http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/24/opinion/24krugman.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogi
n

September 24, 2007

Politics in Black and White

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Last Thursday there was a huge march in Jena, La., to protest the harsh and
unequal treatment of six black students arrested in the beating of a white
classmate. Students who hung nooses to warn blacks not to sit under a
“white” tree were suspended for three days; on the other hand, the students
accused in the beating were initially charged with second-degree attempted
murder.

And one of the Jena Six remains in jail, even though appeals courts have
voided his conviction on the grounds that he was improperly tried as an
adult.

Many press accounts of the march have a tone of amazement. Scenes like
those in Jena, the stories seemed to imply, belonged in the 1960s, not the
21st century. The headline on the New York Times report, “Protest in
Louisiana Case Echoes the Civil Rights Era,” was fairly typical.

But the reality is that things haven’t changed nearly as much as people
think. Racial tension, especially in the South, has never gone away, and
has never stopped being important. And race remains one of the defining
factors in modern American politics.

Consider voting in last year’s Congressional elections. Republicans, as
President Bush conceded, received a “thumping,” with almost every major
demographic group turning against them. The one big exception was Southern
whites, 62 percent of whom voted Republican in House races.

And yes, Southern white exceptionalism is about race, much more than it is
about moral values, religion, support for the military or other
explanations sometimes offered. There’s a large statistical literature on
the subject, whose conclusion is summed up by the political scientist
Thomas F. Schaller in his book “Whistling Past Dixie”: “Despite the best
efforts of Republican spinmeisters to depict American conservatism as a
nonracial phenomenon, the partisan impact of racial attitudes in the South
is stronger today than in the past.”

Republican politicians, who understand quite well that the G.O.P.’s
national success since the 1970s owes everything to the partisan switch of
Southern whites, have tacitly acknowledged this reality. Since the days of
Gerald Ford, just about every Republican presidential campaign has included
some symbolic gesture of approval for good old-fashioned racism.

Thus Ronald Reagan, who began his political career by campaigning against
California’s Fair Housing Act, started his 1980 campaign with a speech
supporting states’ rights delivered just outside Philadelphia, Miss., where
three civil rights workers were murdered. In 2000, Mr. Bush made a
pilgrimage to Bob Jones University, famed at the time for its ban on
interracial dating.

And all four leading Republican candidates for the 2008 nomination have
turned down an invitation to a debate on minority issues scheduled to air
on PBS this week.

Yet if the marchers at Jena reminded us that America still hasn’t fully
purged itself of the poisonous legacy of slavery, it would be wrong to
suggest that the nation has made no progress. Racism, though not gone, is
greatly diminished: both opinion polls and daily experience suggest that we
are truly becoming a more tolerant, open society.

And the cynicism of the “Southern strategy” introduced by Richard Nixon,
which delivered decades of political victories to Republicans, is now
starting to look like a trap for the G.O.P.

One of the truly remarkable things about the contest for the Republican
nomination is the way the contenders have snubbed not just blacks — who,
given the G.O.P.’s modern history, probably won’t vote for a Republican in
significant numbers no matter what — but Hispanics. In July, all the major
contenders refused invitations to address the National Council of La Raza,
which Mr. Bush addressed in 2000. Univision, the Spanish-language TV
network, had to cancel a debate scheduled for Sept. 16 because only John
McCain was willing to come.

If this sounds like a good way to ensure defeat in future elections, that’s
because it is: Hispanics are a rapidly growing force in the electorate.

But to get the Republican nomination, a candidate must appeal to the base —
and the base consists, in large part, of Southern whites who carry over to
immigrants the same racial attitudes that brought them into the Republican
fold to begin with. As a result, you have the spectacle of Rudy Giuliani
and Mitt Romney, pragmatists on immigration issues when they actually had
to govern in diverse states, trying to reinvent themselves as defenders of
Fortress America.

And both Hispanics and Asians, another growing force in the electorate, are
getting the message. Last year they voted overwhelmingly Democratic, by 69
percent and 62 percent respectively.

In other words, it looks as if the Republican Party is about to start
paying a price for its history of exploiting racial antagonism. If that
happens, it will be deeply ironic. But it will also be poetic justice.