You could make the case that none of this has anything to do with slavery and enslavers’ ideology. You could argue that it has nothing to do with race at all, that it’s simply an aggressive effort to secure conservative victories. But the tenor of an argument, the shape and nature of an opposition movement—these things matter. Republicans stepped onto this path after America elected its first Black president, and they thereafter embraced a racist demagogue and his attacks on the legitimacy of the nation’s multiracial character; these actions speak to how the threads of history tie past and
...more
