Ronald Reagan and race

It has been said that Ronald Reagan was a benign bigot. Whilst his opponents accused him of racism during his political career, bitter articles in the present day have been written over his supposed callousness towards non-whites. With just a little willingness to look deeper into the facts, it becomes clear that Reagan was not a racist or a bigot intent on throwing blacks to the back of the bus. Misunderstanding or political frustration lies behind the claims. Whilst they are accompanied by passionate humanitarian logic, I believe they are also careless in their treatment of facts.

If Reagan was a bigot, it would not have made much sense given his early years. The son of a Catholic father, and a Protestant mother, Reagan’s religious upbringing is significant in discussions on the later Reagan and race. At a young age Dutch made a personal commitment to join the church of his mother, the Disciples of Christ, which taught that racial discrimination was as big a sin as any. It has been described how African Americans were welcomed and treated as equals in the Reagan’s home, and how Jack Reagan, Dutch’s father, refused to stay at a hotel when the owner made an anti-Semitic remark. In the home and at church, the young Ronald learnt love and tolerance for all races at a time when the southern Jim Crow system of racial segregation was at its cruellest, and racist attitudes would be found across the country. This background does not of itself prove or disprove anything, but is helpful for the ensuing discussions of Reagan’s political career, which is our concern.

Part of the carelessness with facts that I mention is the habit of some commentators to not give the whole picture. Tim Wise’s passionate essay on Reagan’s legacy (http://www.blackcommentator.com/94/94_wise_reagan.html) argues that ‘Reagan opposed the Civil Rights Act at the time of its passage . . .and never repudiated his former stand’ but this is clearly inconsistent when we consider Reagan’s unambiguous statement in 1965, a year after the passage of the said Civil Rights Act, that ‘I favor the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and it must be enforced at gunpoint if necessary’.
Whilst it is inevitable that all academics, journalists and commentators cannot help but be selective in their use of evidence, it is self-explanatory that striving for the highest level of objectivity is important.

In the same article we are told how Reagan, as Governor of California, ‘dismissed the struggle for fair and open housing, by saying that blacks were just “making trouble” and had no intention of moving into mostly white neighborhoods’ but the fact that under Reagan an unprecedented number of blacks were appointed as Californian state employees is unsurprisingly omitted. (An American Life, p.183). Wise may have a valid point, in so far as Reagan did sometimes make careless comments, but such remarks were at worst negligent, and hardly in themselves racist. Actions, as well all know, speak louder than words, and Reagan’s move to appoint more blacks speaks volumes of his real character. Reagan’s critics seem willing to attack Reagan’s race record on whatever front they can, regardless of whether such criticism is valid or truthful. Perhaps a primary example of this hollow criticism is shown when during the 1980 election Reagan made his first port of call the southern state of Mississippi. Reagan chose to speak to voters about states rights.

Several sources have claimed the subject of Reagan’s speech was a disguised appeal to the entrenched racism of southern voters. (States rights being the central issue of the American civil war). Not only disrespectful to southerners, the accusation also does Reagan a disservice, who had been an advocate of states rights throughout his political career and was clearly no opportunist. Joe R. Hicks, former protester and late convert to Republicanism, makes this point lucidly, arguing that ‘This had everything to do with Reagan's views on localizing democracy and nothing to do with courting segregationists’. (http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/hicks200407090845.asp)
It is thoroughly wrong to imply that by championing states rights Reagan must have agreed with the south’s abysmal history of institutionalised slavery, or that he was in any way pandering to it. By claiming Reagan was pandering to southern racists, his opponents had hoped to obfuscate the issues for political purposes, as critics were to continue to do during the Reagan Presidency. Policy on South Africa was just such an example.

The way Reagan’s critics describe his stance on apartheid South Africa is, once again, incomplete. Phrases such as ‘his support for apartheid South Africa’ are fairly common, which are usually designed to portray Reagan as bigoted. What is not mentioned is the fact that his support was not unqualified, and that he actually denounced the system of apartheid. What he did feel, in opposition to many, was the economic sanctions were not the answer to the countries problems. It was partly his concern for black jobs that informed this view. His 1986 address makes this very clear; that he was absolutely opposed to the system of apartheid, but that he disagreed with sanctions on strategical grounds.

It is possible to argue that Reagan didn’t actually do much to further the cause of civil rights as President, at least in terms of legislation or government programmes. But then Reagan always believed that a just society relied on government playing a limited role. He would have never been tempted to believe that by passing more legislation he could have hoped to solve America’s racial tensions overnight. Whilst President, Reagan may have had a dislike of affirmative action programmes, and blocked sanctions on apartheid South Africa, but to link these positions with bigotry is wrong. To understand how he really detested racism, there is no better place to look than in his autobiography, (An American Life, p. 385) where he describes visiting a black family who had been the victims of racism. He took time to personally visit that family. A small incident, perhaps, but it does much to offset the prevailing notion that Ronald Reagan was indifferent towards non-whites.