Racism is the conservative Republican agenda. Former Republican campaign consultant Lee Atwater proved that notion back in 1981 while he was working for President Ronald Reagan.
Atwater was interviewed by Case Western Reserve University political scientist Alexander Ramis when he described how coded language can be used to win political favor with racist Republican voters.
In this audio clip, you can hear Atwater describe how racist politicians manipulate language to drive their pro-white agenda.
You start out in 1954 by saying, “N—-r, n—-r, n—-r.” By 1968 you can’t say “n—-r”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “N—-r, n—-r.
Republican politics not only target the economic plight of poor African Americans, but they have been targeting their right to vote with gerrymandering and other voter suppression laws. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
