Reply #92: With due respect, I disagree about the level of coding under Reagan [View All]

[Gormy Cuss]

First off, I do agree that it's getting dramatically worse now, but pre-Reagan the tolerance of racist attitudes was much less. It may have been different based on part of the country (I have a Northerner perspective) or where one was in life but unless 'those people' is subtle, I can say that I observed a dramatic shift under Reagan, especially when he was reelected. Society stopped moving forward. The backslide was slow but was present, especially among well-heeled whites. The same old racist rhetoric was used in a slightly cleaned up form. Self-correcting to 'Negro' was the code I heard most frequently, and complaining about how those people can't decide what they should be called was another---" why aren't they still called Orientals?"

IMO, the emergence of the AIDS crisis was a catalyst for the calls to rethink the liberalized society and return to the old moral standards AIDS was used directly to cut off discussions of acceptance of gays and less directly to blame women who stepped out of their traditional roles.Promiscuous behavior was the fault of women, apparently. When the HIV crisis in the African-American community became evident, the racists treated it as further evidence of their inferiority based on a lack of sexual morals. After all, their 'welfare queen' fantasy always included some reference to five kids by five different men.

The return to an acceptance of racist language grew steadily under Reagan and HW. I remember the relative lack of outrage when HW referred to Jeb's kids as the 'little brown ones.' People excused it because he was referring to his own grandchildren, as if that made it all right to say it publicly where a lot of other Latino children would hear their white president refer to them that way. W just picked up where the others left off and accelerated the pace.