An audio recording of Lee Atwater’s famous description:
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, 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 “Nigger, nigger.”
I believe that in another 20 years, national American politics will no longer be primarily about race. But I’m an optimist.
MattF
Krugzilla agrees that, yes, it’s about race:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/11/the-war-on-the-poor-is-a-war-on-you-know-who/
PeakVT
I reject your evidence. We all know lieberals are the true racists. Rush told me so. /wingtard
c u n d gulag
Oh, it’ll still be about race, alright!
Not all of the children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren of our racists, misogynists, xenophobes, and/or homophobes, are growing up to be metrosexuals, hipsters, DFH’s, liberal, and/ or gay.
Maybe it won’t be a tsunami like we occasionally face every once in awhile – like since Barack Hussein Obama burst upon the scene – but fear, hatred, and rage, have always been in us.
And it’s not limited to America, either – sadly.
That reminds me of a late 70[s NY Times photo I carried around in my wallet for years, until it finally broke apart – it was one of the saddest things I’d ever seen: A little infant, in a Klan costume.
Alison
I wonder if the right wingers listen to this to wank off to…
Higgs Boson's Mate (Crystal Set)
I believed that when The Civil Rights Act of 1968 was passed. I don’t any more.
srv
If someone would send me my goddamn jurist card for a death panel, we could make this reality a lot sooner.
Chyron HR
I have it on good authority that racism is just a giant a lie made up by Angry Black Lady and Zandar, so suck it.
trollhattan
Twenty years? Try twenty generations. By then whomever is left will be too busy trying to perfect jellyfish recipes in their Fresno oceanside hut to worry about that other crap.
The Dangerman
Two decades?! Shit, I’ll settle for getting through the next 2 months without things going totally to shit and be happy about it.
Smiling Mortician
Am I the only one who noticed how much Atwater sounds like W? I started listening and it took me right back to Commander Codpiece which is unfortunate because it’s too damn early in the day to start drinking.
Mark S.
Huh, I always thought the quote was some death bed confession of Atwater. I swear I’ve read it described as such in several different places. Apparently Atwater said it 10 years before he died.
Guy
@srv: I just hope when the death panels are *finally* rolled out that they’ll have been properly tested and can handle the volume
IowaOldLady
I was pretty shocked by the way overt racism flared to life with Obama’s election. You think people have simmered down and the next day there’s a picture of POTUS with a bone in his nose.
Ruckus
Maybe primarily. Maybe. I agree with HBM that 45 yrs ago I thought(hoped maybe?) that it wouldn’t be but I also have lost that ideal. But I think it is going to take a number of generations, not just one.
Roger Moore
@Chyron HR:
ITYM that white racism is made up, because we all know that blacks are the real racists.
Eric U.
Atwater and his ilk were pretty smart, because republicans can talk about school reform, taxes, deregulation, and not be accused of racism. However, it’s pretty safe to assume that anything the republicans do has a basis of racism if you push them hard enough
Ash Can
@Eric U.: I don’t know about “anything.” Greed and sociopathy come into play sometimes too.
tbunny
In another 20 years Manhattan might be underwater.
Roger Moore
@Eric U.:
You’re forgetting about serving the plutocracy, which clearly drives a lot of their programs. So does bringing on the end of days.
Svensker
Surprised no one’s commented on Joe the Plumber’s lovely idea, via Digby
PsiFighter37
Yes, you are an optimist. No way racism still doesn’t matter in 20 years. The only way this timeline fits is if we get Latinos in Texas to do some serious GOTV and engage in higher participation rates.
If/when we take Texas, we will have killed the Republican Party for good. There’s no way they can win another presidential election, EVER, if they lose Texas.
Bill E Pilgrim
The Republicans are now at the “Monsters are due on Maple Street” stage. They’ve hated blahs, Latinos, French people, you name it, and eventually there’s so much ginned-up hate that there aren’t enough others to point it at, so they turn on each other.
Yatsuno
@Svensker: We kinda sorta mumbled about it yesterday. It just makes me want VP Julian Castro even more.
@Bill E Pilgrim:
Note to self: mumble in French around wingnuts more.
/Quebecoise
Hill Dweller
Robert Costa is breathlessly tweeting about a Cruz/Palin/Oathkeeper rally at the WWII memorial in DC this afternoon. The wingnuts are claiming it has given them momentum.
I thought it was snark initially, but Costa is apparently serious.
SiubhanDuinne
@Mark S.:
Lee Atwater did have what amounted to a deathbed conversion, but this wasn’t it. The Wikipedia entry on him provides context (Catholicism, for one).
He died the following month.
PsiFighter37
@Hill Dweller: You can only stop sniffing glue for so long.
And why the fuck do these morans still care about Sarah Palin? I feel like it’s because the base is comprised of dirty old white guys who polish their nightsticks to thoughts of MILFs/GILFs starbursts.
PsiFighter37
@SiubhanDuinne: Too little, too fucking late. If there’s a hell, I hope he’s doing a lot more trying to atone for the shit he did.
Maybe that’s cold of me, but all this guy did was renounce what he did, just so he could stick around a little longer. But if he could stick around a little longer, I bet he’d still be running Willie Horton ads.
gene108
@PsiFighter37:
I think we need to make it through 2016 and win the White House, before writing off Republican chances.
The fact we’re waiting with baited breath for Hillary to declare her candidacy or not may put us at a disadvantage. Republican candidates are already making plans for 2016.
Also, too if we don’t get a candidate with Hillary’s stature – with her work as Senator, Sec of State and first female Presidential candidate – I’m not sure the Democratic base will have the same enthusiasm to turn out for another middle aged white man.
EDIT: Democratic voters made history in 2008, in both the primary and Presidential election and I think a good chunk of voters want to make history again and will be let down, if they do not get another historic Presidential candidate.
Roger Moore
@SiubhanDuinne:
Sorry, Lee, but that problem you were describing was with your own soul, not America’s. That’s not to say that America is free of problems, but I’m fucking tired of people projecting their own flaws onto society as a whole.
Redshirt
@gene108: Amen. I don’t agree with all of Clinton’s positions or tactics, but I’ll vote/work for her gladly if she runs – I hope she does. She’ll bring out the vote in a way a boring white male will not. It is imperative Democrats keep Republicans out of positions of leadership whenever possible. Having another 8 years of Dem Presidency is just what we need to continue purging ourselves of this disease – modern “Conservatism”.
Mike G
@PsiFighter37:
At which point Texas, and every other red state, will go to an proportional system for electoral college votes, with a gerrymandered few concentrated Dem electors in the non-insane areas and a larger pool of rural Repukes.
When you’re losing, change the rules. It’s the Repuke way. They don’t just accept losing, ever.
IowaOldLady
I’m trying to recall the talk around Lee Atwater. The first word about his brain tumor is that it was “not malignant,” and someone said if so, it was the only part of him that wasn’t. Then the next it turned out it was, and the person had to walk it back.
pseudonymous in nc
@Hill Dweller:
The wingnutz on Twitter can’t decide whether the people waving a dixieflag outside the White House are librul plants or proud southrons whose HERITAGE NOT HATE no Yankee can understand.
maus
I’m an optimist, but not a utopian.
A Humble Lurker
Do yourselves a favor and don’t read the comments.
bemused
How long can lily white families remain lily white? Families are becoming more and more colorful for lack of a better word. It will take more than 20 years but those “pure” white families are shrinking. Even attempting to reproduce like the Duggers isn’t going to make a dent in the changing demographics.
AxelFoley
@IowaOldLady:
I wasn’t shocked. Nobody who’s been black in America all their life was shocked by the shit that’s come from the Right AND the Left that’s been tossed at Obama.
Visceral
I hate to say it, but politics was more honest in 1954. It’s never not been about race. It’s also never not been about class, sex (in both senses of the word), age, old business vs. new business, free stuff, language, religion, and also clothes, hair, music, etc.
Sometimes I feel like things would work better if we all dropped the one size fits all dream built ion the belief that we’re all the same on the inside and everyone everywhere is eagerly waiting for Jesus, hippies, the Marines, or the market to bring us one version or another of utopia.
Balkanization and trade agreements. Small, homogeneous communities interacting with each other only as far as they can agree to. If you don’t like it, leave, because there will be somewhere that’s perfect according to you.
scott (the other one)
@Mike G:
At which point the GOP gets something like 20 electoral votes, rather than 38. Not ideal, no, but it still means it’s nearly impossible for the GOP to win the presidency again.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@scott (the other one): You’re assuming that Texas is the only one that makes that change. What happens if Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, and Pennsylvania do the same thing?
Elie
A lot of progress and change has been and its easy to forget that but its important not to and to remember what these folks represent… the tailguard to a disappearing not only narrow national view, but a disappearing (though way more slowly), international reality. The world is blending across races, nationalities, creeds… its part of the reason the Islamists hate us so — seeing as a representing a world order where there very separate and distinct identities are getting lost in this big mix.
There will always be a tension between group identify and being part of the larger tribe. Always. Both instincts are imbedded in our genome and each can have a positive effect in survival of the species when not abused or pushed to the extreme — like this.
Neanderthals existed right along side homo sapiens — for a while… It took probably thousands of years for them to completely disappear.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
@AxelFoley: You got that right!
Drexciya
I know we’re not supposed to read too deeply into a white dude “optimistically” declaring the benefits of a deracialized national discourse, but…can we consider the extent of the history, the modern policy considerations, the injustices and the people that get excluded if national politics relegates racial issues to the limits of what well off white people are capable of noticing and finding important? And can we consider why a white person would frame the avoidance and supposed “resolution” of that topic as something that’s worthy of optimism?
DougJ’s comment was neither racially neutral or racially considerate. It would be valuable to interrogate the assumptions that make “not primarily talking about race in 20 years” get portrayed as a good thing. Or at the very least, we can interrogate the assumptions that lead people to frame discussions of race as discussions that racist white men have with one another.
Anonymous
@SiubhanDuinne:
Well, maybe. Atwater claimed that a friend gave him a Bible after the diagnosis, which he read, leading to his conversion. But Ed Rollins (no saint himself), a close confidant to Atwater, said he found the Bible after Atwater died, still in the cellophane. (In the documentary “Boogie Man.”) IIRC, a Wapo story also said that Atwater was converting to religions left and right, hoping to spin his way into heaven.
johnny aquitard
@PsiFighter37:
That struck me as him attempting to bargain.
His admissions of responsibility have this transactional element about them — “you can learn on my dime”. He was getting something out of it. He was setting himself up as wise teacher or giver of wisdom. It’s self-serving abstracted into a seemingly selfless gesture.
Real remorse and sincere acts of contrition are not transactional, they’re 1-way in that the person isn’t looking for anything in return.
I doubt he ever got to the stage of accepting his impending death. He seemed incapable of accepting what he was about and what he’d done.
Another republican scion of personal responsibility.