How Ronald Reagan's Coded Racism Paved the Way for Trump
A former entertainment personality decides, in his later years, to go into politics. To curry favor with the Republican Party whose nomination he seeks, he cozies up to red-state extremists and evangelicals via a healthy dose of racist dog whistles. He couples that with decrying communists, liberalism, and anyone out in the streets protesting for social justice. To top it off, he then aligns himself with corporate America, running on a pro-free market, anti-regulation, tax-cutting ticket that aims to benefit the 1-percenters who make up the most powerful portion of his base—and help keep him and his family living in the lap of luxury.
Sound familiar? Of course it does, although in this instance, I’m not talking about our outgoing president, Donald Trump, but our 40th commander-in-chief, Ronald Reagan.
Such similarities are hard to miss in The Reagans, Matt Tyrnauer’s four-part Showtime docuseries (premiering Sunday, Nov. 15) about the beloved (by some) Republican president and his wife Nancy. A skillful assemblage of archival footage and talking-head interviews with former colleagues, journalists, and scholars, it casts a critical gaze at the Gipper, investigating his rise to power—and subsequent ability to charm the mainstream even through tumultuous times—from a sober remove, free from the magnetic spell he cast over the public during his tenure as California’s governor (1967-1975) and in the Oval Office (1981-1989). While it sometimes undercuts itself by leaning too heavily on certain voices, it’s a valuable examination of a leader whose legacy is more complicated than it often appears, and whose political career established the foundations upon which the present Republican Party is built.
Central to Tyrnauer’s portrait are the concepts of storytelling and myth-making. After growing up during the Great Depression, which his parents survived thanks in large part to FDR’s New Deal, Reagan parlayed his good looks and charisma into cinema stardom—or, at least, into numerous B-movie parts and roles that took advantage of his handsome stoutness. Thanks to bad eyesight, he wasn’t able to enlist in WWII, but from the beginning—and, to some extent, with the help of gossip columnist Louella Parsons—he was able to fashion a persona predicated on all-American wholesomeness by appearing in wartime propaganda movies, Westerns, and Knute Rockne, All American, which allowed him to figuratively fulfill his gridiron dreams. He was a self-made man who willed himself into being a celebrity. As his son Ronald Reagan Jr. opines, “We’re all the heroes of our own stories. He was just a little better at it than most people, I think.”
https://news.yahoo.com/ronald-reagan-coded-racism-paved-095855325.html
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Where the three Civil Rights workers were murdered in 1964. 
Reagan, White As Snow
by Alec Dubro
www.tompaine.com/, May 13, 2007
EXCERPT...
Domestically, he opposed every legislative remedy for African Americans, betraying a meanness of spirit and an open racism. As Sidney Blumenthal wrote in The Guardian in 2003:
Reagan opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, opposed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (calling it "humiliating to the South", and ran for governor of California in 1966 promising to wipe the Fair Housing Act off the books. "If an individual wants to discriminate against Negroes or others in selling or renting his house," he said, "he has a right to do so." After the Republican convention in 1980, Reagan traveled to the county fair in Neshoba, Mississippi, where, in 1964, three Freedom Riders had been slain by the Ku Klux Klan. Before an all-white crowd of tens of thousands, Reagan declared: "I believe in states' rights."
It's hard to believe now, but in 1965, a higher percentage of congressional Republicans voted for the Voting Rights Act than Democrats. Reagan, then, wasn't following party tradition; he was making a grab for the white racist vote-and it worked. Southern Democrats abandoned the party en masse for one more welcoming to white supremacy. No wonder so many loved, and still love, the man: He validated people's whiteness.
It's true that Reagan knew enough to occasionally disguise his racism. He appointed Samuel Pierce to head the Department of Housing and Urban Development, where Pierce presided over the halving of housing subsidies. No matter. Reagan couldn't remember the man's name. Once, at a reception for the nation's mayors, he greeted Pierce with a '"Hello, Mr. Mayor." Despite this, a few black conservatives, such as Armstrong Williams, were willing to validate him as someone who knew better than the "civil rights establishment" what was good for African Americans.
But it was in foreign affairs that he showed that he could rise above mere opportunism and flaunt his racism for all the world to see. He was the best friend that South Africa's apartheid government had in the developed world.
CONTINUED...
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Ronald_Reagan/Reagan_WhiteAsSnow.html
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PS: Lisa Pease is TOPS!
Bell Book Says Officials Told Racist Jokes : Reagan Aide Says He Doubts Claim by Ex-Education Secretary
October 21, 1987|Associated Press
WASHINGTON — President Reagan's first secretary of education says mid-level Administration officials made racist jokes and other scurrilous remarks during civil rights discussions, but Reagan's chief spokesman said Tuesday he does not believe it.
Terrel H. Bell, in a memoir of Reagan's first term, said the slurs included references to the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as "Martin Lucifer Coon" and calling Title IX, a federal law guaranteeing women equal educational opportunity, "the lesbian's bill of rights."
SNIP...
Bell did not identify those who made the racist or scurrilous comments. He could not be reached for further comment.
In his book, he says the jokes about King were made as Reagan was deciding whether to sign or veto a bill establishing King's birthday as a national holiday. He eventually signed it.
Bell said: "I do not mean to imply that these scurrilous remarks were common utterances in the rooms and corridors of the White House and the Old Executive Office Building, but I heard them when issues related to civil rights enforcement weighed heavily on my mind."
Bell added: "It seemed obvious they were said for my benefit, since they often accompanied sardonic references to 'Comrade Bell.' "
CONTINUED...
http://articles.latimes.com/1987-10-21/news/mn-9912_1_racist-jokes
