The Southern Strategy was a conservative political strategy that began in the presidential campaign of Richard Nixon in nineteen sixty eight. Put simply, it was a way to scare Southern white voters, many of whom were still angry about Democratic President Lyndon Johnson's signing of the Civil Rights Voting Bill in nineteen sixty five, into voting for Republicans. This was done by peppering Nixon's speeches with racially coded words like "war on crime", knowing full well who that war would be waged on. In this way, Nixon flipped the Southern states, which had been strongly Democratic for years, into Republican states. While some Republicans claim that no such strategy was ever used, conservative commentator (and former Richard Nixon staff member) Pat Buchanan defended it in twenty thirteen by writing: "After Richard Nixon cobbled together his New Majority, the GOP carried 49 states in 1972 and 1984, 44 states in 1980 and 40 in 1988." In other words, the Southern Strategy worked in Nixon's campaign, and versions of it helped Republicans win in later years.
The latest version of this strategy worked again last Tuesday when Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin won the governor's race in the state of Virginia. While there were a number of factors in his victory (like Biden dipping popularity), one of the big ones was the relatively new issue of Critical Race Theory. Building on the frustrations of public school parents who are weary of the pandemic and the fights over mask mandates in schools, the Republican party has seized on the issue of Critical Race Theory as a new thing to scare white voters with, to imply that poor little white children are being taught to hate themselves. The fact that CRT is not being taught in k through twelve schools in Virginia (or any state) and that it was a term first used in law schools is irrelevant, it just sounds scary to white parents and gets them to vote for Republicans, (Youngkin repeated the words over and over in debates and interviews) which is all that matters. In a way, it's the perfect boogieman for conservatives; Youngkin can say he will ban CRT from schools, and he isn't lying in that it isn't taught there anyway. Such is the low nature of politics that our country has fallen.
The thing that frustrates me the most is that there is a crisis in our public schools that is not being addressed: wildly uneven funding. The whole idea of public schooling in this country is based on the common sense notion that every child born here is given the opportunity of a quality education. But our current public school funding system makes a mockery of that idea. According to the funding for public schools website, about forty four percent of public school funding comes from local property taxes, and not surprisingly, the wealthier the neighborhood, the higher the property taxes and the more money that goes to public schools. Put simply, our current system results in the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.
And these differences in spending are often dramatic even within the same state. In Mississippi for example, a school in Brookhaven spends about six thousand dollars per student a year, while the neighboring Natchez spends about three thousand dollars more per student. While this disparity has lasted for years, attempts to address it have been controversial (like school bussing, which lasted a few years in the seventies but is no longer used). But whatever the remedy, it is a national disgrace that winds up hurting all of us. Poor children who go to schools like jails often wind up in real jails, something for which we all pay. So, instead of being scared of the words Critical Race Theory, I wish voters were more concerned by another far more real educational problem: the school to prison pipeline. Although there has been some movement away from our country's desire to fill our jails, America still has the highest prison population in the world. Fulfilling the promise of our public school system and making them more equal is one way that we can even the playing field for the poor in this country. Sadly, it will still be a problem long after conservative media has moved on from Critical Race Theory to some other way to scare white voters.
