This is a fascinating quote I had saved, from Harper's magazine on 12/20/10; a review of "Conservatism and Counter Revolution from Burke to Palin," by Corey Robin.
"As White House chief of staff H. R. Haldeman noted in his diary, Nixon 'emphasized that you have to face the fact that the whole problem is really the Blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes this while not apprearing to.'" Republican strategist Lee Atwater spelled out the system's elements more clearly: : "You start out in 1954 by saying 'n-----r, n-----r, n----r.' By 1968 you can't say 'n-----r'-that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff liked forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now you're talking about cuting taxes, and all the things you're talking about are totally economic things and a by-product of them is blacks get hurt worse off than whites. And subsequently maybe that is part of it."
This came to mind recently when someone on here was touting states rights. My sense is that the extreme states' rights backers--see the Tea Party-- are most likely a ruse for the dominent culture to maintain their power over the powerless. The Constitution is deemed such a brittle document that we must go back to the minds of the Framer's to glean it's ultimate meaning and woe be it to anyone deviating from Justice Scalia's distored view of federalism. Of course, blacks were slaves at that time and only worth 3/5's of a white man (forget about women--they had 150 years of fighting to do before getting the vote).
The racism of the past is with us still, witness all of the efforts on the part of Republicans nationwide (U.S.) who are desperately trying to restrict voting rights for minorities. Michigan state have stripped ten mostly poor and black towns of their elected officials, and even their local voting rights. It si like a dictatorship under Rep. Gov. Tim Johnson.
Could it be a coincidence that the Republican Party of today--so belligerent and extreme-- would desperately attempt to steal the re-election of a black man to the White House?
Do you think they will get away with it with the Supreme Court's Citizens United decison and all of the corporate money flowing into Republican coffers? As they say, follow the money. And per the Court, money is speech and Corporations are people (see Mitt Romney, millionaire).
As the bumper sticker says: "I'll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one of them."