Ronald Reagan, racist? Ocasio-Cortez didn’t say that — but the controversy reveals a lot about how Americans discuss race by AndrewRomano
Over the weekend, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., the Democratic Socialist and Fox News boogeywoman, sparked yet another conservative conniption when she took the stage at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas and said the words “Reagan” and “racist” in the same paragraph.
The response among Republicans was fast and furious, with dozens of commentators rushing to Twitter to defend Reagan, whom Republicans have sainted in the years since he left office. Watch @AOC accuse President Ronald Reagan of utilizing racism to"screw over all working-class Americans." https://t.co/riEfomYr2e
Consider what Ocasio-Cortez actually said at SXSW: that the “image” of “welfare queens” who were “doing nothing” but “suck[ing] on our country” was “rooted in racist caricature” and that Reagan used it to convince people to “toss out the whole safety net.” In other words, Reagan sold a policy proposal that would hurt a disproportionate number of minorities — cutting welfare and other social services — by tapping into stereotypes about African-American women.
Others continued in a similar vein. “The economic lot for blacks and Hispanics improved far more than it did for whites after Reagan’s steep tax cuts,” Larry Elder added. “In late 1982, Reagan’s second year in office, the unemployment rate for blacks was 20.4 percent. By 1989, his last year, the black unemployment rate had fallen to 11.4 percent.”
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