4
the implicit racial connotations of much of the coverage in the later part of the decade, but it does
provide a good indication of the increasing salience of race in public discussions of race during
these years.
During the Reagan administration, the linkage between welfare and race was capitalized
upon by a new populist conservative movement. While that movement was built on a broader
agenda than the politicized welfare issue, antipathy to federal public assistance nonetheless
formed an essential aspect of this burgeoning populist conservatism.
3
This conservatism became
the new basis of the national Republican Party, under the leadership of Ronald Reagan.
Race has been repeatedly bargained off of the national agenda, until the civil rights
movement forced a direct confrontation. Other than the civil war and reconstruction, the
challenges of racism and racial hierarchy were considered to be state issues. Broadly speaking,
from the end of Reconstruction through the middle of the 20
th
century, racial violence and legal
segregation were permitted to flourish in the south with national acquiescence, while other racial
matters essentially disappeared from national politics.
4
The civil rights movement challenged
this silence on racial discrimination in national politics, and by the mid-1960s the modus vivendi
between southern leaders and the rest of the nation was shattered. Race became, once again, a
central division between the two parties, and was for many years the most salient political issue
other than foreign wars.
5
as containing racial content. Stories without any such references were counted as having no racial content. On the
1962 and 1967 amendments to AFDC generally, see Cohen and Ball, 1962; CQ Almanac, 1962, p. 232 – 233; CQ
Almanac 1967, pp. 892 – 893.
3
On the conservative populist movement in the 1980s, see Dionne 1991; Edsall and Edsall 1991; Rieder in Fraser
and Gerstle, eds., 1989.
4
Woodward 1974. According to Carmines and Stimson 1989: “The ending of Reconstruction marked the end of
race as a national political issue. For most of the next eighty years, race was predominantly a regional concern,
fundamentally shaping the distinctive features of southern political life.” p. 29.
5
Carmines and Stimson 1989. Kinder and Sanders 1996 note that while most public attitudes measured by surveys
reveal a great deal of confusion and lack of clarity, attitudes toward race are “more coherent, more tenaciously held,
and more difficult to alter.”, p. 14.
Convention