Revamping Willie Horton

The GOP is still the same party it always was, motivating its base with prejudice and fear based on lies and distortions.

I grew up during a time when conservatives used Black people to scare ignorant white people into voting for them. Their stories were the result of centuries of demeaning African Americans as lazy, stupid, lascivious, and immoral. In particular, Black men threatened the virtue of young white women because they were unable to control their sexual impulses.

They used these awful stereotypes to prop up Jim Crow and a reign of terror that lasted until the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. White people resisted integration until Congress and the Supreme Court wouldn’t let them any more. Even then, they tried all kinds of schemes to keep the races separate.

In Anson County, where I grew up, conservatives forced to confront integration of the schools proposed separating children by sex, creating a school for boys and one for girls so white girls wouldn’t be threatened by Black boys. The scheme failed, but the sentiment stayed. Conservative whites opened segregationist academies all over the South and politicians used race as a dividing line in political campaigns.

Jesse Helms, part of a vanguard of conservative Democrats who left the party to build the modern GOP, openly campaigned using racial prejudice. He loudly and forcefully opposed the Martin Luther King Holiday. He used political ads to imply that Black workers were taking white jobs.

The national party followed suit. In 1988, George H. W. Bush’s presidential campaign released the infamous Willie Horton ad. The ad played on the centuries old stereotypes and implied that Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis would not protect innocent white people dangerous Black men.

The ad and much of the narrative about Black people in general was based on distortions and fabrications. Reagan coined the term “welfare queen” to describe Black women living off of government subsidies and driving Cadillacs. His story was a lie that was not debunked for years, but it served its purpose to demonize Black people.

Fortunately, most these stereotypes are on their way out. The rise of a large Black middle class with political clout proves the distortions both implausible and malicious. Anti-Black prejudice and white supremacy are not beaten yet, but a majority of people now see these tactics for what they are.

Unfortunately, conservatives have just switched their targets. Today, they’re treating immigrants the same way they did African Americans, creating and exploiting stereotypes for political gain.

Republicans have latched onto the tragic murder of Laken Riley, a nursing student in Georgia, to imply that all immigrants are dangerous and a threat to our families. Just like the Willie Horton ad blamed Michael Dukakis, Republican ads are blaming Biden for Riley’s death because her killer was an undocumented immigrant. The tag line of the latest reads, “How many killers has Biden set free?”

The ad is misleading and exploitive, but it’s meant to incite prejudice and fear. Numerous studies, including one from the conservative Cato Institute, show that immigrants are much less like to commit crimes than native-born citizens. The Cato study said, “The illegal immigrant criminal conviction rate was 45 percent below that of native‐​born Americans in Texas.” Republicans are creating fear from lies and disinformation.

On Thursday, in her rebuttal to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union, U.S. Senator Katie lied about a sex trafficking case, blaming Biden for another tragic story that took place in Mexico, not here, when George W. Bush, not Biden, was president. Republicans are exploiting people’s suffering for political gain. It’s disgusting, manipulative, and immoral.

The conservative movement of Ronald Reagan that was supposed to move beyond the populist bigotry of the pro-segregation era of Jim Crow was just a facade. Republicans have always relied on dividing the country with fear and prejudice to hold office. They’ve never moved beyond it. They’ve just shifted the targets of their hate.

I think they may be overplaying their hand and misjudging the progress that Americans have made. While securing our border is a legitimate concern, most people don’t want to demonize immigrants. They want common-sense solutions to know who is in our country and they have consistently supported a path to citizenship for law-abiding undocumented immigrants, especially those who came here as children. Republicans’ rejection of compromise legislation could backfire if Democrats make an issue it.

Immigrants are crucial to our economy and essential to who we are as a country. They provide the labor to fuel our rapidly growing economy and the innovation and motivation to create new jobs. They not only are mostly law-abiding, they are continuing the American story of building the most successful and diverse country in history.

The people supporting large scale deportations are an angry, loud, and largely ignorant minority. They are the racists that the GOP will incite and cultivate as voters. Fear and bigotry are the tools of the Republican Party and have been throughout my life. Now, they are ramping up for November. Don’t believe a word they say.