In response to the civil rights movement and Black America’s embrace of the Democratic Party, the Republican Party chose to make racism the centerpiece of their electoral strategy.
From the “Southern strategy” and Richard Nixon’s summoning of “law and order” to Ronald Reagan’s “welfare queens” and appeals to “states’ rights”, Willie Horton, the Tea Party and “birtherism” — and now to Donald Trump’s naked racial authoritarianism — racism and white supremacy have paid electoral dividends for the Republican Party and the conservative movement.
But this devil’s bargain rests upon a very slippery foundation: as the country’s racial demographics change from an absolute white majority toward one where white people are “just” a plurality as compared to Black and brown people, the Republican Party’s power as a de facto “whites only” party is imperiled. Continue reading.