The Republican Right's California Racism
by Bill Hare, opednews.com
April 24th 2011
Marilyn Davenport's recent journey into the ugly world of racism exposed the
under belly of a county, party and state with a tragic history of ugly
racist conduct.
An important strategic aspect of the 74-year-old Orange County Republican
Central Committee member's conduct relates to her angry counter punch
embodying a familiar "the best defense is a good offense" strategy. Rather
than permit the onus to reside on a tasteless act depicting President Barack
Obama as a descendant of chimpanzees, Davenport denounced the revelation of
her e-mail as "cowardly".
Even the "apology" of sorts that Davenport delivered was conditional as well
as decidedly lukewarm. Davenport explained that the e-mail was sent to a
selective few people she knew who could presumably "understand" her intent.
Davenport stated that the exercise was meant as nothing more than a joke and
apologized to anyone who found the e-mail offensive. For those who did not
find it offensive there was no need for an apology and her carefully crafted
statement acknowledged this.
Orange County Republican reactionaries were in the forefront of the John
Birch Society revolution of the sixties. Its culmination was helping supply
foot soldiers who aided in Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona's defeat of
eastern establishment archrival Governor Nelson Rockefeller of New York in
the 1964 Republican presidential primary. The pivotal victory secured
Goldwater's nomination.
The ensuing Republican National Convention in San Francisco was more of a
bloodletting than a serious discussion of major political issues. Badly
outnumbered African American delegates were bullied by racist delegation
members. One African American delegate was set on fire.
Anti-media antipathy was so strong that popular NBC television reporter John
Chancellor was taken into custody and forcibly removed from the convention
floor.
Buoyed by the Goldwater success California Republicans, with Orange County
in the forefront, operated in tandem with the California Real Estate
Association to achieve a major success in the November election. While
Goldwater sustained a landslide loss in California, an initiative repealing
the recently passed Rumford Fair Housing Initiative won by a solid margin.
The "rationale" embraced by those backing the initiative, which was
ultimately overturned as unconstitutional, was that there was no racism
involved in the effort. Pro-initiative backers explained that even if one
deplores racism that citizens should have the right to practice it. That,
after all, embodies freedom, and isn't freedom part and parcel the American
way?
During the fall campaign California's Democratic Senator Pierre Salinger on
a whistle stop train campaign junket across the state had the misfortune to
stop in Orange County. Hoodlumism was the disorder of the day as he was
hooted down. Salinger sought to impose reason by stating that it was the
American way to listen and not to engage in the tactics of Nazis by shutting
off speech.
An indignant Republican woman used the best defense is a good offense tactic
in a letter to the editor that appeared in the Los Angeles Times. She noted
that Salinger referred to "Nazis" rather than "Communists" and accordingly
had revealed himself for what he was.
A Goldwater alternate delegate from California at the San Francisco
convention who watched the proceedings with great interest was a veteran
motion picture and television actor named Ronald Reagan. His acting career
was on the wane and politics provided a promising new venue to exercise his
communicative skills.
After two terms as California governor and two unsuccessful attempts to
become the Republican Party's presidential nominee, the brass ring was
finally his in 1980. When Reagan launched his ultimately successful fall
campaign against President Jimmy Carter his choice of venue was eerie.
Reagan's campaign opened in Philadelphia, Mississippi, a small town that as
of the 2000 census was home to 7,303 people. To the uninitiated the choice
was confounding. Shouldn't a major party nominee select a major city of a
large state containing a large bloc of electoral votes?
To the initiated the choice was chilling and tragically racist in its
implications. Philadelphia, Mississippi was a town with the stench of death,
an embodiment of racism at its ugliest. It was the location where in June
1964 three young civil rights workers seeking to help integrate Mississippi
were brutally killed.
Reagan's kickoff speech in Philadelphia could in any realistic political
context mean but one thing. The good old boy southern network was being
reassured that the uppity Lyndon Johnson civil rights initiative was a thing
of the past and that a new age was dawning.
Original Page:
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