OPOA’s Contemporary Midwest Strategy
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By Anthony Rogers-Wright
The use of seemingly insidious but profound racial tropes in the U.S. polity is as old as colonization, Indigenous genocide, and African chattel slavery. It’s ensconced in the DNA of this nation and operates in both perpetuity and impunity. The overarching ethos of this praxis is simple and elementary - inciting fear in white people to vote against any candidate, and especially Black candidates, who espouse any semblance of racial and social justice.
The playbook of engendering and maintaining white fear and resentment post-1960s civil rights epoch is the progeny of the Republican party and the 1964 “Southern Strategy” associated with the presidential campaign of Arizona Senator, Barry Goldwater in his race against Lyndon B. Johnson – who, incidentally, is the last Democratic presidential candidate to win the white vote in a general election.
The Southern Strategy was a deliberate methodology, exploiting the resentment of white people who opposed integration, school busing, and other racial justice successes associated with the civil and voting rights acts, using race as a wedge issue to appeal to white southern voters.
Moreover, this strategy established a nexus between the advancement of Black freedom rights at the expense of white hegemony, as well as associating reduced anti-Black policing with a converse increase in crime. GOP operative and strategist, Lee Atwater, confirmed the efficacy of the strategy in an infamous quote where he stated:
"You start out in 1954 by saying, '[N-word, N-word, N-word].' By 1968 you can't say '[N-word]'— that hurts you, backfires. So, you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states' rights, and all that stuff, and 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. ... 'We want to cut this,' is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than '[N-word, N-word].'"
The GOP’s southern strategy did not deliver them the presidency in 1964, yet it became a ubiquitous variable of its campaign strategy from Regan’s “welfare queen,” to George W. Bush’s Willie Horton, and full circle to Donald Trump’s, “Make America Great Again,” which all led to electoral success in 1980, 1984, 1988, and again in 2016. But if you think the GOP monopolizes the southern strategy, think again.
The Democrats have also utilized the strategy to ratify Bill Clinton and Joe Biden’s 1994 “crime bill,” see also use of the term “super predators” to paint a caricature of dangerous Black men in a successful effort to coalesce the support of both white liberals and Black petit-bourgeois democrats. Less than 20 years later, Hillary Clinton utilized the southern strategy during her race against Barack Obama in 2008 when she attempted to misconstrue the veracious words of his former pastor Jeremiah Wright, who proudly proclaimed, “G-d Damn America” in the spirit of liberation theologians like James Cone and Gustavo Gutierrez.
Cammy Watkins, Photo Credit: Cammy4Council.com
These days, the southern strategy is less associated with a region of the country as it is with the circumference of the entire nation that collectively fears the edification of Black, Brown, and Indigenous peoples. Recently, the southern strategy came to the Midwest, and Omaha specifically, when the Omaha Police Officers Association (OPOA), who endorsed Democratic candidates including Ben Gray (District 2) and Danny Begley, promulgated it profoundly.
Begley is currently in a tight race with political newcomer Cammy Watkins, who is running as an Independent, to represent District 3 of Omaha’s City Council. The race between Watkins and Begley is so competitive that the OPOA has been circulating a series of mailers essentially linking votes for Watkins, a Black woman, with increased violence and precarity in Omaha. The imagery and messaging speak for themselves, vindicating an aphorism by someone I once knew, “white supremacy is in Revelations mode.”
Photo of the mailer sent on Begley’s behalf.
What’s more troubling is that the rhetoric being used against Watkins has not been condemned by any Democratic lawmakers. When I demanded that DCDP Chairman, CJ King, condemn the above mailing, he refused. And Danny Begley did no better when he offered a meretricious statement on the matter via Facebook, failing to even name OPOA as the responsible party.
It is clear that OPOA believes they can get away with this axiomatic racist trope because their president is a Black man, Anthony Conner, who is nothing more than a modern-day Jim Crow-era Dixiecrat in Blackface which gives them cover – the old, “I can’t be racist, I have Black friend(s)” defense. While Watkins has called for common-sense police reforms, Connor, who hosts and speaks at rallies attended by a known white terrorist collective, the Proud Boys, has also used the southern strategy to exacerbate fear for all Omahans.
In a recent interview, Conner proclaimed that defunding the police, something Watkins has not called for, would result in more police shootings of unarmed Black, Brown, and Indigenous people. Yet he never offered any statistics or reasoning to make such feckless and myopic conclusions – it’s as if someone else is writing Conner’s words for him, and if you’ve ever witnessed his pre-K reading level social media posts, this would make much sense.
What’s even more problematic is the fact that no Black Democratic leaders to date have spoken out on this issue including, but not limited to, Councilmember Ben Gray (who was endorsed by OPOA in his race against Juanita Johnson) or Commissioner Chris Rodgers. [Since writing of this piece, Senator Wayne and Precious McKesson of the NDP Black Caucus have posted statements. A previous version stated they did not.]
Additionally, the Nebraska no-frills version of the Kennedy family dynasty, the Cavanaughs, who were steadily posting about “Black Lives Matter” last summer, have been quieter on this issue than Black folk at a Hootie and the Blowfish concert.
This silence is complicity and demonstrates the anemic comprehension of racial justice by the same Nebraska and Douglas County Democratic parties that drafted a resolution condemning Don Klein for upholding white “supremacy.” There is no such thing as intermittent justice, and the establishment of equity and the evisceration of white “supremacy” and anti-Blackness are both quotidian exercises that far too many Nebraska Democrats don’t seem to have the fitness to understand. In fact, the only lawmaker who condemned the OPOA mailer was Senator John McCollister, a REPUBLICAN, who is known for his integrity and temerity on the issues of racial justice – he even called out his own party publicly last year.
In addition, the Nebraska no-frills version of the Kennedy family dynasty, the Cavanaughs, who were steady posting about “Black Lives Matter” last summer, have been quieter on this issue than Black folk at a Hootie and the Blowfish concert. This silence is complicit and demonstrates the anemic comprehension of racial justice by the same Nebraska and Douglas County Democratic parties that drafted a resolution condemning Don Klein for upholding white “supremacy.” There is no such thing as intermittent justice, and the establishment of equity and the evisceration of white “supremacy” and anti-Blackness is a quotidian exercise that King, Rhoades, and Begley don’t seem to have the fitness to understand.
We allowed OPOA, the DCDP, and the entire political and social apparatus in Omaha, the most segregated city in the country, to get away with racism. Next Tuesday, May 11, we have a chance to push back and stand up by voting for Cammy Watkins, who was recently endorsed by the Omaha World-Herald. As part of their endorsement, the Herald stipulated, “As a councilmember, Watkins could help colleagues understand issues of growing importance to the city and enable Omaha to make progress on them.”
Cammy Watkins speaks about race in Omaha during Candidates for the Culxr: All District City Council Forum hosted by NOISE and Culxr House November 2020.
One of the most salient issues holding the city back is racism and anti-Blackness, and Cammy Watkins should not be feared but revered for her approach to making Omaha more inclusive, more accessible, and more equitable for all its residents. The ball is in our court now to expel the southern strategy from our polity before it becomes fully ensconced in the Midwest, while also sending OPOA a clear and direct message; real policy platforms TRUMP scare tactics, and grassroots organizing will always overcome political machines, Democrat and Republican, that attempt to sew division instead of fostering synergy .
Anthony Rogers-Wright