ON RACE AND INTOLERANCE IN AMERICA: FROM NIXON ON THE REPUBLICANS NEVER MADE A DENT

    They say the Heavens rejoice when one repents, even in their last moments, but in the case of Harry Dent who passed two weeks ago, there was far more time for celebration.  First the bad: while working as a strategist for Richard Nixon’s 1968 campaign, Mr. Dent sought to take advantage of uneasy or just plain bigoted whites who resented the Civil Rights Bill of 1964, using such terms as “State’s rights” and “law and order”, Dent articulated what has been known as the “Southern Strategy” and was given a large amount of credit for Nixon’s 1968 election win.  
    Now for the ugly; this ploy kept working and became such an integral part of the right wing playbook, that Ronald Reagan opened his successful 1980 campaign at Philadelphia, Mississippi, (that of “Mississippi Burning” infamy involving the murder and torture of 3 civil right’s workers), with a pledge of reverence, again, for “state’s rights”.  And unfortunately, such divisive race based strategy, used repeatedly, from Willie Horton on down, has worked for the GOP to this day.  But now the good; in 1981, Harry Dent retired from his politics of darkness and saw the light and left the practice of law to become a Southern Baptist deacon.  That same year in an interview with the Washington Post, he candidly spoke of his “Southern Strategy” as follows:  “When I look back, my biggest regret now is anything I did that stood in the way of rights of black people”, he said, “Or any people.”
    He worked to help build churches and orphanages in Romania and in the end, he proved to be a uniter not a divider:  I wonder if our president, who brags he reads little in the news, saw Mr. Dent’s obituary.