Brandt Ayers has an interesting column in the Anniston Star in which he compares today's allegations of racial politics to those of 20, 30 and 40 years ago. His conclusion is that if you think the Clinton vs. Obama campaign has gotten in the gutter on race issues you need to crack some history books.
Ayers is the publisher of the Star, which is a rare voice of progressivism in Alabama and has been for many years. He has seen it all on the political front in Alabama for many. many years. He knows racism when he sees it.
In his most recent column he takes aim at the NYT's Maureen Dowd and her hysterical rants against the Clintons.
With respect due to her entertaining style and Pulitzer Prize (which I haven't won), I can say, "Child, you haven't seen the race card played until you've been a liberal journalist in George Wallace's Alabama."
I know something about the race card, like: "He's a integratin', skallawaggin', pool-mixin', bald-faced liar," or "He wants to bus little school chillun all over town," and "I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say: Segregation today, Segregation tomorrow ... Segregation forever!"
Ayers was around when George Wallace ruled Alabama. Those were the days when you didn't need a "dogwhistle" to get a racist message to the electorate. You just stood up and tossed the N word around like a baseball at spring training.
And those were the days when you got absolutely nowhere by trying to be a progressive.
Most people don't realize, for instance, that when Wallace first ran for governor in 1958 he was endorsed by the NAACP. His opponent, John Patterson, was backed by the Klan. Wallace, who had spoken out against the Klan, got beat. But he famously vowed never to be beat again.
After the election, aide Seymore Trammell recalled Wallace saying, "Seymore, you know why I lost that governor's race?... I was outniggered by John Patterson. And I'll tell you here and now, I will never be outniggered again."
Wallace made sure of that. He became the hardline segregationist who won in 1962. By 1963 he was standing in the schoolhouse door at the University of Alabama. Years after he was shot and wounded in Maryland, he recanted his racist past in a speech at a black church. The black community in Alabama forgave him and helped him win his last term as governor in 1983. He even made good on his word by appointing a record number of blacks to state government positions.
Wallace wasn't so much an ideological racist as he was a power-hungry opportunist. It suited his ambition to become a racist so that's what he did. If Wallace had been born in East Germany instead of Alabama he would have become a communist.
A much more recent example of playing the Race Card is Lee Atwater and the infamous Willie Horton ads of 1988 that sank Michael Dukakis.
Ayers quotes Atwater on how playing the race card had evolved from the time Wallace did it to how it had to be done in 1988.
He was asked about Ronald Reagan appealing to the racist Wallace voter by saying that he would do away with legal services and cut back on appropriations for food stamps.
Atwater answered, "You start out in 1954 by saying, 'Nigger, nigger, nigger.' By 1968 you can't say 'nigger' — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now (that) you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things, and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites …
"You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, 'We want to cut this,' is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than 'Nigger, nigger.'"
Atwater has to be more subtle than Wallace, so he dredges Willie Horton up from the slime -- a scary-looking black man set loose on the streets by that wishy-washy Massachusetts liberal Dukakis.
Bush seized on the Horton case, bringing it up repeatedly in campaign speeches. Bush's campaign manager, Atwater, predicted that, "by the time this election is over, Willie Horton will be a household name." According to one political writer, Horton never went by the name "Willie"; Atwater called him that "hoping to get more racial mileage."
Horton was the ace in the deck of race cards. And it worked to perfection.
Of course, Atwater shortly afterwards developed a brain tumor. It was said by some back then that the tumor must have been pressing against his conscience because he spent his remaining days apologizing to Dukakis and others for what he did.
My illness helped me to see that what was missing in society is what was missing in me: a little heart, a lot of brotherhood. The '80s were about acquiring -- acquiring wealth, power, prestige. I know. I acquired more wealth, power, and prestige than most. But you can acquire all you want and still feel empty. What power wouldn't I trade for a little more time with my family? What price wouldn't I pay for an evening with friends? It took a deadly illness to put me eye to eye with that truth, but it is a truth that the country, caught up in its ruthless ambitions and moral decay, can learn on my dime. I don't know who will lead us through the '90s, but they must be made to speak to this spiritual vacuum at the heart of American society, this tumor of the soul.
As vile as the Willie Horton ads were, as vile as Wallace's stand in the schoolhouse door was, both men deserve credit for seeking forgiveness from those they harmed. Doesn't excuse their actions, but it shows that redemption is possible for even the worst among us.
It's hard to imagine anyone getting away with such a blatantly racist ad today, which is probably why the "dogwhistle" concept arose -- code words that don't sound racist on their face but send a racist message to supporters.
Dogwhistling shouldn't be any more acceptable than standing in the schoolhouse door. But if in the span of just 40 years racial politics can be reduced from a defiant public spectacle to an ad with a black criminal to a silent whistle, then perhaps we can eliminate it all together.
