White Supremacy and the White House—an American Tradition

March 7, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

When Donald Trump recently refused on national TV to disassociate himself from white supremacist leader David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan, the other Republican presidential candidates and the whole Republican Party establishment fell all over themselves to exclaim horror and shock and denounce Trump. Trump’s playing up to the KKK was truly reactionary and despicable—and his phony “disavowal” of the KKK can’t cover up his ugly racism. But as for the “outrage” from the official voices—they do “protest too much,” as a Shakespeare character says. If they want to denounce Trump, why the fuck don’t they do the same for Ronald Reagan, revered by Republicans as almost a demigod (and admired by Democrats, too, as one of the “great” presidents)?!

Reagan trumped Trump when it comes to outright pandering to the Klan. He opened his 1980 presidential campaign with an appearance in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where he praised “states’ rights.” The meaning of this act was unmistakable: Philadelphia, Mississippi, was where a KKK mob murdered three civil rights workers—James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman—in 1964. And “states’ rights” was a code word used by Klansmen and their more polite supporters to justify the lynchings, murders, and other terror they used against people fighting segregation. In office, Reagan ramped up the so-called war on drugs that targeted and resulted in massive imprisonment of Black and Latino youths—while turning a blind eye to the drugs being pumped into the ghettos and barrios in the 1980s, including by CIA operatives and “assets.”

This is really ugly stuff. But we could—and we will in future issues—go into how there’s a long-running sewer stream of racist shit coming out of the mouths of U.S. presidents and presidential candidates. For now, in the interests of “equal time,” let’s look at Bill Clinton.

Clinton didn’t openly traffic with the Klan, but in his first run for the White House, in 1992, Clinton—then the governor of Arkansas—made a point of interrupting the campaign to fly back to the state to deny clemency for death-row prisoner Ricky Ray Rector, a brain-damaged Black man, and to witness his execution. Then he posed with a Georgia senator in front of a chain gang of Black prisoners at Stone Mountain, Georgia—a monument to the Confederacy and known as the birthplace of the “modern” KKK. That picture appeared widely in newspapers just before the primaries in many southern states. These actions were meant as a signal to racist whites that he would keep Black people “in their place.”

Why is there this presidential tradition of racist demagogy and catering to the KKK? These presidents, Democrats and Republicans, represent a system that, from its beginnings, has had as one of its key pillars the racism against and oppression of Black people—and other “people of color.” The exclusion of these groups of people, whether explicitly or in practice, and white supremacy have been—and continue to be—essential to the functioning of this country. And that’s why, when it comes to the position of the commander in chief of the U.S. empire, catering to white supremacy is a job requirement.

 

 

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