The Party of Lincoln needs to reckon with its’ racial legacy to survive.
In the process of growing up, one of the most important skills a child learns is how to admit when they made a mistake and to learn from it. This same ability is held by countries and political apparatuses. Some of our most celebrated moments in American history come from admitting past faults and working to remedy them. The passage of Brown vs Board of Education and the ratification of the 19th Amendment both took that ability to reflect and admit past fault. This capability as a country is core to American Exceptionalism and our historical uniqueness. Very few countries have so readily been able to admit fault and change their behavior accordingly. The events following the death of George Floyd allow the conservative movement an opportunity to see how we might have contributed to issues of racism, and how we can move forward while taking accountability for our actions.
Since the conversation surrounding the passage of the Civil Rights movement, the conservative movement has found itself on the wrong side of the argument more than once. Decades of ink have been spilled defending Barry Goldwater’s opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Bill Buckley in the pages of National Review defended the practice of Apartheid. When Black Lives Matter and Colin Kaepernick’s kneeling protest started, pages of conservative editorial were spent on how All Lives Matter and how protesting athletes should “shut up and dribble”. conservative pundits and leaders such as Donald Trump and Rush Limbaugh demonized children such as the Central Park Five and Trayvon Martin.
These attitudes displayed by the conservative media ecosystem played out in policy and political strategy as well. How much paper has been wasted trying to downplay the racial undertones of Nixon’s Southern Strategy? How do we own the damage done to black communities through The War on Drugs? How do we be honest about the racial undertones of ads such as Willie Horton? How much ad money was spent calling black communities decaying hellholes run into the ground by Democrats? To criticize such tactics is to admit the damage done by Republican luminaries as beloved as Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr., intentionally or not. To openly admit the faults of beloved leaders is difficult for anybody, but it’s a skill any political party should have.
Instead, The conservative movement spent many years talking about how the fault for the plight of the black community was on Black Americans or Democrats, which by proxy of voting percentage is again, Black Americans. For many conservatives, Black Americans and Democrats too cavalierly used the word “racist” to define policies that had a disproportionately negative impact on their communities. They blamed rap musicians for being poor community leaders. They complained about the moral failings of black men and called black women “Welfare Queens” on the national stage. And this helped keep any blame for the issues facing Black Americans from conservatives.
For conservatives, Racism was a recessive strain of the party since very few of us were personally racist, and none of us were George Wallace. Racism as policy was a relic of the past akin to the John Birch Society. After all, the Democrats called every conservative, even men as decent as Mitt Romney, racist for supporting conservative principles. When one cries wolf too often, it inoculates people against the accusation. Trump, a very real racist, used this perception to great effect, shielding himself from accountability for his racist rhetoric and actions. Black Americans have spoken out about these issues for decades, and instead of constructively dealing with it, counter narratives were woven about how the Democrats were the real issue, not Republicans. Democrats absolutely shoulder blame for not doing more to help Black Americans, but the conservative movement has consistently failed to look inward to see what our share of the fault might be.
Maybe the conservative movement could have used Occam’s Razor to reason out some of our faults. If over 80 percent of Black voters voted for Democratic presidential candidates since 1964, maybe the issue wasn’t Black voters being tricked by Democrats, but that the conservative movement had fundamentally failed to listen to the concerns and priorities of the black community. If Black Americans were calling Republican leaders such as Steve King racist, and no conservative leaders were condemning him for fear of being shut out of Iowa, maybe that’s an issue we needed to address and roundly condemn before it became a national embarrassment. If Republican leadership only manages to condemn racism when something as egregious as Charlottesville occurs, maybe that’s a moral failing of the movement. If leading conservative voices such as Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham are engaging in racially charged dog whistles, maybe the movement needs to take a step back and reflect on how we facilitated in giving these people platforms.
We’ve managed to reckon with our past faults before. Bill Buckley himself managed to change his mind regarding civil rights. And looking at the demography of America, this reckoning needs to happen sooner than later if the conservative movement wants to survive into the next generation. Some conservatives tried to begin this in 2012, and instead of paying heed to the warning of the 2012 Autopsy, the GOP elected the leader of the Birther movement to the presidency. Until we can own our responsibilities in letting real racists into positions of power and the legacy of some of our policies on injuring the black community, we will not be able to move forward as a political movement. More importantly, until we’re honest about our failings with our voters, we won’t be able to move forward unified as a country.
Christian Thrailkill is a graduate of Southern Methodist University, musician, and columnist. He lives in Dallas, Texas. Follow him on Twitter @Wolvie616
