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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 28, 2022

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Well, the CRA was very much a signature initiative of a Democratic administration, and Democratic leadership in Congress (including Hubert Humphrey, who was instrumental in getting the civil rights plank added to the Democratic platform in 1948, leading to Southern segregationists walking out and [running their own candidate for President[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_United_States_presidential_election]). Note also that the Wikipedia page you link to indicates that Southern Republican representatives (not that there were many) unanimously voted no. So, being pro-Civil Rights was

And, as for Goldwater, he rather famously voted no on the CRA. So, when you have an election in which the candidate for one party pushed hard for the CRA, was promised to enact the Voting Rights Act if reelected, and the candidate for the other party voted against the CRA, it is not surprising that African American support for the latter party plummeted. As for why it was locked in, the Johnson Administration followed up by pushing through the Voting Rights Act, a campaign highlighted by this speech, which famously used the civil rights movement's refrain, "We shall overcome." Moreover, in the wake of the Voting Rights Act, it is hardly surprising that African American voters, especially newly enfranchised ones (this states that the pct of African Americans registered to vote went from 23% before the VRA to 61% in 1969), it is also unsurprising that the new support levels became permanent.

Finally, just as white voters in the Deep South continued to vote for Democratic (often segregationist) candidates at the state level even as they shifted to supporting Republicans for President, it is certainly possible that African Americans in the Deep South did not support Democratic candidates at the local level at the same rate that they supported Democratic candidates for President.

And, as for Goldwater, he rather famously voted no on the CRA.

It was on free market principles, not hatefully standing against regulation of hateful exclusion, that Goldwater voted against it. Every time you fill out a form for employment or credit which asks your ethnic heritage, it’s because of a vast bureaucracy of statistics and lawyers enabled by the CRA working in the background for statistical fairness, and more lawyers ready to pounce on and destroy anyone who doesn’t agree.

Of course he handed the Democratic Party a huge PR win by standing on principle, and we’re now about halfway through LBJ’s predicted century of control of the Black vote.

It was on free market principles, not hatefully standing against regulation of hateful exclusion

I am really trying to focus on analytical arguments, rather than normative ones. I did not claim that Goldwater was racist, but rather was trying to explain why African Americans might be disinclined to vote for the Republican nominee in 1964. And, it is certainly not surprising that African Americans, and many others, myself included, might hear a candidate say, "free market principles are more important to me than ending Jim Crow," and conclude, "Gee, this candidate might be a wonderful person without a racist bone in his body, but nevertheless his priorities are misplaced; therefore, I will not vote for him."