Racism as conservative wedge strategy

This is a long article. It is worth reading very carefully in its entirety.

The racism at the heart of the Reagan presidency - Salon.com

This is an old story. The Atwater quote, in particular, should be well known by now:

You start out in 1954 by saying, “N—, n—, n—.” [Editor's note: The actual word used by Atwater has been replaced with "N—" for the purposes of this article.] By 1968 you can’t say “n—” — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I’m not saying that. But I’m saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, “We want to cut taxes and we want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “N—, n—.” So anyway you look at it, race is coming on the back burner.

The idea that was new to me in this article, or at least the enunciation of the idea,  is the idea of "positive liberty" vs. "negative liberty."

Positive liberty is basically freedom to do what you want to do. But negative liberty is freedom to keep other people from doing what you don't want them to do.

So if you want to eat in a restaurant, the principle of positive liberty says that you should be free to use a public accommodation without impediment. If you own the restaurant, the principle of negative liberty says that you should be free to refuse service to anyone for any reason.

There is much, much more to this article. Again, it is worth reading very carefully, every bit of it.