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The Inescapability of Race
AFRICAN AMERICANS
IN CONSERVATIVE
MOVEMENTS
Louis G. Prisock
African Americans in Conservative Movements
Louis G. Prisock
African Americans
in Conservative
Movements
The Inescapability of Race
Louis G. Prisock
Rutgers University
Piscataway, NJ, USA
vii
viii Acknowledgements
xi
xii Contents
Bibliography 349
Index 369
CHAPTER 1
Notes
1. See historian Patrick Allitt’s, The Conservatives: Ideas & Personalities
Throughout American History (2009) for an excellent historical account of
the fluidity of American conservatism. Allitt demonstrates how, at times,
conservatism could be at odds with itself around such issues as democracy
and inequality, and the extent to which during its trajectory in American
history it has been in constant motion, never stagnant or rigid.
2. According to Lopez, dog whistle discourse is one that is not specific to
one political perspective as it can be used by both the right and left and is
applicable to a variety of issues targeting many different audiences.
1 INTRODUCTION—RACE: THE ACHILLES HEEL OF A MOVEMENT 7
References
Allitt, Patrick. The Conservatives: Ideas and Personalities Throughout American
History. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009.
Chattanoga, W.W. “Speaking Truth to Obliviousness,” uploaded June 24, 2015,
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2015/06/ben-car-
son-race, accessed July 14, 2016.
Cho, Sumo. “Redeeming Whiteness in the Shadow of Interment: Earl Warren,
Brown, and a Theory of Racial Redemption.” Boston College Third World Law
Journal, vol. 19, no. 1, 1998: 73–170.
Lewis, Matt. “Twitter’s Right-Wing Civil War: For a Not-Insignificant Portion
of the Online Right, a New Form of White Nationalism Is Taking Root—
And It Coincides with the Rise of Donald Trump,” uploaded July 28, 2015,
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/07/28/twitter-s-right-wing-
civil-war.html, accessed September 4, 2015.
Lopez, Ian Haney. Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have
Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class. New York: Oxford
University Press, 2014.
CHAPTER 2
“Racial pride is not a luxury I can afford…I do glory when a Negro does
something fine, I gloat because he or she has done a fine thing, but not
because he was a Negro. That is incidental and accidental. It is the human
achievement which I honor.” (Hurston 1942: 248)
Soviet expansion throughout the world with the collective help from
the US’ allies. This approach also meant the commitment of American
troops and military resources to areas that were vulnerable to commu-
nist overthrow. For some conservatives like Senator Robert Taft of Ohio,
Truman’s containment plan was ill-advised and dangerous. Taft and
other conservatives were a part of a wing that wanted much stronger
action against Communism. These distinctions in the Republican party
later became exacerbated and Senator Taft was considered to belong to a
wing known as the mid-western conservatives or isolationists.
Political analysts Chip Berlet and Matthew Lyons describe this cadre
of conservatives best as the nationalists, a group of conservatives com-
mitted to (1) the United States conducting unilateral attacks over com-
munist states instead of working collectively with its allies; (2) the idea
that US-based communists were a dangerous threat to national security
and a part of a larger global conspiracy; (3) a “rollback” approach to
social and economic issues on the domestic front (they were staunchly
hostile toward the labor movement as illustrated by the passage of the
1947 Taft-Hartley act that took away many of the rights laborers had
won during the 1930s and made it difficult for many unions to con-
duct successful labor struggles without breaking the law); and (4) doing
away with the welfare state that, according to them, irreparably harmed
American business interests and led to a form of socialist governmental
control (Berlet and Lyons 2000). Many of the nationalists were opposed
to such social movements as the Civil Rights movement. They felt this
and other movements were infiltrated and led by communist forces with
the purpose of creating internal strife so as to weaken the United States
from the “inside out.”
Many of these conservatives were also based in the mid-western,
southern, and western regions of the United States. This core represented
the right-wing segments of both the Republican and Democratic par-
ties who saw themselves as businessmen who were not a part of the silk
stocking establishment. Instead, they viewed themselves as regular people
who had succeeded by holding true to their traditional values. As Berlet
and Lyons also point out, many from this group made their living from
old manufacturing sectors like textiles and steel that were labor intensive,
which meant that profits were tied to maintaining low wages and benefits.
This group of conservatives adamantly adhered to laissez-faire individual-
ism and was hostile to any federal government intervention.
14 L. G. PRISOCK
For the most part, Eisenhower’s main objectives during his stay in the
White House were to forge unity between the moderate/liberal and con-
servative wings of the Republican Party, and to elevate what he thought
his leadership represented—modern Republicanism (Rae 1989: 40). As
the nation, particularly anti-communist right-wingers, became transfixed
on the potential threat that communism posed abroad and at home,
another storm was developing—the shake-up of the South. The trans-
formation of the south would take place on many levels—economically,
politically, and racially.
From the time of the New Deal to the beginning of the US’ entry into
the Cold War with the Soviet Union, the federal government had been
pouring into the South significant amounts of resources. At the same
time, the occurrence of several developments would impact the nation
greatly. Technological advances in transportation and communication, the
transformation of industrial technology, an increase in economic compe-
tition on a regional and international scale, and the expansion of capital
into regions like the South, which had a lower wage rate and no signif-
icant presence by organized labor, would reconfigure American urban
industrial areas all across the nation. Not only were companies look-
ing toward the South but they were also speeding toward fast-growing
regions like the West and states like California in particular (Sugrue 1996:
127). As this region known as the Sunbelt was growing and becoming
stronger, traditional industrial stronghold areas like the Northeast and
Midwest were beginning to wane in power and influence as plants were
closing and moving to other areas. This diminution led to the area’s labe-
ling as the Rust Belt. As historian Thomas Sugrue attests, the emergence
of the southern and western parts of the United States also translated into
increasing political power for those regions in Washington:
Eisenhower’s signing of the 1957 Civil Rights Act only increased the
boiling animosity white Southerners were already feeling toward the fed-
eral government. The white Southern backlash to Washington’s direc-
tion regarding civil rights was epitomized by Eisenhower’s standoff with
Arkansas governor Orval Faubus. Faubus’s resistance to allowing nine
African American students to enter Central High school as mandated by
Federal desegregation orders culminated in Eisenhower sending in fed-
eral troops to allow the nine black students entry. All hopes President
Eisenhower and other Republicans had of building a coalition with white
Southerners were dashed with Eisenhower’s decision to send in federal
troops (O’Reilly 1995: 182).