Dark underbelly.
“The wedding of the Klan’s mainly working-class constituency to the Republican Party was no simple feat in light of the strong appeal that Republican candidates hold for wealthy and upper-middle-class white southerners,” the authors argued.
White working-class southerners were more receptive to Republican economic policies because they had already broken ties to the Democratic Party due to its position on civil rights, they argued.
“The Ku Klux Klan did not succeed in defending Jim Crow, but, through its similarly polarizing character, played a role in linking its working-class constituency to a political party that strongly opposes proactive intervention of the federal government to produce greater racial and class-based equality,” the researchers said.Raw StoryKKK crucial to building the South’s enduring Republican majority, study finds
Travis Gettys
10 comments:
If you were a Dixiecrat betrayed by your party, what would you do? What would Jesus do?
This narrative isn't anything new. It's been an elite white liberal meme as far back as I can remember. It's a smear job on southern whites, promoted by clueless northern, guilt ridden and intellectually dishonest, whites who largely reside in their very own segregated communities as they simultaneously browbeat those so called white KKK inspired demons from the south. Well most anyone from the south, black and white included (except for the few race baiters trafficking such nonsense), will scoff at the notion of race relations in the south being somehow uniquely toxic, especially relative to those bastions in the pompous northern quadrant of the US. Oh, and the KKK pretty much disappeared in the south once it moved towards the Republican party. Many of those haters called Democratic Party KKKers relocated to those "morally anointed" states such as Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Iowa. But, no matter, it's the Republican south where race relations exceeded the north by a significant margin during the KKKs five decade exodus northward to the Democratic promised land. To all those smug and ill informed elite northerners and their newly arrived KKK bedfellows, Al Gore would simply call it an inconvenient fact.
@ Malmo's Ghost,
As a foreigner, I can't really take sides on that. Honestly, I just don't know enough about the U.S.
However, I have noticed the holier than thou attitude some Northern Yanks assume when dealing with their Southern counterparts, in spite of which, one also finds cases of racial abuse in the North, like the choking-death in NYC.
Do you have a study arguing your point?
Malmo's Ghost wants us to believe there was nothing wrong with white southerners being racists because northerners were racists too. He also wants us to believe that white southern racists didnt move from the Dixiecrat party to the Republican party, but instead all migrated to the midwest. He is wildly wrong on both counts.
Sadly, there is still no shortage of white southern Democrat racists, but their numbers are becoming fewer and it is at least considered a major character flaw. White Republicans in Texas can say whatever racist nonsense they like without repercussion. Witness there Facebook posts on rioting in MO if you dont believe me. And white Republican politicians suffer minor media backlash for racist comments, but their polling numbers dont suffer. Dont believe me? How did Rick Perry poll after ithe name of his family ranch was revealed? Now go iron your sheet, Malmo. You've probably got a meeting to go to.
@ six,
Of course there are racist southerners. And, yes, some southern Democrats stayed in the south and became Republicans. So what? Race relations in the south are still superior to those in the north ( I know this for a fact, you?). That includes those bastions of northern liberalism, NYC, Boston and Chicago. :)
Dixiecrats, boll weevils and blue dogs - them democrats are everywhere.
+1 to what Malmo's Ghost said.
Democrats threw their New Deal working class base under the bus from at least 1976 onward. It's no wonder the working class stopped voting for Democrats. To blame it on racism is a cop-out.
My racist Southern cracker relatives continued to defend LBJ even after he passed Civil Rights legislation. The reason they abandoned Democrats was Carter's horrible economy, Clinton's NAFTA, Hillary's health care scare, and Clinton's gun ban. Obama's failed presidency has merely driven more nails into the Democrat's coffin.
http://www.salon.com/2014/12/09/democrats_vs_the_new_deal_who_really_runs_the_party_and_why_it_might_surprise_you/
Thanks, Dan.
I've lived in Lynchburg, Va, Martinsburg, W Va, Tampa, Fla, Huntington, W. Va--all before my 16th birthday in the 60's and 70's. I had my first kiss from a black gal at 13, went to all black 1st grade in Huntington, took baths with my black best friend whose dad was deputy sheriff, played basketball in Martinsburg on a team predominantly black. I also went to high school in Downers Grove, Illinois and never experienced racism like I did there. I had a black girlfriend my senior year and incurred the wrath of god because of it among my peers, something unheard of in those southern towns I lived in earlier--and if anything the south is more tolerant of minorities than ever, at least relative to the pompous north.
My grandfather was a Republican leader in W. Va. who was on the original civil rights commission appointed by Eisenhower. Never once did I hear a disparaging word about blacks from his mouth, even in the 60's. He, in fact, hated Bob Byrd and his strident racist past. So, yes, I'm sick of the northern race baiters pontificating about evil southern Republicans/whites, when in fact it was the Democratic Party aiding and abetting the racists. The idea that somehow Republicans are Satan incarnate is specious, ill informed, northern liberal fictional BS.
I don't know if race relations are better in the north or the south; it has nothing to do with my point. I do know that West Virginia is closer to Canada then the Deep South. You can literally throw a rock from Huntington into Ohio.
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