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Reagan Made Racism Respectable
By: George E. Curry
Weekly Column
Originally posted 6/7/2004
In a 1980 presidential debate against Jimmy Carter, the late Ronald Reagan will forever be remembered for having asked, “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?” If African-Americans were to ask themselves if they are better off today than they were before eight years of Ronald Reagan in the White House, the answer would be an emphatic no.
Ronald Reagan was an amiable figurehead who made racism respectable. Efforts to re-write history, even by newspapers with so-called liberal editorial pages, cannot change that fact. I didn’t say he was a racist – I said had he made racism respectable. And he did so by launching an all-out attack on civil rights, all while smiling, tilting his head to the side, and doing a better acting job in the White House than he ever did in Hollywood.
Reagan made his White House mission clear by kicking off his 1980 general election campaign in Philadelphia, Miss., where three civil rights workers had been murdered in 1964.
Reagan appointed William Bradford Reynolds as assistant attorney general for civil rights. Not only did Reynolds make it clear that the administration would no longer use goals and timetables to help eradicate racial discrimination, he went so far as to seek the invalidation of voluntary affirmative action programs around the country.
Reynolds wasn’t Reagan’s only bad appointment. He selected William H. Rehnquist, then the most conservative member of the Supreme Court, to become chief justice. Reagan appointed Antonin Scalia, who was even more conservative than Rehnquist, to a seat on the court. He also picked Sandra Day O’Conner, a conservative who slightly moderated some of her views after being elevated to the High Court, and Anthony Kennedy, who remained a true conservative.
At the executive level, Clarence Pendleton, a divisive Black conservative, was appointed chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. His selection ended what had been a history of bi-partisan cooperation on the commission, which had been created under Dwight D. Eisenhower, a Republican. Initially, Reagan had sought to disband the commission, but Congress overruled him.
Clarence Thomas, was first appointed to a post in the Department of Education before being named to head the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). Reagan’s lone Black cabinet member, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Sam Pierce was so ineffectual that he was called “Silent Sam.” He was such a non-entity that Reagan didn’t even recognize him at a reception for mayors, greeting him as “Mr. Mayor.”
When I was covering the White House for the Chicago Tribune during the Reagan years, aides would concede off the record that Reagan’s I.Q. was lower than room temperature.
It has always amused me to see people struggle to say the same thing in a more sophisticated manner.
Fred I. Greenstein, a political scientist, refers to Reagan’s “hands-off” quality. Reagan biographer Lou Cannon observed: “Often, he held the reins of power so lightly that he did not appear to hold them at all. He kept busy, without taxing himself. And he was a happy president – pleased with script, his cue cards and his supporting cast.”
Clark Clifford, an adviser to a long line of Democratic presidents, was more direct, describing Reagan as “an amiable dunce.”
The lavish praise being heaped upon Reagan this week ignores his fiscal legacy. As head of a party that had come to symbolize fiscal responsibility – in words, if not deeds – Reagan entered office with a federal deficit of less than $1 trillion. But because of Reaganomics, when he left office, the deficit was three times larger. He pledged to reduce the size of government, but increased it by 200,000 employees.
Reagan presided over the worst recession since the Great Depression. He pushed through a cut in federal taxes but balanced those cuts on the backs of the poor, slicing nearly $50 billion from the budget the first year.
Reagan’s determination to overthrow the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua marked one of his greatest failures. In what was called the Iran-Contra affair, Reagan authorized the secret sale of arms to Iran in exchange for the release of kidnapped Americans held in Beirut. Top administration officials lied to Congress about the scheme that played a part in the GOP losing control of the Senate in 1986.
As you are deluged with Reagan platitudes this week, don’t be duped about the real Ronald Reagan. When they ask if Blacks are better after eight years of Reagan, adopt Nancy Reagan’s anti-drug slogan: “Just say no.”
George E. Curry is editor-in-chief of the NNPA News Service and BlackPressUSA.com. His most recent book is “The Best of Emerge Magazine,” an anthology published by Ballantine Books. Curry’s weekly radio commentary is syndicated by Capitol Radio News Service (301/588-1993). He can be reached through his Web site, georgecurry.com.
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