General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: A large majority of the Republicans I've known personally have been racist. [View all]zipplewrath
(16,646 posts)During the '50s and early '60s, the national democratic party was moving away from segregation and towards civil rights. The party desegregated the southern party structures and forced them to have integrated delegations to the national conventions. This brought the rise of attempts in the south to form their own parties such as the "Dixiecrats". Kennedy had to face this in his election. As southern politicians saw that they couldn't stay in the democratic party, and the alternate parties would have no national influence, they began to gravitate towards the republican party. Up until then, the GOP was the party the VAST majority of African Americans joined. But as the segregationists started to show up at the state level, they began to push out the African American members. In some cases they were physically pushed out, or barred, from state conventions. Both Goldwater and Nixon embraced this transition as a way to break up the "solid south" of the democratic party. It's how Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms both ended up in the GOP.
In the end it became the party most friendly to racists because the party would give them the justification for their racism with things like Willy Horton and "Welfare Queens" and the like. They would couch it in economic terms, but it was all grounded in racism and white privilege.