The Northern Strategy

New York’s epic white backlash: How a horrid 1960s relic is still with us today - Salon.com:

...New Yorkers like to feel superior to Southerners and Red Staters when it comes to race relations, but they don’t have the right. Just as Dr. King said Chicago could teach Mississippi how to hate, after he tried to challenge segregation there, New York shows what happens when fear of crime turns good people into frightened authoritarians, who’ll trade security for occasional police misconduct, as long as they don’t have to watch it on video.

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I’ve known for quite a while that Richard Nixon’s so-called “Southern strategy” — to lure white Democrats to the GOP largely around issues of race — had a strong Northern component targeting white working class “ethnics.” But I only realized writing my book that I was raised in the capital of the GOP’s Northern strategy...