We are living through an ugly season of racial politics.
Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell’s Confederate History Month pronouncement, the racist fulminations of tea party leader Mark Williams and the vilification of the black Agriculture Department official Shirley Sherrod marked low points. Even Dr. Laura has gotten into the act, with an n-word-filled rant. That Sarah Palin is strongly defending.
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Michael Gerson, the former George W. Bush speechwriter who now writes for The Washington Post, pointed to the dangers that racism poses to the conservative cause in particular. “Given our history,” Gerson warned, “the tea party movement has a positive duty to assure African-Americans that it is the second coming of Barry Goldwater, not of George Wallace.”
But did Gerson have it entirely correct? True, Gov. Wallace of Alabama was a sneering racist. Sen. Goldwater of Arizona, on the other hand, was a conservative constitutionalist. History suggests, however that Gerson is overstating the difference between the two.
Because when it came down to the basic issue of racial justice, Wallace and Goldwater shared common ground.
This has lessons for today. Some conservatives may want to muzzle Williams and other racist demagogues in their ranks. But when it comes to policy, what the government should do in matters regarding racial justice, the distinction between the “strict constitutionalists” and the race-baiters should not be overstated.
In the 1960s, Goldwater was the golden boy of a resurgent conservative movement. He may have been on the far right of American politics, but he was no racial demagogue. Unlike Wallace, Goldwater did not traffic in racial slurs.
But Goldwater had condemned the 1954 Supreme Court ruling Brown v. Board of Education, which desegregated schools as “not based on law.” In 1962, federal troops restrained white mobs trying to prevent James Meredith, a black student, from attending the University of Mississippi. Goldwater said this federal action violated states’ rights.
In 1964, Goldwater voted against the Civil Rights Act, saying it threatened to create a “police state.” As biographer Rick Perlstein notes: “Of the genuine police state in the nation’s midst — Mississippi — he said nothing at all.”
Goldwater clearly liked some constitutional principles more than others. For him, the right of states to trample the freedom of African-Americans trumped equal rights as guaranteed under the 14th Amendment.
The Southern segregationists had found a hero in Goldwater. Sen. Strom Thurmond, Wallace and other race-baiting Southern Democrats embraced the new Mr. Conservative of the Republican Party.
Goldwater, on the other hand, thought Wallace was a racist thug. But both sides understood the political value of an alliance. Wallace boasted, according to Perlstein, “It must be apparent to a one-eyed N —- h who can’t see good outta his other eye that me and Goldwater would be a winning ticket.”
Goldwater’s personal dislike of Wallace was real enough, and the Goldwater-Wallace ticket wasn’t to be. But even the blind could see that Goldwater’s conservative principles undermined the constitutional rights of black Americans. When it came down to what mattered in terms of government policy, Mr. Conservative and the racial demagogues shared a common platform.
Forty years later, much remains the same in the conservative movement.
A good measure of the conservative positions on race is demonstrated in the 2010 Texas Republican state platform. As the document states, “the embodiment of the conservative dream in America is Texas.”