Negrophobia dissected by Rachel Maddow

D_Harvey Schmeckel

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msnbc tv- msnbc.com

I think the centuries-old tactic just jumped the shark with the attempted character assassination of Shirley Sherrod, making itself ridiculous and pathetic. Calling it racism makes it sound scary and dangerous, which it is. But calling it negrophobia makes it sound antiquated and stupid, which it also is.

Am hoping this is a teachable moment, and a turning point in the effectiveness of a despicable political tactic.
 

D_Martin van Burden

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Take a look at the first few clips on the Rachel Maddow Show again. The word "Negrophobia" was taken from a political operative's internal memo dating back to 1970. In this memo, the author writes that Republicans are unable to secure but a small margin of African-American votes, and so they should be comfortable with more letting them join the Democratic party as... "Negrophobic" whites would flock to the Republican party.
 

tripod

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Otherwise known as the "Southern Strategy".

Dreamed up by evil genius Lee Atwater (Karl Rove is an Atwater protege).

You start out in 1954 by saying, "nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968 you can't say "nigger"—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.

And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigger, nigger".
- Lee Atwater in 1981

I've never been fooled, being a Republican has always been a means to define just how "white" someone is. My skin is white, but my soul has always been adverse to "whiteness". I just don't understand how white people can feel uncomfortable around black folk.

What sick bastard would want to live in a predominantly white society in a country that was built by African slaves and stolen from the Native peoples? It makes absolutely no sense other than being contradictory and retarded.

White devils.
 

Zeuhl34

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I've never been fooled, being a Republican has always been a means to define just how "white" someone is.
White devils.

I'd say this is stretching it a bit. Admittedly for some it is like this, but I know plenty of Republicans who are not hung-up in any major way on racial issues. (Though self-identified "libertarians" who end up voting Republican are considerably more common than self-identified "Republicans" in this part of the country, so my sample may be a touch skewed.)
 

D_Harvey Schmeckel

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It's an ugly word for an ugly phenomenon. Kevin Phillips might have coined it with reference to Republican strategy in the Nixon era, and Lee Atwater might have perfected it in the Reagan/Bush years. But I used the term "centuries old" deliberately. In the 1890s the Democrats were the culprits as Jim Crow legislation was passed in state after state with a campaign of racebaiting fearmongering. Sixty years earlier in the 1830s there had been another wave of racist legislation, caused by panic about slave insurrections. (Panic fanned by sensationalist press in both cases.) The horror is that Fox News and the Tea Partiers show that racial hatemongering still works in America. Maybe its effectiveness as a political tactic has just taken a nosedive-- we can always hope.
 

Satsfakshun

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... In the 1890s the Democrats were the culprits ...

FDR did a lot to move "those" democrats to the margins. So much so that they formed a third party in the 1948 election, Dixiecrats. However, after the 1964 Civil Rights act, most of them became Republicans, i.e. Stohm Thurmond, Jesse Helms, et al.
 

TomCat84

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Otherwise known as the "Southern Strategy".

Dreamed up by evil genius Lee Atwater (Karl Rove is an Atwater protege).

You start out in 1954 by saying, "nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968 you can't say "nigger"—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.

And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigger, nigger". - Lee Atwater in 1981

I've never been fooled, being a Republican has always been a means to define just how "white" someone is. My skin is white, but my soul has always been adverse to "whiteness". I just don't understand how white people can feel uncomfortable around black folk.

What sick bastard would want to live in a predominantly white society in a country that was built by African slaves and stolen from the Native peoples? It makes absolutely no sense other than being contradictory and retarded.

White devils.

Tripod- you're forgetting that until FDR, blacks usually voted en masse for the Republican Party- a legacy of the Abe Lincoln years. I also reject your racially charged language toward the end of your post. White Devils? That kind of language has no place here.
 

D_Harvey Schmeckel

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Tripod- you're forgetting that until FDR, blacks usually voted en masse for the Republican Party- a legacy of the Abe Lincoln years. I also reject your racially charged language toward the end of your post. White Devils? That kind of language has no place here.

If "here" means NC where Tripod lives, I'm afraid that language is all too appropriate wrt Republicans-- not that I believe in devils but Jesse Helms is as diabolical a figure as has appeared on the political scene in a half century IMO. I realize that your mileage in CA may vary as there are some nonracist Republicans there. In NC, I have my doubts that they exist any more. Yet from 1865 until FDR Republicans were the anti-racist party in NC, and the track record of Democrats was consistent horrendous on racial issues.