For blacks, a different (Reagan) legacy [View All]

Although Ronald Reagan will be remembered as the "Great Communicator" in history books, his death has unleashed pent-up anger from some black Americans who view the Reagan years with contempt. Reagan's death has exposed a racial divide in America that separates the way some whites and some blacks view his legacy. While the news media point to the fall of the Berlin Wall, some black Americans remember Reagan for dismantling social programs and his use of racially tinged code words such as "welfare queen" and "states' rights."

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"My sense of Ronald Reagan is that blacks didn't really exist for Ronald Reagan," said David Bositis, senior political analyst for the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, who has advised the Republican and Democratic National Committees on political issues and issues pertaining to blacks. Reagan's economic policies cut taxes for the wealthy and corporations but did little to help the poor, many of whom are black, Bositis said. During Reagan's unsuccessful 1976 presidential campaign, he described a "welfare queen" driving a Cadillac, a reference seen as perpetrating the idea that blacks were defrauding the welfare system.

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Using coded language to exploit wedge issues such as affirmative action and welfare, Reagan wooed disaffected Southern whites and wrote off black voters, who were expected to vote Democratic. By opening his 1980 presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Miss., where three civil rights workers were killed in 1964, Reagan let the world know what he thought of civil rights, Nunn said. Reagan told the audience that he supported "states' rights," the code term Dixiecrats had used for segregation. Nunn said Reagan's exploitation of racial issues was a side of his legacy that many Americans didn't talk about this past week.

"A lot of what you're hearing now is that he did a lot to make Americans feel like Americans again," Nunn said. "But a lot of that was tapping into the silent majority, the angry white citizen upset over advancements in terms of civil rights. I think Ronald Reagan was a president that made racism fashionable again," Nunn said. "And he could do it with a smile. The face of racism was no longer George Wallace. ... Who can't like Ronald Reagan?"

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/bal-te.journal13jun13,0,4595887.column?coll=bal-nationworld-utility