The Reagan/Bush Era

Carter's statements, however, were easily overtaken by the Nixon-like approach used by Ronald Reagan in 1980. Reagan officially kicked off his campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, in Neshoba County, at a fairgrounds used as a meeting place by the KKK and other racist groups. This was also the part of the state where, in 1964, civil rights workers Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner and James Chaney were killed, about which Reagan said nothing.

As Marable explains, "Reagan never used blatantly racist language, because he didn't have to. As sociologist Howard Winant astutely observed, the New Right's approach to the public discourse of race was characterized by an 'authoritarian version of color-blindness,' an opposition to any government policies designed to redress blacks' grievances or to compensate them for either the historical or contemporary effects of discrimination, and the subtle manipulation of white's racial fears. The New Right discourse strove to protect white privilege and power by pretending that racial inequality no longer existed." (p. 73)

All through the 80's, with the dominance of the Reaganites and the emergence of the center-right Democratic Leadership Council within the Democratic Party, the powers-that-be within both parties followed similar scripts during Presidential campaigns. Michael Dukakis, the Democratic standard-bearer in 1988, followed Reagan's example and went to Neshoba County, Ms. in early August, soon after the Democratic National Convention in Atlanta. Like Reagan, he did not mention Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney. He did this despite the strength of Jesse Jackson's Presidential primary campaign and the existence of the National Rainbow Coalition.

But it was George Bush's campaign manager in 1988, Lee Atwater, who came up with probably the most infamous, modern use of racism during a Presidential campaign, the outrageous linkage of Dukakis to Willie Horton.