Political Crossover: The Troubling Emergence of "Black Reaganism"

Colin Jenkins @ The Hampton Institute - During the 1976 Republican Presidential Primaries, then-candidate Ronald Reagan coined the term "Welfare Queen" as he detailed the story of an African-American woman from Chicago who was arrested after using multiple identities to collect over $150,000 worth of welfare benefits. Reagan's story had a purpose: to establish a connection between the "evils of taxation" and the consequences of "illegitimate" welfare programs that "rewarded laziness," and to relay this to an American electorate poised to identify a scapegoat for what they viewed as a "dying nation." The engine behind this message was the Republican Party's overtly racist "Southern Strategy," which formulated a conscious effort to "appeal to racist whites" who Republicans believed "could never forgive the Democratic Party for its support of civil rights and voting rights for Blacks.  Read more.