Next time somebody's telling you about the racist Democrats of 50 years ago and how it's Republicans who passed the Civil Rights Act, just close your eyes and remember what the 1964 presidential campaign was actually like.
You probably thought it was Nixon that invented the Southern strategy in the 1968 campaign, and so did I, but I was forgetting. Barry Goldwater totally rejected racism, as we all know, and merely rejected the Civil Rights Act on these absolutely abstract grounds, nothing to do with black folks here, oh no not at all, but you know racism didn't reject him; it
knew something about him he didn't (apparently, if you know what I mean) know himself.
