Reagan, Race and Remembrance

[TreasonousBastard]

http://www.blackcommentator.com/94/94_wise_reagan.html

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While persons of color make up approximately 30 percent of the population of the United States, the Reagan faithful look like another country altogether. As they gathered in Simi Valley – home of the 40th President’s library, as well as the jury that thought nothing of the police beating of Rodney King – one wonders if they noticed the incongruity between themselves and the rest of the state in which they live: a state called California, where people like them are slightly less than half the population now.
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That the mourners wouldn’t notice the overwhelming monochromy of their throng is no surprise. But it has been more than a little interesting that no intrepid reporter - or at least someone pretending to be such a creature – has thought to ask the obvious question about the racial makeup of those losing sleep over the death of Ronald Reagan, versus those who frankly aren’t.
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Perhaps black folks and other people of color remember the words of former Reagan Education Secretary Terrell Bell, who noted in his memoir how racial slurs were common among the “Great Communicator’s” White House staffers, including common references to Martin Lucifer Coon, and “sand niggers.”
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And it isn’t surprising that few if any Salvadorans or Guatemalans who came to the U.S. in the 1980s, fleeing from violence in their countries, were to be seen placing flowers outside Reagan’s library either.
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[Cocoa]

1. commentators repeatedly called those crowds a "cross-section"

only the BBC among the channels I watched said a word about the total lack of nonwhites.

It's like they just edited nonwhites out of the picture, a little like Reagan did. Maybe that's what all the nostalgia is about, these people long for the days when it was acceptable to equate "America" with "White America."