It goes back to things like the word ghetto. And today, maybe you’ve heard urban. Or how about undesirables? Oh, and my favorite (not), dangerous elements. Which would eventually become thugs. My mother would call this “gettin’ over,” but for the sake of this not history history book, let’s go with what the historians have named it: the “southern strategy.” And, in fact, it was—and remained over the next five decades—the national strategy Republicans used to unite northern and southern racists, war hawks, and fiscal and social conservatives.
