instruction. Showing the way. Walking them through the process. Enlightening them.

This is what Jenny told the trainee Jody, who sat, wedged into to Jenny’s cube, close enough to make out the terminal and the phone console.

Once the customer understood what the process was, Jenny said, they were less likely to get upset. After all, it was a matter of enabling the customer. Of giving them the tools to make the decisions about their magazine subscriptions, or the car insurance policy, or their health insurance or the 100 Country Hits or the doggie step stool or whatever the product Four Seasons was contracted to provide customer service on.

“How do you we know what to say to the customer?” Jody asked, leaning closer as she readjusted her pony-tail. All eyes. Attentive, serious hazel eyes.

“It depends on the product,” Jenny said. Jody sat with her in her cube, listening to but not taking part in, a call from a client. “If it’s a call for insurance, don’t worry, you get prompts on the screen. For the magazine subscriptions, it’s more cut and dry.”

“That customer sounded kind of upset,” Jody said.

“It’s because he had to wait so long. The queue is always ten minutes. You get thick skin from working this job. You’ll see,” she smiled. Jenny hoped whoever was listening in could hear her smile. Smiles the customer could hear were part of the job.
Of course, Jenny wasn’t sure if her conversation with Jody was being recorded or if they – who exactly they were Jenny was never entirely sure – would listen to CSRs when doing training.
The call ended with an icy ‘thank you’ from the customer.
“Do you ever get upset with the customer?” Jody asked.
“Well, that’s a very interesting question. Well…The test of a good CSR for Four Season’s is how well you can handle your most difficult customers.”

Don kept talking today. Rush had long since signed off. But Don kept talking. Mostly to help keep himself awake on the monotonous drive back from Longview. The sun set like a burning bruise in the night’s sky.

“No, I don’t trust the white property managers of the shopping centers,” Don said. “I don’t trust white landlords. Or the white politicians. Or white bosses. Mr. Stern is okay. But most other white bosses.” Don amended, listening to the silence of his drive.
There was nothing on the radio.

“I don’t trust white sports played by white people. I don’t trust lacrosse players, I don’t trust polo players, I don’t trust golfers, I don’t trust white swimmers and I don’t trust skeet shooters or figure skaters or speed skaters or curlers.”

Now he was just keeping himself awake. But he found rage worked better than caffeine for him.

“I don’t trust hockey players or hockey fans or hockey coaches. Or those weird skier shooters that compete at the Olympics. What kind of white sport is that where they ski and then shoot? Only white people could think of that,” Don said to the road before him. Then thinking of the biathlon some more he realized, even the snow is white.

Mike sneezed so forcefully he almost jerked his foot off the brake. The voices clamored on the radio. Mike’s rig was too big to maneuver for the small parking lot. Of course, that was probably why they gave him the job. They were happy to find a sucker with a commercial driver’s license who could maneuver these parking lots. He spent a good chunk of his day backing into narrow parking lots to the satisfaction of whoever happened to be standing there watching him. Always under their eyes. Oh, and when I’m parked, I personally get to find the delivery and cart it out on the hand truck, under the watchful eyes of a bunch of Mexicans prep cooks. This was no kind of life at all. And the allergies. Back when he was a trucker allergies meant he was home. But back then he always got to leave his watery eyes and runny nose and constant sneezing if it got too bad. These days, it was like he had a c-clamp screwed into his forehead. What was it? He wondered? The radio clamored, “They say they’re gonna acquit OJ,” said a caller.

“There will be riots if they don’t,” said the host.
“Thanks to Rodney King.”
“Thanks to the liberal media.”
“What’s become of this country?”
“Liberalism: “That’s what’s become of it.”
“Political Correctness: That’s what’s become of it.”
“Liberalism is PC.”
“And PC means judging people not by their acts of murder or mayhem but by the color of their skin.”
“Even the judge is PC.”
“The whole case is PC. It wouldn’t be politically correct for the rich black man to be found guilty of actually murdering his wife.”
“It’s outrageous.”
“It’s damnable.”

Mike jumped out of the cab, clipboard in hand. The radio, through the open door’s speaker yammered out broadly to the day. The voices exploded across the country’s airwaves, across the blazing pavement of the parking lot.

The clamor and drum of the news both compounded Mike’s headache with noise and gave it release with a subject to direct his fury towards. Mike went to the back of the trailer, turned the handle of the latch and heaved the door upward, revealing the stacked boxes of White Swan cooking supplies. Something about the air tickled his nose, he pulled down the ramp and walked up, and there, in the darkness of the truck, he sneezed, spraying mist in an explosion through his gloved hand.