Race to the Top
Iraq. The Karl Rove Scandal. Social Security. A contentious Supreme Court nomination. The political agenda for the fall doesn’t bode well for the Republican single-party state, already sinking fast in public support. My bet for the issue we’ll be hearing a lot about in the months to come? Re-authorization of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
As some people may know, this cornerstone measure of the Civil Rights era is due to expire in 2007, and legislative forces are already gathering around its renewal. At issue here are a series of enabling laws that put force behind the 15th Amendment of the Constitution, guaranteeing people of all races equal rights to vote, made necessary by the intransigence of white-run governments, mostly in the South, in failing to extend the franchise to blacks in the century following the Civil War. During the 1960s, when it was still possible to find outspoken proponents of racism and segregation, the idea of ensuring federal protection for minority voters was explicitly controversial. It took the assassination of President Kennedy, mounting public protests, the politics of the Cold War, and the principled insistence of President Johnson to pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965 over the opposition of Southern lawmakers. In the intervening 40 years, the Voting Rights Act proved to be one of the most effective pieces of Civil Rights legislation, eliminating all of the formal and many of the informal barriers to universal suffrage, and creating the framework for greater minority participation at all levels of American politics.
It also set in motion the political re-alignment that’s led to an overwhelming period of conservative government since 1968. The total political and cultural triumph of the Civil Rights movement made the position of the Southern segregationists (and, eventually, racists everywhere) not just politically untenable, but also morally and intellectually bankrupt practically overnight. Richard Nixon was among the first to realize that the underlying fears and anxieties that many whites felt over the issues of race could not be swept so easily away by changes in legislation and public discourse. Nor would the power-structure that racism supported, overtly in the South and more subtly in the North, give way by simple legislative fiat, because the issue of race concealed far more intractable problems of economic power and class. The Republican “Southern Strategy” was conceived as a way to translate the lingering anxieties, resentments, and, above all, power dynamics of the pre-Civil Rights era into a new political movement that supported the same social and economic class interests, but omitted the discredited ideology of racism.
What’s important to understand about the Southern Strategy is that it’s primarily about power, not race. It’s meant to perpetuate the privilege and authority of the (naturally, white) aristocratic elite who have always run things in the South. From the earliest days of America, this class always had a closer intellectual and cultural affinity with European landed gentry than with the technocratic and mercantile sensibilities of the North. Social orders based on land-ownership are inherently far less open and dynamic than those based on trade. Wide-spread education and political participation have lower economic utility in an agrarian society; the lack of economic mobility makes it far more difficult for those at the bottom to challenge the cultural nexus of tradition, religion, and rigid class distinctions that keep the political order intact. Largely isolated from the larger currents of American culture for 100 years, Southern economic elites were able to institutionalize their privileges in a much more formal and overt way than was possible elsewhere, including the baroque habits of racism that, for 100 years after the Civil War, were useful in preventing poor white and blacks from forming a cohesive political opposition to their interests. Unfortunately for them, this formality made the system brittle. When race was removed as a legal lever of power, the whole system seemed poised on the brink of collapse.
It was a desperate moment. The Civil Rights movement had brought the Federal government into play against the traditional power structure, and a new generation of political leaders in the South seemed ready to finally explore a more open social, political and economic order. Having lost the support of the national Democratic party in the 1960s, the Southern aristocracy turned to the Republicans. Had Nixon rejected the Southern Strategy in 1968 and taken race off the table as an issue in national politics, it is possible that the momentum of change may have finally swept aside the reactionary legacy of the plantation economy, or marginalized its proponents so decisively that real progress would have been possible. Instead, by accepting their support and embracing their agenda, Nixon and the Republicans gave the traditional elites of the South the means to weather social and economic change without relinquishing their position at the center of power.
The result has been a string of victories for Republicans at the national level, broken only by two moderate Southern Democrats. The South has also apparently completed a 30-year transition from single-party Democratic control to single-party Republican control, with the same basic set of people in charge despite the change of party labels. But it was a Faustian bargain for both sides. Southern elites gained Republican support by signing on to the agenda of their traditional enemies, the Wall Street corporate-commercial interests; Northern Republicans relinquished their moderation (if not outright liberalism) on social issues, giving lip service if not material support to the reactionary values that serve the same divisive function as race did in perpetuating the privileges of the Southern economic elites.
Though the “culture war” has become a proxy for race in today’s politics, race itself hasn’t gone away. You don’t have to look too closely at housing and education patterns in the United States to see that white people at almost all economic levels don’t want to live near black people, don’t want black kids in their schools, don’t extend credit to black homeowners or business owners absent laws that say they have to, and become visibly uncomfortable when race enters the political or cultural dialogue. Nor is this limited to a particular social, economic or regional group; in my experience, working class whites are often far less racist in their actual interactions with minorities than those with higher economic, occupational or educational status. I would also venture to guess that discomfort with the overwhelming percentage of black votes going to Democrats at least partially explains the reluctance of some Republican moderates or self-identified Libertarians (not EA readers, of course) from crossing over parties, despite a long and mounting list of grievances against the embarrassingly bizarre, corrupt, incompetent and reactionary Republican-led government. Republicans, they figure, whatever their faults, are still Our People, whereas the Democrats, whatever the virtues of their positions, have been irredeemably mongrelized and are not to be trusted. I even know a few Democrats who, in unguarded moments, will express this opinion.
It’s an interesting paradox. On one hand, most white Americans are sincerely uncomfortable with the injustices of racism; as a society, we have made significant progress in eliminating the most visible forms of oppression, and in removing barriers for talented and ambitious minority individuals to succeed. The vast majority of Americans of both parties are not racist in the way we would recognize the meaning of that term before 1970. On the other hand, the unconscious tribal appeal of racism persists. It’s a seductively simple way for some people to explain away the disconcerting complexities of modern life, and it activates a whole set of emotions that appeal to group solidarity and self-esteem, even among educated, cosmopolitan and otherwise-sophisticated people. In a desperate struggle for political and economic power, the big red button of race is just too tempting to resist pushing – not because white politicians are necessarily still interested in oppressing blacks (though of course a few are), but because it is such a cheap and easy way of mobilizing white votes.
Which brings us back to the Voting Rights Act reauthorization. There is a legitimate debate on whether, as legislation, it remains necessary in modern America. For the record, I think it does, but that’s a case that needs to be made with facts, and it’s not racist on its face to suggest that it might not be. There’s also the very stark fact that blacks vote Democratic by some 90%, which makes support for reauthorization a much easier political position for Democrats to take than Republicans. Finally, there are issues with leadership in the African-American community, which, while entirely tangential to the principle of voting rights, will unfortunately color the debate.
Most significantly, for the first time in a generation, reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act puts civil rights squarely on the legislative agenda. There’s no need for proxy issues, no need for code words. And unlike the last time, power rests firmly in the hands of those who represent the values and interests of “traditional Southern heritage.” Even though there is no possibility or interest in restoring the formal institutions of segregation, defeating or diluting the Voting Rights Act provides a tempting opportunity to score a symbolic victory against the signature triumph of 20th century liberalism, and, as a bonus, threatens to disenfranchise a significant portion of the opposition’s base. And it gives Rove and Bush another way to follow the strategy that Pat Buchanan advocated to Nixon: “split the country down the middle – our side will be bigger.”
Will they do it? It’s hard to see how they could resist, given their troubles on other issues and the supreme ability of race to serve as a divisive political distraction. But if they do, it won’t be because they’re racists (Bush actually seems personally very tolerant and sincerely without prejudice). It will be, as always, for reasons of power.
11:23:17 AM 
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