Pedro Noguera and Robert Cohen: Remembering Reagan's Record on Civil Rights and the South African Freedom Struggle
[Pedro Noguera is the Peter L. Agnew Professor of Education at New York University. Robert Cohen is a professor of history and social studies in NYU's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development.]
Sentimental 100th birthday tributes to Ronald Reagan rolling out this month would have us believe that the “Great Communicator” led America into a bright conservative era of prosperity, ended the cold war by getting tough with the Soviets and restored America’s confidence by flexing its military muscles abroad and reining in the welfare state at home.
But in addition to overlooking the dramatic increase in homelessness that occurred on Reagan’s watch, never mind the covert counter-revolutionary operations in Central America, promoters of Reagan nostalgia consistently ignore his record on race, civil rights, and South Africa. There, Reagan’s legacy is abysmal.
Early in his political career Reagan opposed every major piece of civil rights legislation adopted by Congress, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. And even if one tries to explain away this opposition on the grounds that it came early in the history of the civil rights movement or was motivated by a misplaced reluctance to empower the federal government, Reagan’s civil rights record during his presidency is tough to justify. As President, Reagan supported tax breaks for schools that discriminated on the basis of race, opposed the extension of the Voting Rights Act, vetoed the Civil Rights Restoration Act and decimated the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). When you combine Reagan’s political record with his symbolic stance on race issues—his deriding welfare recipients as “welfare queens,” his employing “states rights” rhetoric in the same county where in 1964 three of the most infamous murders of civil rights workers occurred, his initial opposition to establish a national holiday to commemorate Martin Luther King Jr.—the Reagan legacy begins to lose much of its luster.
The part of the Reagan record that most impacted our generation of student activists during the 1980s was his refusal to support sanctions against the apartheid regime in South Africa. Evoking memories of America’s own Jim Crow past, images of South Africa’s police and military assaulting black civil rights activists sparked outrage on American campuses. Because American companies supplied vehicles and other technology used for these brutal attacks, students throughout the country called for the universities they attended to divest from companies that held investments in South Africa and helped to prop up the regime....
Read entire article at The Nation
Sentimental 100th birthday tributes to Ronald Reagan rolling out this month would have us believe that the “Great Communicator” led America into a bright conservative era of prosperity, ended the cold war by getting tough with the Soviets and restored America’s confidence by flexing its military muscles abroad and reining in the welfare state at home.
But in addition to overlooking the dramatic increase in homelessness that occurred on Reagan’s watch, never mind the covert counter-revolutionary operations in Central America, promoters of Reagan nostalgia consistently ignore his record on race, civil rights, and South Africa. There, Reagan’s legacy is abysmal.
Early in his political career Reagan opposed every major piece of civil rights legislation adopted by Congress, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. And even if one tries to explain away this opposition on the grounds that it came early in the history of the civil rights movement or was motivated by a misplaced reluctance to empower the federal government, Reagan’s civil rights record during his presidency is tough to justify. As President, Reagan supported tax breaks for schools that discriminated on the basis of race, opposed the extension of the Voting Rights Act, vetoed the Civil Rights Restoration Act and decimated the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). When you combine Reagan’s political record with his symbolic stance on race issues—his deriding welfare recipients as “welfare queens,” his employing “states rights” rhetoric in the same county where in 1964 three of the most infamous murders of civil rights workers occurred, his initial opposition to establish a national holiday to commemorate Martin Luther King Jr.—the Reagan legacy begins to lose much of its luster.
The part of the Reagan record that most impacted our generation of student activists during the 1980s was his refusal to support sanctions against the apartheid regime in South Africa. Evoking memories of America’s own Jim Crow past, images of South Africa’s police and military assaulting black civil rights activists sparked outrage on American campuses. Because American companies supplied vehicles and other technology used for these brutal attacks, students throughout the country called for the universities they attended to divest from companies that held investments in South Africa and helped to prop up the regime....