The New-Old Southern Strategy Mixes Racism and Sexism for Nasty Results

colorlines.com — Often, when I'm trying to sum up what sounds like a dangerously antiquated policy or idea, I'll ask, "What is this? 1919?" That year, white anxiety and hostility over the post-World War I appearance of black advancement boiled over into a summer of racist rampages in cities such as Chicago and Washington, D.C. But lately 1919 hasn't been working for me. Certainly the election of President Obama has resulted in some of the most blatant expressions of white supremacist anxiety I've seen in my life. But I've been struggling to understand how the 2008 election of the first black president of the United States syncs up with the surge of anti-choice, anti-woman political activity. Between the near record number of state anti-choice bills, the growing Personhood movement, those stupid billboards branding abortion as Black genocide and recent skirmishes over Obama's co-pay free contraceptive policy, 2012 is looking more and more like 1873, when Congress outlawed the interstate sale and mailing of birth control via the Comstock Law.

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