Reconsidering Reagan: Racism, Republicans, and the Road to Trump

by Daniel S. Lucks

A long-overdue and sober examination of President Ronald Reagan's racist politics that continue to harm communities today and helped shape the modern conservative movement.

Ronald Reagan is hailed as a transformative president and an American icon, but within his 20th century politics lies a racial legacy that is rarely discussed. Both political parties point to Reagan as the "right" kind of conservative but fail to acknowledge his political attacks on people of color prior to and during his presidency. Reconsidering Reagan corrects that narrative and reveals how his views, policies, and actions were devastating for Black Americans and racial minorities, and that the effects continue to resonate today.

Using research from previously untapped resources including the black press which critically covered Reagan's entire political career, Daniel S. Lucks traces Reagan's gradual embrace of conservatism, his opposition to landmark civil rights legislation, his coziness with segregationists, and his skill in tapping into white anxiety about race, riding a wave of "white backlash" all the way to the Presidency. He argues that Reagan has the worst civil rights record of any President since the 1920s--including supporting South African apartheid, packing courts with conservatives, targeting laws prohibiting discrimination in education and housing, and launching the "War on Drugs"--which had cataclysmic consequences on the lives of Black and Brown people.

Linking the past to the present, Lucks expertly examines how Reagan set the blueprint for President Trump and proves that he is not an anomaly, but in fact the logical successor to bring back the racially tumultuous America that Reagan conceptualized.

Genres: Politics, History, Nonfiction, Biography, American History, United States, Political Science

370 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2020

Reviews

[Jean · Rating 4 out of 5]

I already knew most of the information in this book. What I have found helpful is that this puts most of the information into one book with references and documentation. I have been concerned about the whitewashing of Reagan’s legacy. I hope this book helps people stop and think.

The book is well written and meticulously researched and documented. I realize this is not a biography and was written to point out Reagan’s racism, as well as his flaws and mistakes he made. Normally, I prefer books that are unbiased and point out the good things done by a president as well as their mistakes. I believe the author is attempting to counter the attempts to whitewash the Reagan presidency, if so, he achieved his goal. This is an example why one should read a variety of books on both sides of an issue. I remember when Reagan was Governor of California, he tried to overturn the Fair Housing Act. The author reports that when Martin Luther King had his March for Poverty to Washington, D.C. Reagan said, “it was a fraud and a hoax”.

I noted some reviews written against the book that primarily made sarcastic remarks. I would have preferred to have read some examples of specific issues that have documentation where the author is incorrect either in source or analysis. I want to learn but need facts not rhetoric or sarcasm to evaluate their position. Overall, the book was easy to read and understand considering it is more of an academic book. It is well worth the read.

I read this as an audiobook downloaded from Audible. The book is thirteen hours and seventeen minutes. Jeff Zinn does a good job narrating the book. Zinn is an actor as well as a voice-over artist and audiobook narrator.

[Mikey B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Over the years when speaking to Americans of President Reagan there was a kind of mystical aura that came about when his name was mentioned. I was always puzzled, because many in the rest of the world found the man less than inspiring, particularly his virulent anti-communism. At best we found Reagan to be a guy with a really good PR platform.

From reading this book I also found out that African-Americans were not under the magical spell of Ronald Reagan.

Page 156 (my book) from Reagan’s inaugural address in 1980

“Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”

What this implies was to remove government programs to aid the disadvantaged. The Reagan years started a full-fledged attack on civil rights and voting rights. As the author demonstrates Blacks had to defend and fight an ongoing battle with increasing assaults on the Civil Rights Commission. Across the board more and more conservatives were appointed, like Antonin Scalia to the Supreme Court.

Page 176

For Blacks, perhaps the most frustrating consequence of the Reagan administration’s civil rights policies was that it forced the nation to refight the battles of the 1960s and 1970s and diverted precious energy from the unfinished business of the civil rights revolution: the battle for economic justice.

Historically the author demonstrates that Reagan was a prodigy of the right-wing civil libertarian Barry Goldwater who ran for President in 1964 and lost to Lyndon Johnson. Goldwater opposed the Civil Rights Act (and later the voting Rights Act) as an infringement on States Rights and personal liberties. Reagan agreed with this as well as with George Wallace, Strum Thurmond, and Jesse Helms. Reagan learnt from their mistakes and knew how to phrase his racism to make it palatable and obscure. When Reagan espoused States Rights in the South people knew what he meant – less federal interference.

Page 257

Reagan’s hostility to civil rights and civil rights enforcement eerily anticipated the policies of Trump and his administration… Reagan’s capture of the Republican Party nomination in 1980 marked the triumph of “states rights” conservatism. Reagan’s “polite racism” betrayed the fact that he perfected the art of politics of white supremacy.

Reagan captured the evangelical vote when the IRS, during the Jimmy Carter era, started targeting evangelical schools, which had sprung up after Brown vs Board of Education. They were being classified as being invalid non-taxable educational institutions because their students were predominantly white. Reagan opposed this as another government intrusion.

Also, Reagan espoused “law and order” and the “War on Drugs” – again a direct attack on African Americans which led to their mass incarceration.

The authors' explanations at the beginning of the book on Reagan’s rise to power and his governorship of California could sometimes be vague and somewhat unsubstantiated. The reader should not be forced to look at Wikipedia for explanations – for example to find what the meaning of the Rumford Fair Housing Act of California implied (Reagan opposed this). There were times at the beginning when I felt the author was acting like an over-enthusiastic prosecutor!

But later we are given the scope of what the eight-year long reign of Reagan led to.

Page 229

Reagan’s appointment of 346 federal judges… only 2 percent of whom were African American.

Page 159-160 Hubert Humphrey
“The moral test of government is how it treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; and those who are in the twilight of life, the aged; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.”

Social programs were anathema to Ronald Reagan.

Ronald Reagan often repeated this stock phrase when someone questioned him on the race issue or civil rights.

Page 148 Ronald Reagan

“I believe this nation has made great progress from the days when I was young and when this country didn’t even know it had a racial problem.”

For someone in leadership this displays gross ignorance of history – of slavery and the civil war to start with. Or maybe it was just Reagan’s way of pretending - he was good at that.

[Kimberley · Rating 4 out of 5]

A comprehensive look at the impact Ronald Reagan's polarizing presidency had on the nation, and how the resurfacing of similar attitudes and ideals set the tone for the current administration's rule.

I grew up in the 1980's, so what I remember of Reagan's presidency is draped in his wife Nancy’s "Just Say No" campaign; I have vivid memories of seeing Nancy on television, with Mr. T, and some level of awareness that her husband Ronald was not well-liked by the adults around me—my mother, in particular.

Point of fact: my motherstillloathes him...even now.

Decades later.

You can't mention his name without seeing the beginnings of a grimace cross her face because of the misguided ignorance he used in making public policy which only served to do right by those who didn’t need help at all.

My grandmother, on the other hand, who was not (as far as I know) "political", never spoke of Reagan but, in hindsight, it was clear his reign had a significant impact on her daily life.

She lived in Bed-Stuy, an area of Brooklyn, NY associated with a large share of criminal and drug activity. Spike Lee's Do The Right Thing showcased some of the issues within that neighborhood, while also highlighting the effects gentrification (in its infancy at the time) was beginning to have.

It’s also where I spent the bulk of my summers during the height of the “War on Drugs”.

While I was never intellectually aware of what was going on, it was clear my cousins—who spent the entire year there—did. The rules were always the same: stay between the streetlights, stay together, don't be out after the streetlights come on, and keep your mouth shut when folks come asking too many questions.

It wasn't until later, I was able to give context to those visits, and better understand those warnings.

As an adult I've read about mass incarceration and the 'War on Drugs', and gained an understanding of why my grandmother (a single mother of nine and foster parent of 11, during that time) had young adult sons she tried desperately to deter from getting into “that life”, why she suddenly had to become the foster parent of her own grandchildren, and what it meant to go "up state" to visit those of her sons who weren’t able to resist the temptation of “easy money”—especially when being poor was all they’d ever known.

This book was a goldmine of information, at least for me, because it lent context as to why my mother, to this day, cannot stand Reagan and why my grandmother's situation in Bed-Stuy was so dire--even though she never complained or brought attention to her circumstances.

This book allowed me to better understand the lives, of those I love, at that time, and made me keenly aware of one thing, without hesitation: Reagan was a racist. Period.

There's no way to walk away from this book and not think that way about the man so many still place on a pedestal.

No matter how well-intended he may have believed himself to be, his actions spoke a lot louder than his words (which were often just as bad), and his actions against minorities and women spoke volumes.

Lucks exposes every misstep through facts and figures, not anecdotes and opinions, and it makes it difficult to walk away from this with anything other than a negative opinion of Reagan's administration and the party he represented.

For those who continue to make excuses for a man who willfully supported apartheid, played dumb about Jim Crow, catered to separatists, called Black African Nationals "monkeys", and repeatedly tried to do away with the Voting Rights Act--going so far as to nominate a Supreme Court Justice whose ruling essentially set the rights of voters in traditionally discriminatory areas back decades--there is no explanation for your co-signing of his undeserved legacy.

There is little difference between him and the current man at the helm.

And I don't say that with any degree of respect.

I enjoyed this book and would recommend it highly to anyone with a desire to learn a bit more about how we got from there to here. It’s a revelation.

Thanks to Edelweiss+ for the Advanced eGalley of this work. Opinion is my own.

[Janet · Rating 5 out of 5]

I won this book in a Goodreads Giveaway. Thank you!
Pay no attention to those 1-star reviews. Those people did not read this book. They are obviously right-wing trolls.

The editing of Reagan's reputation over the years has been very troubling to me. It began at his funeral when President Clinton praised him without reservation. I recall watching open-mouthed. Was he talking about the person I remembered? He couldn't be. I realize it's bad form to speak ill of the dead, but really?

This book puts everything I have known about Reagan into print, with references. He always claimed not to be a bigot or racist, but his actions and statements told otherwise. I remember talking with a young person about the Reagan years and noting I always expected a race war, given how Reagan's policies declared war on the poor, unions, people in need, blue collar workers -- nonwhite people.

Reagan spoke about war as if he had served, he hadn't. He talked about God as if he had religion, he didn't. He preached family values as if he had a loving brood of children, they despised him. He talked about Hollywood as if he was a great leading man, that was Errol Flynn.

And the Reagan legacy is clearly Trump.

Reagan was NOT a good person or president. This book lays out the facts in a well researched and written manner. My only complaint is the size of the type.

[Reid tries to read · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a child Reagan was a lonely kid ashamed and scarred by having an alcoholic deadbeat as a father. To overcome his shame Reagan, the loner stuck inside his own head, found a way to shield himself from painful truths by crafting his own version of reality as he saw fit. He was raised by two liberal progressives, but when he became an actor in Hollywood he received a crash course in anti-communism via the FBI. The FBI made Reagan believe that Hollywood was under threat of a communist menace and that Reagan was one of the communists’ main targets. By being a confidential FBI informant Reagan was inoculated with an anti-communist mindset that grew within him for the rest of his life. Reagan soon found himself at the very top of a union struggle within Hollywood, during which Reagan took the side of the studios over the workers. In a time when his acting career was dying and his soon-to-be ex wife was seeing her career take off into the stratosphere, being a red-hunting studio crony thrust Reagan into new heights of fame he never thought possible (with a big helping hand from the FBI for good measure). The attention he garnered at this time would act a propellant that drove him towards more fame and attention for the rest of his life, including, by his own admission, imprinting within him the desire to become president of the United States.

Ronald’s marriage to Nancy Davis would further help push him right. She was a right wing racist raised by two even more virulent racists, and her stepfather would become like a surrogate father figure to Reagan himself, taking the place of Ronald’s absent alcoholic father. Reagan’s first job after venturing outside of the foray of Hollywood would be as an actor and ambassador for General Electric (and essentially an anti-union propagandist). It was under GE’s tutelage where Reagan would undergo, in his own words “a post graduate course in political philosophy” during which he studied F. A. Hayek’s “the road to serfdom” and became an avid fan of William F. Buckley’s “National Review”. So powerful was the influence of Reagan’s crash course in the virtues of the free market, anti-unionism, and benevolent monopolies that his speech he would routinely give to GE employees would later become his “a time for choosing” speech that he would give out on the campaign trail for Barry Goldwater in 1964. Reagan’s relationship to William F. Buckley in particular became very important in shaping Reagan into a staunch racist conservative. Buckley would eventually become a lifelong friend to Reagan, and something akin to a true father figure to Reagan’s own children. Buckley was also a strikingly brazen racist who, among other authors in “National Review”, wrote about how black people were not fit for democracy, how the South had been morally wronged by the North during the course of the civil war and reconstruction, and that segregation was ultimately justified.

When Reagan was fired from GE for being overly critical of the Tennessee Valley Authority,
whom GE had a lucrative contract with, Reagan’s anti-“big government” ideology was further solidified. These events, plus his battles with the IRS over avoiding taxes, really congealed conservative libertarianism with the racist milieu Reagan was a part of. Mixed with his cordiality, Reaganism would become a potent conservative cocktail that was first unleashed on the wider public with Reagan’s campaign speeches during the ultimately doomed presidential run of Barry Goldwater; a campaign where Goldwater‘s run at the presidency was crushed in historic fashion by LBJ. However, by appealing to racist dogwhistles like “states rights” rather than being outright racist, Goldwater‘s more acceptable racism pulled Southern Dixiecrats into the Republican Party. This would last for generations due to LBJ signing the civil rights act as well as the voting rights act after Kennedy’s assassination, which was to the dismay of Southern democrats who felt betrayed by someone they considered one of their own. On the campaign trail Reagan launched himself into political prominence, much to the jealously of Goldwater himself, by being a nice, easy going yin to Goldwater’s fiery and brash yang. Despite the fact that they had virtually the same exact beliefs Reagan’s demeanor quickly made him the face of the burgeoning conservative movement over Goldwater.

Reagan would use the white backlash to the riots in Watts, California to become the state’s governor. Watts was essentially a segregated slum without proper infrastructure like hospitals that was ruled by a ruthless police state. After the riots, which claimed 30 lives and injured more than 1,000, California gun sales shot up 200%. Reagan then used his mayorship as a springboard to push for the presidency. This started slowly at first, with him simply testing the waters and not even running a real campaign in 1968. Yet his appeal to the South was already apparent when he spoke for “states rights”, “law and order”, and compared young black activists to Nazi youth. As governor Reagan showed himself to be more of a pragmatist than some sort of great man of history who bends the world to his very will that conservatives often see him as. He passed one of the most pro-abortion pieces of legislation in the nation at the time and oversaw the latest tax increase by any governor in the history of the United States (despite running on the exact opposite promises). Still, as the self-processed ‘George Wallace of the Republican party’ Ronald Reagan had begun to show that, by the 1970s, white backlash and reaction was becoming a potent force in American politics.

When Reagan contested sitting president Gerald Ford for the Republican nomination for the 1976 election he continued to spew right-wing racist dogwhistles. By this time Reagan had openly adopted Nixon’s “Souther Strategy” of courting racist white men in the south, which was an avenue originally pried open by the Goldwater campaign. Reagan claimed “if there is a Southern Strategy then I am a part of it” and upped his usage of coded language and dogwhistles. He appealed to the standard States’ rights trope which really meant “the state’s right to segregate”. He also used a highly successful technique of attaching the lazy black woman stereotype to welfare by describing “welfare queens” who would cheat the welfare system for their own benefit. He even made up a completely exaggerated story of a black woman with “40 different drivers licenses” who was “collecting military benefits off 4 of them” and “had stolen over $100,000”. In fact no such woman existed, and the closest comparison not only had been arrested for cheating the welfare system but her money stolen totaled around a measly $8,000. Later Reagan would talk about how a “strapping young buck” (historically a code for a young black male who liked white women) was ordering expensive steaks with food stamps in the grocery line in front of him, much to the frustration of the hard working white people in line. Reagan’s ability to lie with his whole heart behind the lie never seemed to matter; he was, after all, a guy who claimed to have liberated concentration camps even though the closest he ever got to war was on a film studio backlot in the United States. While economically Reagan and Ford were essentially interchangeable Reagan was much more socially reactionary than Ford so, as Reagan gained popularity, Ford and his campaign ended up mimicking many of Reagan’s racist tropes in an effort to eat into Reagan’s racist constituency.

Reagan lost his bid as the Republican nominee in 1976, but after the failure of Jimmy Carter’s first term as president Reagan had new life. He also had the southern evangelical vote, who saw Reagan as a key to keeping their private schools on the tax exempt list; schools that were created in the first place, as it turns out, because they could essentially block any black kids from going to them due to the fact that they were private institutions. One of his biggest Evangelical supporters was preacher Jerry Falwell. Jerry was the head of what he called America’s “moral majority” who sent him and his various programs around $5 million per month; he was also vehemently anti-abortion, homophobic, let open racists like Lester Maddox and George Wallace come on his television program, and believed that segregation was ordained by the Bible.

After winning the presidential election the right wing counterrevolution’s strength, cunning, and audacity was quickly apparent. Reagan chose William Bradford Reynolds, a corporate lawyer for Du Pont, to be the head of the Civil Rights Division. Reynolds believed that affirmative action was “a kind of racial spoils system” which intentionally disadvantaged white people. Under Reynolds the Civil Rights Division would help dismantle many civil rights gained over the previous decade. Reagan also ushered in a new era of austerity into America with his Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act, which cut $35 billion dollars worth of Great Society programs aimed at helping the poor including: food stamp funding, school-lunch programs, public housing support, and job finding programs. On top of this he passed ERTA, the largest tax cut in American history which would reduce the rate of the highest tax payers (AKA the richest of the rich) from 70% down to 28% over 3 years! He then let unions know their days were number as well when he fired 11,000 striking air-traffic controllers and decertified the air-traffic controller union (PATCO). This austerity shock understandably led to massive increases in poverty and homelessness comparable to that of the Great Depression.

During Reagan’s 1976 campaign he had spoken about the possibility of invading Rhodesia in an effort to keep their white supremacist order intact. As president Reagan immediately reversed Jimmy Carter’s disapproving rhetoric about the Apartheid state in South Africa. His administration skirted around a UN embargo which prevented countries from sending arms to South Africa, and Reagan personally invited South Africa’s foreign minister (a member of a political party that had supported Nazis during ww2) to the White House; this visit would cement a new era of friendship between the two countries.

After the Iran-Contra affair Reagan’s domestic agenda seemed effectively neutered. His final domestic attack against civil rights legislation was an attempt to veto a civil rights bill (the first president to do so since Andrew Johnson), which was then overturned by congress. Luckily though, the war on drugs had already given the right a new front from which they could assault black Americans. Reagan had absolutely no sympathy for drug users, associating them with the 1960s counter culture like the protestors at Berkeley he crushed when he was governor. His estranged daughter was also a drug user which certainly didn’t soften his view. His drug czar (the head of the Drug Abuse Policy Office) chosen to run these programs was Carlton Turner, a man who believed smoking marijuana would turn people into homosexuals and spread AIDS. Under Reagan and Turner law enforcement, not drug treatment, would be the method of combating drugs. Practically overnight police budgets skyrocketed and were rapidly outfitted with military equipment as the DOJ and military were essentially blurred into one. Most of their militarized drug raids focused on predominantly black and Latino neighborhoods. Judicial discretion was also ended, meaning mandatory pre-determined sentences were imposed on the mainly black and Latino Americans incarcerated for drugs. On top of this, the mandatory sentencing act’s Civil Forfeiture Clause authorized local law enforcement agencies to keep up to 80% of the proceeds from properties seized from accused drug dealers no matter if these dealers were indicted, went to trial, or were convicted or not. As of today the United States incarcerates a higher percentage of black citizens than South Africa ever did during apartheid.

After Reagan’s presidency his dogwhistles combined with tough-on-crime rhetoric continued to be powerful political tools. George Bush’s presidential campaign ran a series of prominent adds blaming his opponent for allowing a white women to be raped by a black prisoner on furlough which proved especially effective in drawing voters to the underwhelming Bush (unmentioned was that many similar crimes happened under similar California furlough programs while Reagan was governor, which Reagan had vehemently defended). Reagan’s assertion that racism was dead and that the civil rights movement and MLK killed it (ironic considering the fact that Reagan was a vocal critic of both in their heydays) continued to be an argument conservatives used when attacking things like quotas and affirmative action for being “reverse racist” and blaming anything racist on a lack of personal responsibility. Reagan’s legacy could also be see in men like President Bill Clinton, who was possibly the perfect synthesis of Reaganite conservatism: a Southern, tough on crime, “colorblind”, anti-welfare democrat with a charismatic charm gluing it all together. It is no surprise that Clinton accelerated the war on black people and drugs with the Omnibus ‘3 strikes and you’re out’ crime bill that mandated mandatory life sentences for repeat offenders of relatively minor drug crimes. Newt Gingrich and his engineered republican takeover of the House of Representatives showed the evolution of Reaganism: no more compromising, no more funny jokes or charm, just brutal ruthless cruelty.

So let’s now compare the quintessential conservative of the 20th century to the most infamous one of the 21st century, Donald Trump. Reagan started as a mediocre actor before his ascendency to politics, while Trump started out as the son of a real estate tycoon before climbing to national prominence as the host of a mediocre reality show. Both were extremely charismatic and could genuinely be funny. Both had no problem doubling or tripling down on their many lies which the media could never seem to make stick on them. Both probably were in office while suffering through some form of dementia. Both are quite obviously racists, although Reagan’s racism was much more plausibly deniable than Trumps more open “Mexicans are bringing drugs and they’re rapists” rhetoric. While Reagan mainly focused his racism on attacking black Americans, in a post 9/11 world Trump focused on attacking Muslims as well as immigrants from Central and South America. Both were outsiders of their party before more or less completing a hostile takeover, signaling that each was changing the direction of the Republican Party; they both wanted to “Make America Great Again” after all. The direction Reagan took the party, the country, and eventually the world in was towards neoliberal austerity. He legitimized what Carter and Ford failed to make popular. Trump is different; he has often railed against neoliberal economic policies (a rhetorical symptom of the post-2008 financial crash) but has done nothing to change them. While Reagan was supported by the ruling class due to his ability to sell the coming storm to the general American public, Trump has been a distraction. He’s a loud obnoxious jester that floods the airways at the exact same time the wealthy are stealing trillions of dollars from the other 99% during the largest pandemic of our lifetime. Trump is a symptom of Reaganism in decay. No longer is the right content with dogwhistles they want shouts. No longer do they see a future where the United States functions as an expansive global power spreading wealth and freedom across the planetary frontier, they want a wall to hide their wealth behind. Trump is what happens when decades of US hostile intervention to our South leads to more people with dark skin entering a land that is supposed to be dominated by white people. Trump is what happens when a war on terror turns into a forever war; when all the patriotism and camaraderie in the wake of 9/11 decays into genocide, xenophobia, and a sense of purposelessness. Trump is what happens when almost half a century of neoliberal austerity finally comes crashing down on millions of heads in 2008. Trump is what happens when a black man is elected to the highest office in a country where black men are supposed to all be incarcerated. Without a proper left wing movement to really discipline and tutor the right, Trump is what happens when you must create fictitious enemies in lieu of the fact that the real enemy is the abstract system of capitalist accumulation.

[Bob · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's been said Trump's most impressive feat has been rehabilitation of George W Bush's image (perhaps Neil Postman would credit Will Ferrell). Always enjoy a good Reagan beat up and this does not disappoint. Given many mainstream Dems continue to pay homage to RR, it's helpful to be reminded what a racist Reagan truly was. A central take home for me was how motivation of Moral Majority and other evangelical Kristian Konservatives was segregation not Christianity. That's why it was important to beat Carter in 1980.

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book.

Written by an American political historian whose first book was on the civil rights movement and the Vietnam war, this book revisits Ronald Reagan's life and political career through the prism of race. Essentially, it shows how Reagan used anti-Black politics throughout his career to win elections. Regardless of his own personal feelings toward people of color, Reagan's policies were racist at their core and central to his entire career. Although much of this is known, Lucks brings it all together into one narrative and shows how thoroughly committed Reagan was to turning back the clock on civil rights and other areas of political progress for Black people in the US. Reagan's "sunny" disposition covered up for a very dark vision of the US and a repudiation of this country's ideals of equality for all.

Bringing together all of this material into one highly readable book makes it even clearer that the Republican party has been running on racism for decades. Trump is only the tip of a very nasty iceberg. Of course, that is not news either, but the Republican party is at a turning point and only if they come to terms with the history that this book makes clear will they ever be able to get beyond Trump, who is a throwback to the extreme right-wingery (worse than Goldwater) that Reagan cleverly papered over with his wit and congeniality. As made clear in the reaction to the George Floyd murder, the country is growing much less tolerant of this overt racism, and the Republican party now has the difficult job of having to break with its base and to find a way to lead the country without their support.

A most timely book!

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s hard to describe my feelings on this book. While it does make some good arguments, they get lost in the execution. It makes the presumption that the reader understand anti-racist terminology and paradigms. It tries to be a new biography while also sometimes trying to be a commentary. By not sticking to either, the flow of the book is interrupted. Where the book shines is the brief moments when examples are linked explicitly back to the thesis of Reagan being the foundation of the current racially charged rhetoric of the current Republican Party. It’s not going to convince any Reagan supporter of his wrong-doings, and it’s too much of a slog for casual readers of racism in America. I’d pick it up if you were interested in supporting your own research, but for the casual reader I’d leave this one alone.

[Darrell · Rating 1 out of 5]

Another rewrite of history by a left-wing moron. I'd give it zero if I could.

[Elliott · Rating 5 out of 5]

You can tell the importance of this book by how it brings a spate of barely coherent right wingers from the woodwork each too upset by the implications to converse properly.
I never understood people who think Reagan was a good president- still less the people who think he was a great president and much, much less the people who see some sort of break between Reagan and Trump. I think any reasonably minded individual who read this book, and noted the prodigious number of sources cited would find themselves sobered from the Reagan mythos.
Any others are not to be listened too.

[Monika Schrock · Rating 5 out of 5]

Much of the information is common knowledge except for the FBI piece, but it’s quite helpful to see it organized in a clear manner. It puts an end to the myth of Trump’s rise as a fluke, and really puts the emphasis on the death of the party of Lincoln. Now it’s the party of Reagan and Trump, and resembles the Old South more than a party set on abolition, freedom and basic human rights. That is truly sad, and time will tell whether another Lincoln will rise, or we will be stuck with the Reagan/Trump model of segregation and continued demonization of anyone not a White conservative.

[Bryan Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

This should be required reading for anyone interested in political and racial history. Lucks has made a thorough case that Reagan's legacy on race was horrid.

It is important to remember that although people around Reagan never heard him say blatant racist things, but his actions prove to me that he was racist. Lucks' work will be controversial to some, especially fans of the president, but it is so important to put into context what Reagan was doing for his entire career. This book does this. This is an important book in the Reagan literature.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This account of the Reagan presidency and its troubling legacy is written in a straightforward manner and for the uninformed it might seem a revelation. But anyone who was alive at the time or has read about the period knows that a large part of Reagan's legacy was racism and an appeal to a return of a pre-Civil Rights America. For those still believe Reagan was a great leader who lead America to a brighter future this book will serve as a needed corrective but as usual in such cases those who would most benefit from the book won't be open to reading it or accepting its message. The book has an important lesson to teach but it is far from an original one and it is at times needlessly repetitive which can make reading it less than enjoyable. All in all this is an average political history. This book was received as a Goodreads giveaway.

[Claire · Rating 5 out of 5]

I recently saw a tweet that said something along the lines of "growing up is realizing that Ronald Reagan is responsible for most America's problems now," and after reading this, I believe it now more than ever.

I am giving it five stars, largely to cancel out the right wingers that clearly didn't read the book and only gave it one star. I would give it a 3.5-4 star rating, as it is dry and a pretty academic read. For anyone interested in reading it, I would recommend listening to it via audiobook. Regardless of the nature of how it was written, this book is extremely important. I am continually amazed by how little American schools taught me about our nation's horrendous history.

Read this book!

[Eunice · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. A masterpiece! Please do yourself a favor and read this book. The parallels between reagan and trump are truly horrid and alarming. The book is a little dry but it's a history book so it's to be expected

[Nancy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I won this in a Goodreads giveaway.
The way some people worship Reagan has always made me uncomfortable. Like all of us he had blemishes but to many the days of his administration were close to utopian. That is if you were straight, white, and at least middle class. To those who did not fit those categories those days were a struggle if you managed to survive through them. This book shows us the warts and strips away Ron's angel wings.

[Lucie · Rating 5 out of 5]

fuck reagan!

[D · Rating 1 out of 5]

🚫 Reconsidering Lucks: Lying, Leftism and the Lane to LumpenProLucksiat

👉 Lucks’ book contains references to Reagan lying, but it is Lucks who is the liar-liar-lefty-pants-on-fire rē his own professional credentials. See evidence and “Nota Bene” comment below.

🔺 Why should any reader believe anything that Daniel Seth Lucks writes is factually correct — since he is a SUSPENDED attorney (since 2018) who is counter-factually stating (passim on the Internet) that he is an “attorney of law”? This is an issue of ethics and therefore of journalistic credibility.

👉 See Luck’s page @ CA Bar Association:
http://members.calbar.ca.gov/fal/Lice...

🤥 SUSPENDED CA attorney Lucks emailed me, stating he is an “inactive lawyer” — but this is incorrect; he was “Inactive” in 1991 and 2000 (per CA Bar Association’s “License Status”) but since 2018 has the CA Bar License Status of “Not Eligible to Practice Law in California”; yet he has a LinkedIn page and and his publisher (Beacon Press) and various sellers stating that he is an “attorney” or “attorney of law”. See:

▪️LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/https://w...
▪️Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Daniel-S.-Luck...
▪️Lucks’ Publisher’s Website:
http://www.beacon.org/cw_contributori...
▪️Barnes & Noble:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/reco...
▪️Audible (book seller):
https://www.audible.com/author/Daniel...
▪️Google (book seller):
https://books.google.com/books/about/...
▪️Book Depository (book seller):
https://www.bookdepository.com/Recons...

🔺 Nota Bene: After I contacted Lucks’ publisher (Beacon Press), Lucks stealth-edited on several sellers’ sites “attorney” and “attorney of law” to “graduate of the University of California Hastings College of the Law”.
——————————-

🔺 California Code:
6126. (a) Any person advertising or holding himself or herself out as practicing or entitled to practice law or otherwise practicing law who is not an active licensee of the State Bar, or otherwise authorized pursuant to statute or court rule to practice law in this state at the time of doing so, is guilty of a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in a county jail or by a fine of up to one thousand dollars ($1,000), or by both that fine and imprisonment."
👉 CA Code:
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/fa....

[Mark Gowan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reagan is infamous and by this late date it is clear what Reagan did to bring us to the political point that we are at today. Lucks, however, chooses to concentrate on Reagan's racist tendencies primarily. His writing is straight-forward and reads like most socio-political books do, journalistic in style and void of vagueries that novels and many other literary forms of writing make a point at.
The book "reconsiders" Reagan by studying some of the less discussed aspects of Reagan himself and his presidency (such as his racism) and of the government during his tenure.

I don't feel like there is anything new here, but it is good to have the information in one source. Well written and well researched I think Lucks presented some good insight into a president that changed the course of American politics, especially conservative, for better or most likely worse.

This is a good start for anyone wanting to delve into the history of conservative politics since and because of Reagan and although the conservative movement was not completely defined by this one president it certainly took many ques from his ongoings, attitudes and beliefs. Lucks does a good job and presenting these for a better insight into recent American political history.

[Victor Sang · Rating 1 out of 5]

Was Reagan perfect? No. Did he say a few ugly racist comments? Yes. Did he make a lot during his presidency? No.
If you had a secretly taped conversation of Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, or even Obama.....do you think you'd hear any anti-white or Jewish comments? Never!

The author is a far left delusionist. Everything and everyone GOP is racist. The only ones that will like this book are the idiots like himself. In 1000 years, it will still be racism holding back teen Moms with 3 kids and a Dad nowhere to be found except with his homies. And you can bet he'll be using the N-word with them more times in a minute than most whites have ever said it.

[Mary Lou · Rating 4 out of 5]

I learned a lot about Reagan through this book. He was popular and well liked but he was a racist and never had an understanding of poverty and a narrow view on the hardships of being black in America. He cut social welfare programs and lumped poor people into a lazy category. While there will always be those who are going to mooch off the system, he put civil rights back to pre Lyndon Johnson days. When will Americans realize that keeping people down is a drag on all of us?

[Mona Mason · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an eye opener for me. I was not interested in politics back in the 80’s and the people in my environment praised Reagan, especially after Reaganomics. To learn he was a racist and shut several programs down, to learn he was the one who coined “ Make America Great Again,” to learn and see several parallels between Trump and Reagan , well, it was disappointing to learn this. An excellent read, worth rereading as there is so much information in it.

[John Petersen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another must-read. Lucks has a PhD in American History. Here he traces the direct line from Reagan to Trump via the racist policies and platforms of the Republican Party. As a student of American History myself, I’ve long known Reagan’s numerous policies were catastrophic to the progress and gains made with the Civil Right Movement, but I honestly had no idea just how much of a racist POS he was personally. Sheesh.

[Barbara White · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even though I lived through the Reagan presidency, Reconcidering Reagan opened my eyes. We should always learn from history, as we learn from our mistakes. This book would be a wonderful text for political science classes. Thanks to Goodreads First Reads for my copy of this amazing book. Thanks to Daniel Lucks for writing it.

[kylajaclyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think this quote in the Conclusion is an excellent summation of why Reagan was so dangerous (and why we still experience the effects of his policies today) and why we need to reconsider him: “Nonetheless, Reagan was more sinister than Trump because he was able to mask his heinous policies on race behind his amiable facade and convince the American public that he was a great man.”

[Deanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lucks elegantly described the overt racism in the Republican Party prior to, during and post Reagan era. The policies Reagan enacted during his governorship and as president are clear steps toward the problems that plague the nation today. Lucks outlined with explicit chronological order how Reagan was the birther to trump

[Aloysius · Rating 3 out of 5]

The white identity politics of the GOP, sad to say, didn't start with the descent of King Donnie the First down that golden escalator five years ago. No, it goes all the way back to the Gipper himself.

[Emily Coulombe · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this very much. Certainly shed a lot of light to who Reagan was as a person and made me hate him that much more <3 now I just need my dad to read it. I’m giving it 3 stars only because it didn’t do a whole lot of connecting to Trump. Literally only in the last 10 pages and I wanted more

[Zach Berly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Informative, but ultimately not very well written. Reads much like a scholarly article than a true book. See Reaganland for a better telling.

[Marc Pressley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lucks brings the receipts. This book lays out the decades-long quest of the conservative movement to roll back civil rights. It's all in service of power and money (not necessarily in that order).