The GOP and Magic Negros
In a new Huffington Post story by Sam Stein on the GOP's now infamous Magic Negro song, I offer this observation:
"The core play in the GOP playbook for 44 years has been the magic negro
playbook," said Simon Rosenberg, head of Democratic organization NDN
and one of the most well-versed party figures on racial politics. "They
don't have another play or another playbook. Whether it is Willie
Horton, or welfare queens and tax and spend, or the way they have dealt
with immigration... they don't have a play in their playbook that
doesn't start with the exploitation of racial divisions... They are
going to have to reject 44 years of GOP politics in order to have any
chance in the 21st century America."
That a major candidate for RNC Chair could produce this song, at this time, in this year, is yet another example of why for the GOP theirs is A Long Road Back, a topic I covered in a recent essay on our blog. Their recent success as a national Party was built on an approach towards race that spoke to a different racial reality in America, an American one where could get away with magic negro songs, and much much worse of course. But that America - a white/black, majority/minority America - is now an historic relic, and is in the process of being replaced by an America that has 3 times as many minorities as it did just 44 years ago, and is on track to be majority minority by 2042 (for more on this historic demographic transformation see here). But for many in the GOP, including ones who might become their Chairman, they know no other politics than this Southern Strategy era politics, a politics that has been rejected once and for all by the American people of today's America.
It is important that the leaders of the GOP have begun to confront its shameful racial past. But their problem has no simple or easy fix. It will require a complete refashioning of their politics around a very different set of 21st century demographics and a much more tolerant understanding of race in America - and a complete and utter repudiation of much of their domestic agenda for the past half century. Which is major reason why I think their road back is such a long one - many of their leaders came to power by becoming expert in this kind of politics; it is the core play in their playbook; it is the foundation of their domestic agenda; and they know little else. Their old Southern Strategy dogs aren't going to learn new tricks - for the GOP they will have to slowly, over time, replace their anarchronistic leaders with ones schooled in the modern governing challenges, modern media and technology and modern demography of our day. The process of watching this generational replacement take place will be one of the most interesting political stories of the next 10-20 years, and of course has become all the more necessary in the age of Obama.
How many reading this blog are aware that of the hundreds of Republicans in the Senate and House, just 5 are technically minorities - 4 Cuban-Americans from South Florida and a new Vietnamese-American from Louisiana? No African-Americans, no non-Cuban Hispanics. In a nation now one-third minority the Washington Republicans remain 98 percent white and deeply out of touch with the emerging and much more complicated racial construct of our day.
My advice to them? As you remake your Grand Old Party look to Lincoln - not Nixon - for your inspiration. And good luck. The nation will be better off with a 21st century Republican Party rather than the failed, disgraced and intolerant one we have today.
Update: For fun check out how our A Long Road Back argument was addressed and discussed at the conservative website Townhall the other day.
Wed am Update: The debate rages on. The WaPo weighs in with an editorial today, and the Politico reports that "'Magic Negro' Flap Might Help Saltsman."
Fri am Update: Paul Krugman chimes in today with a very good column that echoes some of these themes.
- Simon Rosenberg's blog
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