Cornell University professor Ed Baptist told TPM last week that the criticism lobbed (and subsequently retracted) at his new book on slavery by a reviewer at The Economist magazine — that the book portrayed all blacks as victims and all whites as villains — was nothing new. He had heard it for a long time in history circles.
Well, here is another bit of evidence of the pervasiveness of The Economist’s line of thinking. Slate’s Dave Weigel turned up Monday (thanks to historian Rick Perlstein) a 1977 quote from soon-to-be-President Ronald Reagan discussing the television miniseries “Roots.”
“Very frankly, I thought the bias of all the good people being one color and all the bad people being another was rather destructive,” Reagan said, according to the Washington Post.
That sounds oddly familiar.
No surprise. After Reagan got the nomination in 1980, his first campaign appearance was in Philadelphia Mississippi - site of the murders of civil rights workers Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner. Reagan’s topic? States Rights
Well, Gipper, history shows that there was no one more destructive to the American Dream than you.
You were instrumental in morphing the brutality of outright slavery into a softer, more palatable, less physically brutal and slightly more racially inclusive indentured servitude, laying the foundation for the enormous and growing wealth gap that’s certain to destroy the nation altogether.
So, a hail and hearty “fuck you, Ronnie” to you and all your supporters.
Reagan once acted in a movie about John Brown’s revolt where he played one of the soldiers under Robert E. Lee who recaptured Harper’s Ferry. The movie went out of its way to romanticize slavery and the lifestyle of the antebellum South and cast as jerks anyone who would interfere with in— it would never be made today. As Reagan had a history of conflating his movie roles with life experience, this is not surprising.
Yes there is no surprise. His decision to announce his candidacy in Philadelphia, Mississippi was the one of the most despicable things he did. Scumbag
I second that “Fuck You”