Due December 10,2020 (please read under for instructions and let me know if you can do it!)

Ronald Reagan, Neshoba County Fair Speech, 1980 Following is the speech of Ronald Reagan at the Neshoba County Fair on Sunday, Aug. 3, 1980, as transcribed from a tape recording: Thank you very much. I think you all know without my saying it that Nancy and I have never seen anything like this, because there isn't anything like this any place on earth. From the moment we got off the plane in Meridian, and from the crowds all along the way that were waving a warm welcome to us, and now, to this. Your congressman, your senator, president of your Fair, and your other officials who are here, and to your acting governor, Bill Alexander, who is governor while your governor is at the Governor's Conference, I have to tell you that several years ago when I was governor, I was the guest of your then-governor of Mississippi. It was late in the fall, toward the end of the football season, and he had me as his guest, Nancy and myself, at the game between Ole Miss and Tennessee. Now that particular season, Tennessee hadn't done very well-I mean, Ole Miss hadn't done very well. Tennessee was a powerhouse, so it was a foregone conclusion how the game would turn out-except, they forgot to tell the Ole Miss team it was a foregone conclusion. And, as football teams will, no matter how bad the season has been, they were rising to the heights, and along about the middle of the third quarter when it was apparent Ole Miss was going to win, and by several touchdowns, there was a lull in the noise of the crowd, and I heard a voice behind me up in the stands say, "Man, if they do this for him, what would they have done if John Wayne was here." God rest his soul. I don't know whether John Wayne ever had this experience or not, but I wish he had, because I don't know of anyone who would have loved it more or been more at home here than the Duke would have been, right here. Now these gifts. When I think how tough the next 12 weeks is going to be-and Nancy says she's going to sit in that [rocking chair] and eat that fruit, she's gonna be sitting on my lap. As a matter of fact, knowing what a campaign is like, I expect to sit in it about two weeks and then I'll start rocking. Finally, we'll get around to the buggy. This is just wonderful. I know that in speaking to this crowd, that I'm speaking to what has to be about 90 percent Democrat. [Shouts of "No" from the crowd.] I just meant by party affiliation. I didn't mean how you feel now. I was a Democrat most of my life myself, but then decided that there were things that needed to be changed. I know, people have been telling me that Jimmy Carter has been doing his best. And that's our problem. The President lately has been saying that I am irresponsible. And you know, I'll admit to that if he'll confess he's responsible.

We've had the New Deal, and then Harry Truman gave us the Fair Deal, and now we have a misdeal. They're having quite a fight in that conventions that's coming up. Teddy Kennedy-I know why he's so interested in poverty: He never had any when he was a kid. All of us in this race, of course-you know, there's talk now about getting our commercials together, and our television ads and so forth. I heard the other day they have one for Jimmy Carter. It's called, "The Best of the Carter Years." It's a 3-second station break. But I don't know-do you feel as I do, when they talk in Washington of balancing the budget that makes me think of a fellow sitting in a restaurant. He's ordered dinner. He knows he doesn't have any money in his pocket to pay for it, but he's hoping maybe he'll find a pearl in his oysters. Seriously, and I'm not going to take a great deal of time talking about the particular troubles we- we know what confronts us in this country. We know that an administration for three and a half years, that told us when they took office that it was going to reduce inflation to less than four percent and reduce unemployment to less than four percent, has betrayed the people with an inflation rate that they hope that they might get back down to 10 percent after it having reached 18 at the beginning of the year. The unemployment in the months of April and May alone-1, 700,000 American working people lost their jobs. I don't know how many since. But probably the worst thing is what had been done to this county on the international scene. This once proud country, this country that all the world turned to and looked to as the shelter, as the safety and as the anchor to windward. Today, our friends don't know whether they can trust us, and certainly our enemies have no respect for us. Our young men are told to pre-register in the event that we need a draft. May I suggest something I think we need much more than that, because I don't believe we need a peacetime draft. What we need is to recognize what we're asking of the young people of this country who are in the volunteer military and then provide a pay scale and benefits commensurate. But you'll never know how rewarding this is, this institution that has existed for so long-and as I said in the beginning, I know there is nothing-I have read all about it in the National Geographic. How did you ever accomplish this without a federal program? Sure, it's right that we should say we want, too, to do something about unemployment, and about inflation, about the value of our money and to get this country moving again. But I think even more important on a broader scale [is] in doing that, what we will have to do is to bring back to this country what is so evident here: Bring back the recognition that the people of this country can solve the problems, that we don't have anything to be afraid of as long as we have the people of America.

[In] more recent years with the best intention, they have created a vast bureaucracy, or a bureaucratic structure-bureaus and departments and agencies-to try and solve all the problems and eliminate all the things of human misery that they can. They have forgotten that when you create a government bureaucracy, no matter how well intentioned it is, almost instantly its top priority becomes preservation of the bureaucracy. Today, and I know from our own experience in California when we reformed welfare, I know that one of the great tragedies of welfare in America today, and I don't believe stereotype after what we did, of people in need who are there simply because they prefer to be there. We found the overwhelming majority would like nothing better than to be out, with jobs for the future, and out here in the society with the rest of us. The trouble is, again, that bureaucracy has them so economically trapped that there is no way they can get away. And they're trapped because that bureaucracy needs them as a clientele to preserve the jobs of the bureaucrats themselves. I believe that there are programs like that, programs like education and others, that should be turned back to the states and the local communities with the tax sources to fund them, and let the people [applause drowns out end of statement]. I believe in state's rights; I believe in people doing as much as they can for themselves at the community level and at the private level. And I believe that we've distorted the balance of our government today by giving powers that were never intended in the constitution to that federal establishment. And if I do get the job I'm looking for, I'm going to devote myself to trying to reorder those priorities and to restore to the states and local communities those functions which properly belong there. I'm going to try also to change federal regulations in the tax structure that has made this once powerful industrial giant in this land and in the world now with a lower rate of productivity than any of the other industrial nations, with a lower rate of savings and investment on the part of our people and put us back where we belong. Now I just want to conclude with a couple words about something that inspired me last night, and I hope it will you, too, and it's just an indication of why I still believe the answer to any problem confronting us lies with the people. Nancy and I attended a swimming meet in California last night. It's little bit in some ways like this in that it's a longtime institution at that particular community, in Irvine. So, young swimmers from all over the United States were there because this year they made it something more special. All the swimmers who were unable to compete to go to the Olympics and then go to Moscow- and I think properly so because I don't think that the Soviet Union has any characteristic that qualifies it to hold the Olympics. These young Americans, young men and young women were there competing-and in addition to the medals they were going to compete to be on an honorary Olympic team. In other words, they were competing so that at least they would be able to say that even though we could not go to the

Olympics they made the Olympic team. And I want to tell you, up there on that electric scoreboard when the times of the various events were coming off-and up above them were the times of those same events in the Olympics in Moscow. What a thrill; five young men in the 100-yard butterfly-five young men, all of whom had beaten the winning time in Moscow. A 15-year-old girl in the same event for women not only holds now the world's record as a result of that meet, but she too last night beat the gold medal winner's time in Moscow in that event. And I had the privilege of speaking to them for just a few minutes at the midway point in the swimming meet. And I called attention to the fact of the sacrifice that they had had to make, more than most have had to make, because of our feelings in this country about the Soviet Union and where the Olympics are going to be held. And I said-I wasn't quite sure-I worried a little bit because I thought some of them might have been bitter about not being allowed to go. But I said to them anyway, I hope that as the years go on, you realize, and be proud of your sacrifice because you will know that it was for the right cause. And those young people, those competitors, came to their feet with a roar and a cheer that just sent shivers down my spine. They know what they've done; they're willing to make the sacrifice, and I think this country of ours is going to be in pretty safe hands from here on out. Now I know I have to conclude, and you've been very patient, but before the press says it, I just want to say one thing about that surrey over there. I can remember when I rode one of those for real. Thank you all very much. _____________________ David Greenberg, “Dog-Whistling Dixie: When Reagan said "states' rights," he was talking about race” An academic journal would seem a more likely place than the New York Times op-ed page for a pitched debate about a 27-year-old political speech. But the speech that David Brooks, Bob Herbert, Paul Krugman, and guest contributor Lou Cannon have been arguing about for the last two weeks deserves the broader airing it's getting. The bone of contention, as readers of "Chatterbox" know, is Ronald Reagan's 1980 endorsement of "states' rights" at the Neshoba County Fair in Mississippi, close to the site of the ruthless 1964 murder of three civil rights workers. This matters because Reagan's election to the presidency that year hinged on bringing into the GOP fold several new groups—including the rank and file of white Southerners, the bulk of whom, for generations after the Civil War, wouldn't dare check a Republican name on a national ballot. Ever since, Dixie, once "solidly" Democratic, has been more or less solidly Republican.

The current row is about interpreting Reagan's defense of "states' rights" and his choice of venue. Was this language, in this place, an endorsement of the white South's wish to reverse the 20- year-old trend of using federal laws (and troops when necessary) to protect the rights of African- Americans? Or was Reagan's remark just an expression of his well-known disdain for "big government"—and his choice of Neshoba County an unhappy blunder? In the ambiguity lies the answer. The first point to emphasize is that the claim that Reagan was not personally bigoted—the linchpin, for example, of Cannon's defense of the man whose life he has chronicled five times— isn't central. Personal prejudice is far from the only or most pernicious kind of racism, and politicians who don't think ill of blacks can still exploit racist aspects of our society for their own gain. You have to understand that point to understand the conservative movement's triumph. After all, by 1980 or so, the civil rights movement had for the most part established racial equality as an undisputed good. Only in the farthest reaches of American political culture did public figures dare to make nakedly racist appeals anymore. Even segregationist standard-bearer George Wallace famously renounced his racist past in 1982 en route to re-election as governor of Alabama. These new social norms left no room for the rank white supremacism that once flowed easily from the mouths of many Southern (and non-Southern) leaders. That doesn't mean, however, that America had attained "the end of racism," as right-wing polemicist Dinesh D'Souza claimed in a 1995 book. For one thing, bigotry continued to fester privately, in sentiments and stereotypes that people were loath to share with reporters or pollsters. Even more important, though, racial inequities had become intricately woven into many policies and structures of American life—from housing patterns to popular notions about crime and welfare—and any discussion of these issues invariably carried a racial subtext. It's against this matrix of racialized social policy that Reagan's rhetoric and ideology, and that of the conservative movement more generally, has to be seen. In histories of the contemporary right, as historian Michael Kimmage has noted, a dichotomy exists. The conservative movement, which is highly self-conscious about its own history, has generated a library of triumphalist in-house chronicles, most of which deny that racism played a significant role in the success of Reagan or the right. In their telling, ascent stems from "ideas" such as small government, individual freedom, and anti-communism. This account, it should be noted, ignores that conservatives defined the first two of those ideas (if not the third) in ways that, intentionally or not, served to countenance racism. Conservatives spoke of "individual freedom," for instance, but they approached the concept from the perspective of a white businessman, not a black job-seeker. On the flip side, academic historians have put race at the center of their explanations of the right's rise. These histories tend to stress the migration of the white South from the Democratic Party to the GOP. Such history sometimes shortchanges the role of the Cold War, the Great Society, and the loosening of social mores—as well as factors like the evolution of Dixie's economy. The focus is on Republican opposition first to the civil rights movement and then to later, more controversial efforts to achieve racial equality like busing and affirmative action. At

its most tendentious, the argument comes close to stating that Reagan came to power because America, or at least the South, is racist at heart. Both accounts, obviously, are overdrawn. But there are a few more nuanced histories out there, including Chain Reaction by Tom and Mary Edsall (which Krugman cites in his latest column) and In Search of Another Country by Emory University historian Joe Crespino (who has weighed in on the Reagan-in-1980 controversy here). These credit the way that race has worked as an unspoken subtext in unlikely places. The key to the argument is that Reagan's successhinged on forging messages to Americans—not just Southern whites, incidentally, but also Catholic blue-collar workers and neoconservative intellectuals—that eschewed explicit racism while still tapping into sublimated resentments of blacks or anger at racially fraught policies like busing, welfare, and crime. In its simplest form, this multitiered message relied on code words. No one who used the phrase "states' rights" in living memory of the massive resistance movement against forced desegregation could be unaware of the message of solidarity it sent to Southern whites about civil rights. (The phrase, of course, had been bound up with racism at least since John Calhoun championed it in his defense of slavery in the 1830s.) But because the term also connoted a general opposition to the growth of the federal government's role in economic life, nonracist whites could comfort themselves that politicians like Nixon and Reagan were using it innocently—and thus shrug off any guilt they might feel for being complicit in racist campaigning. It was a dog whistle to segregationists. In the same vein, Reagan's use of phrases linked to insidious racial stereotypes—his talk of Cadillac-driving welfare queens, or "young bucks" buying T-bone steaks with food stamps—pandered to bigots while making sure not to alienate voters whom starker language would have scared away. More important, even where code words weren't at work, Reagan's very ideology contained a strong dose of racial conservatism. On one issue after another, Reagan's image and appeal was shot through with a hostility to assisting minorities with positive measures—affirmative action, legal protections for criminal defendants, welfare programs (which mainly helped whites but were perceived as mainly helping blacks). As a standard-bearer of the conservative movement, the Edsalls have written, Reagan in 1980 "revived the sharply polarized racial images of the two parties … with racial conservatism contributing decisively to the GOP advantage." As Crespino notes, the triumph of the civil rights movement and its assumptions about racial equality forced conservative Southerners to find other issues with which to galvanize voters. On these fronts, too, racial politics nonetheless shaped the debate. Southern candidates created private religious schools, for example, that could escape court-ordered integration, thus recasting the fight as one of religious freedom. In my own research, I've found that today's right-wing attacks on the "liberal media" have roots in George Wallace's relentless war in the early 1960s against the national news agencies whose reporters, he and other Southern whites believed, distorted the terms of their struggle to maintain Jim Crow. The upshot was that by 1980, race and ideology had become so commingled that one's stand on racial issues served as a proxy for one's partisan preference. Previously, economic issues had been the chief dividing line between the parties. By 1980, though, according to the Edsalls, the

changes that followed the civil rights movement had crystallized, and racial politics figured just as strongly. Almost 69 percent of the public, for example, thought the Democrats were likely to aid minorities, compared with just about 11 percent who thought the same of the Republicans. Conversely, roughly 66 percent thought the GOP "unlikely" to aid minorities, while about 12 percent said the same of the Democrats. Even talking about domestic government spending carried a tacit racial message, since public opposition to spending was highest and most intense when it came to programs devoted to the needy and to blacks. By contrast, support for government spending on Social Security, education, health care, and the environment remained robust even during the heyday of Reaganism. Building on the efforts of Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon before him, as well as of a generation of Southern Republican leaders, Reagan succeeded in altering the terms of political debate when it came to race. Stripping away the crude bigotry that had cost the white South the rest of nation's sympathy in the 1950s and 1960s, he and other conservative political leaders fashioned an ideology in which racial politics were implicit, and yet still powerful. Ever since, their followers have been able to indignantly claim that any allegations of racism are smears and slurs—and discredit the entire discussion by making it about personal prejudice rather than public policy.