Justice Stevens' death reminds that what's gained can be lost
By E.J. Dionne Jr.
The Washington Post
It was by chance that former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens died on the same day that the House of Representatives voted — sadly, very nearly along party lines — to condemn President Trump for racism in a resolution laden with quotations from Ronald Reagan. This accident of timing was highly instructive.
It can make you heartsick for our country that the discussion of Trump’s genuinely vile comments about four congresswomen of color moved so quickly from outrage to detached analysis about what the divider-in-chief was trying to accomplish politically. Trump doesn’t even have to manipulate the public conversation anymore. He knows the GOP’s spineless congressional cheering squad will always fall into line and that dissenters will be isolated. Mainstream journalism is more willing to call him out than it used to be, but eventually feels obligated to take whatever he says for granted as another exciting episode in the drama he orchestrates.
But let’s not lose track of the moment we are in. Over the course of our nation’s history, we have had moments of great progress toward racial equality and periods of betrayal and reaction. The freeing of the slaves and the empowerment of African Americans during Reconstruction after the Civil War was a triumph for justice. It was quickly followed by a loss of nerve among northern white liberals, which allowed the imposition of Jim Crow, and racial subjugation in the South once federal troops were withdrawn in 1877.
The Second Reconstruction of the 1960s once again took up the work of living up to the words of our Declaration of Independence. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were accompanied by what many of us thought (or, at least, wanted to hope) were decisive changes among white Americans in their attitudes toward race. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 reflected this new disposition, ending deep racial biases in our system for welcoming newcomers.
Perhaps it was inevitable that the Second Reconstruction would be followed by a second period of white backlash, and in truth, it has been building for decades. It began with Barry Goldwater’s conversion of the Deep South to the GOP in 1964 and former Alabama Gov. George Wallace’s 1968 presidential candidacy. Both prompted Richard Nixon’s Southern Strategy and everything that has followed.
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