Good Obama story in the Guardian today:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/28/uselections2008.race
[Regan] was in favour of states' rights, he said, earning a lusty cheer. That sounds innocent enough as a political statement, but made in the deep south it had resonance. It was a euphemism, widely recognised at that time, for support of southern racial segregation and opposition to the meddling anti-racism of the federal government.
Is this really true? "states' rights" = racism? Even if that term encompassed racist attitudes, I find it hard to believe that that's all it meant? It seems an extremely simplistic reading (though it certainly works well in setting up Pilkington's article). But maybe someone else more familiar with the South can fill me in.
Given the location, Reagan's clarion call for states' rights was a bold and deeply cynical move. As the liberal commentator Paul Krugman has put it: "Everyone got the message."
And the message stuck. It helped convert southern whites, the so-called Dixiecrats who had backed the Democratic party for decades, to defect to Reagan's cause, securing him victory in 1980 and completing the Republican stranglehold on the south that remains firm to this day. Mississippi has voted Republican in every presidential election since Reagan entered the White House. In 2004, John Kerry carried not a single southern state.
I also find this an extremely simplistic reading of a shift from Dem to Rep for Southern whites. Pilkington's essentially saying, isn't he?, that since Regan affirmed racial segregation/racist attitudes in the South, the Republicans won enough white voters to win the election. I certainly don't know much, if anything, about the shift from Dem to Rep, but to condense it to racism is hardly useful, even if it is partly true (I'm not naive enough to say it isn't). There must have been other factors - the rise of the religious right as it was associated with the Republican party, for example, given the deeply conservative/religious leanings of the South, "the Bible belt"?
Again, if I'm misreading Pilkington, someone let me know. I'm sure racism is rampant, and probably all too horribly so among white Republicans, I'm just incredulous that racism alone made Regan win and John Kerry lose.