In his Daily News column, Stanley Crouch reviews the diversified ranks of the right wing. He says that it's important for Americans to understand the evolution of racial hostilities and the GOP.
It is hard for some to understand how the right wing of our country has become ethnically diverse. The far right is populated by plenty of individuals who, though not white, appeal to the kind of national redneck constituency that made Newt Gingrich appealing in South Carolina, where the Civil War began and where the Confederate flag still waves over government buildings.
Gingrich appealed with sly allusions to race so coded and contemptuous that they are now called “dog whistles” by commentators like Chris Matthews, Rachel Maddow and Karen Finney.
What bothers Matthews and Maddow may be more completely understood by Finney, who realizes that the hatred of our President has led the likes of Sen. Mitch McConnell to admit that his sense of duty compels him to try and make Barack Obama a one-term President.
This hatred, as I see it, extends back to a sentimentalized “lost cause” of the Civil War, in which hundreds of thousands died and the slave system that kept black Americans “in their place” was destroyed.
The redneck philosophy that defended segregation was disguised under the phrase “our Southern way of life,” which always meant white on top and black on the bottom. Ever since rednecks were welcomed into the Republican party by President Richard Nixon, overt hostility to black people was discouraged but never left the hearts of Southern troops, no matter where they lived, South or North.
Read Stanley Crouch's entire column at the Daily News.
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