In a long Twitter thread Princeton historian Kevin Kruse establishes that support or opposition to the 1960's civil rights laws was determined by "region" not party. Brown v. Board targeted southern "de jure" segregation which it demanded be extirpated "root and branch" in the 1968 Green v New Kent County. Despite wide and deep racism in the north, apartheid was deplored there. By 1974 the Supreme Court would declare "de jure" and other intentional racial segregation as the boundary beyond which race conscious remedies would not be tolerated. Racial integration as a -goal lasted from 1954 to its death in 1974. In Milliken v. Bradley the Supreme Court refused to "burden" suburbs with integration unless a suburban school district had itself discriminated on racial grounds. The States had already been left free to fund schools inequitably.
From 1964 to 1968 a wave of civil rights laws were passed by Democratic Congress and Senates and Democratic Presidents. (Civil rights, Voting rights, Fair Housing, But southern Democrats were obstacles, not allies. Liberal northern Republicans compensated for the southern Democrats opposition. Republican Senator Everett Dirksen (IL) denounced Barry Goldwater for his vote against the landmark 1964 Act.
After the Goldwater campaign rallied conservatives to the GOP banner conservative intellectuals like William Buckley and National Review, and insurgents like New York State's Conservative Party targeted the pro-civil rights GOP faction. Faux populists, like the TV character Archie Bunker, they lambasted liberal Republicans like New York Mayor John Lindsay as "Rockefeller Republicans" and "limousine liberals". After conservatives had come to dominate the GOP and could claim to be the "real" Republicans they lambasted the remnants of moderation as RINOs.
- gwc
No comments:
Post a Comment