Did President Reagan Oppress Blacks More Than The Klan?

Many Americans think President Ronald Reagan was one of the best presidents in American history, that his face should be on Mt. Rushmore. There is no doubt that he was a patriotic American. I think that he was the high priest of American civil religion or the high priest of the American trinity.

Some inconvenient historical facts seem to tell a different story, that Reagan did much to reverse the Civil Rights Revolution.

First, the witness of Kevin Phillips, a one time bright, zealous conservative Republican, now a disillusioned one; here is how he tells the story of the 1980s---the Reagan era. From his book, The Politics of Rich and Poor, 1990:

"The basic messages of The Politics of Rich and Poor were essentially these: that the 1980s had been a decade of fabulous wealth accumulation by the richest Americans while many others stagnated or declined; that the 1980s were, in fact, the third such capitalist and conservative heyday over the last century or so; . . . ."

Phillips cites study after study which indicates that the rich got richer and concludes that "trickle down wasn't trickling." Historically, the masses, even many Republicans, resent the rich getting richer at the expense of the middle class and the poor. While Americans are materialistic, they do have some sense of fairness and thereby react against economic extremes.

Phillips begins his book with this hard-hitting paragraph:

"The 1980s were the triumph of upper America---an ostentatious celebration of wealth, the political ascendancy of the richest third of the population and a glorification of capitalism, free markets and finance. But while money, greed and luxury had become the stuff of popular culture, hardly anyone asked why such great wealth had concentrated at the top, and whether this was the result of public policy."

According to Phillips, "Since the American Revolution the distribution of American wealth has depended significantly on who controlled the federal government, for what policies, and in behalf of which constituencies." During the Reagan era, both billionaires and the homeless grew in numbers; and the U.S. had the greatest gap between the rich and poor of any nation.

The presidents following Reagan---Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama---did little to change the dominance of the rich; the Reagan legacy remains intact. So the wealth gap is not just a Democratic or Republican one; it is an American issue.

Next, the perspective of Michelle Alexander, author the the best-selling (over 400,000) The New Jim Crow. Alexander is just as critical of the Reagan era, but more from a racism perspective:

"President Ronald Reagan officially announced the current drug war in 1982, before crack became an issue in the media or a crisis in poor black neighborhoods. . . . The Reagan administration hired staff to publicize the emergence of crack cocaine in 1985 as part of a strategic effort to build public and legislative support for the war. The media campaign was an extraordinary success. Almost overnight, the media was saturated with images of black 'crack whores,' 'crack dealers,' and 'crack babies'---images that seemed to confirm the worst negative racial stereotypes about inner-city residents. . . . helped to catapult the War on Drugs from an ambitious federal policy to an actual war."

Again the presidents following Reagan---Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama---have done little to reverse the War on Drugs, the mass incarceration of young black and Latino males; the Reagan legacy remains intact in 2015. See pages 47-53 for more information on how the Reagan administration reversed much of the Civil Right Movement. A master at the use of code words to avoid Klan type bigotry, Reagan was more dangerous than the Klan for his legacy continues today as an American legacy.

Now another black voice on the 1960s and what has happened since, that of Michael Eric Dyson; a Princeton Ph.D in Religion, a prolific author, an activist. His 2008 book on Martin Luther King is entitled April 4, 1968: Martin Luther King, Jr.s Death and how it changed America. This book is about death---physical, psychological and social death; it is also about leadership under these difficult circumstances---King, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.

Chapter Three, Facing Death, is about the damage---physical, psychological and social---centuries of oppression have done. Chapter Five, Black Family and Black Inequality, discusses the individual, family and cultural dysfunction that oppression has caused. Dyson has a fine grasp of both the social and historical factors.

Next, a few quotations from chapter three, Facing Death. While Dyson doesn't use the term post-traumatic stress disorder, he does describe the deep psychological damage systems of oppression have done to blacks:

"I am referring to the pernicious self-doubt, . . . race-doubt---that is the ontological residue of collective self-hate. . . . In then name of King's movement against all forms of oppression, we must be released. . . . And in the public realm, we hardly do better. We don't buy black, shop black, or even love black, because we think and have been taught, and often still believe, that our blackness is just not good or beautiful enough."

"Finally, one of the ugliest forms of black death is how the poor are subject to a symbolic social death.. . . . The suffer from social alienation: They lack standing, status, and protection. They are mercilessly flogged in the press, demonized by fellow citizens, made a football by politicians, viciously criticized by policy makers, and assaulted by scholars and intellectuals. The stigma the poor carry bans them from the presumption of political innocence, of being good citizens; they carry the weight of social pariah."

Dyson quotes King:

"But the problem is that the church has sanctioned every evil in the world. Whether it's racism, or whether it's the evils of monopoly-capitalism, or whether it's the evils of militarism." "we have remained silent behind the safe security of stained-glass windows."