# What created the Reagan societal shift towards governmental mistrust? **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [December 18, 2018, 1:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-created-the-reagan-societal-shift-towards-governmental-mistrust/826304 "2018-12-18T01:55:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![KarlGauss](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/karlgauss/32/3713_2.png) [@KarlGauss](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KarlGauss)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2018, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-created-the-reagan-societal-shift-towards-governmental-mistrust/826304/21 "2018-12-19T00:43:24Z")
> [@kunilou](#): > > . . . > The Pentagon Papers revealed that the government knew all along that Vietnam was a failure, but lied to the public about it. . . . I think that misses something. The key thing, in my mind, was that the Pentagon Papers revealed that the American public had been lied to by the Government about the war’s _cause_. And the truth was ugly. That the war ultimately became a “failure” is less relevant. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2018, 4:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-created-the-reagan-societal-shift-towards-governmental-mistrust/826304/22 "2018-12-19T04:34:09Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > Especially by the 1980s almost everyone had conceded and agreed with civil rights and with a social safety net. But the social safety net, beginning back with the New Deal programs, was supposed to have been fundamentally for **white** people. We’ve [discussed](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=20788313&postcount=303) not so long ago, for example, how the Federal Housing Authority “financed Levittown, the emblem of postwar suburbanization, on the condition that none of its 17,500 homes be sold to blacks”, and [similar institutionalized racism in other social programs](https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/07/books/review/fear-itself-by-ira-katznelson.html). > [@](#): > > Thanks to the disfranchisement of blacks and the reign of terror that accompanied it, the South had become solidly Democratic by the beginning of the 20th century, the Deep South exclusively so. One-party rule translated into outsize power on Capitol Hill: when Roosevelt took office, Southerners held almost half the Democrats’ Congressional seats and many of the key committee chairmanships. So whatever Roosevelt wanted to put into law had to have Southern approval. And he wouldn’t get it if he dared to challenge the region’s racial order. […] > > Roosevelt repeatedly let the Southern bloc write discriminatory provisions into his programs. When the Tennessee Valley Authority built model communities, Southern congressmen made sure they were strictly segregated. […] That segregated “racial order”, as we’ve also [discussed recently](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=21249389&postcount=438), was itself originally a bait offered to the white working class by white elites in order to win their support for laws that favored elites: > [@](#): > > In 1894, black Republicans and white Populists joined together to create a “fusion” ticket of candidates to oppose Democrats. They shocked the political establishment and won two-thirds of the legislature. […] > > Fusion was a ticket of the working class, and the alliance soon began implementing policies that helped its supporters. […] > > The white elite were threatened by these new policies, especially because Fusion had shifted the burden of taxation from individuals to corporations and railroads. Yet they had little connection with poor voters, and so had few ideas about how to address their economic concerns. Instead, they tried to convince poor whites that they should not associate with blacks in any way. So yes, there’s a lot of truth to the statement that civil rights legislation, and antipoverty legislation that was widely perceived as helping black people, made a lot of white voters feel betrayed on some level. They had bought into the concept of “white solidarity” and “white supremacy” that white elites worked so hard to sell them, and the realization that after all that they didn’t even get to keep their status of being automatically “better” than black people was infuriating. This attitude is by no means extinct among white Americans, as, for example the rising support for “white nationalism” under Trump attests. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2018, 4:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-created-the-reagan-societal-shift-towards-governmental-mistrust/826304/23 "2018-12-19T04:48:59Z")
I had an Anthro professor who had led an interesting life. He was a Marine in the Pacific during WWII, then an honet-to-God hippie in the '60s. Died in an ultralight accident in the '90s. I still recall him telling us the mistrust with government stemmed from WWII. He said before the war, you could take to the bank just about anything the government said, but then with the war came all these programs aimed at duplicity and secrecy in a bid to confuse and deceive the enemy, and it never got straightened out. That’s probably oversimplified, but I think there’s a grain of truth there. ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2018, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-created-the-reagan-societal-shift-towards-governmental-mistrust/826304/24 "2018-12-19T16:04:16Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > Simple: The government started helping black people. This is the opposite of what actually happened. The 20 years between the end of WW2 and the start of the Great Society had seen the largest drop in the black poverty rate in history. It went from about 68% in 1947 to 39% in 1967. This progress stagnated in the 1970s only going down to 32.5% in 1980. Meanwhile skyrocketing crime rates hit black people the hardest. In 1980 black people were 64% more likely to be a victim of a homicide than they were in 1960. Because of this trust in the federal government has been lower than whites since the mid 60s. ---
**Author:** ![CaptMurdock](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/captmurdock/32/11736_2.png) [@CaptMurdock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CaptMurdock)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2018, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-created-the-reagan-societal-shift-towards-governmental-mistrust/826304/25 "2018-12-19T16:09:51Z")
> [@Chisquirrel](#): > > And in response, he sold them weapons and gave the money to terrorists. Win win! Hey, c’mon, you just can’t have a thread mentioning Reagan without one of **Shodan** ’s revisionist hagiographies about The Gipper. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![JB99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/439d5e/32.png) [@JB99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JB99)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2018, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-created-the-reagan-societal-shift-towards-governmental-mistrust/826304/26 "2018-12-19T16:53:27Z")
So it’s a well - documented fact that racial resentment played a hugely disruptive role in party politics and basically cast the Republicans into the demographic set they now represent. I see most of the posts here citing Vietnam, and other malicious things like Watergate. Those are the ‘big issues’ that I read about most often. Aside from these three things, to what extent did other events shape people’s thinking? The Kennedy assassination? Bay of Pigs? Intelligence oversight committees? McCarthyism? ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2018, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-created-the-reagan-societal-shift-towards-governmental-mistrust/826304/27 "2018-12-19T22:27:48Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > This is the opposite of what actually happened. The 20 years between the end of WW2 and the start of the Great Society had seen the largest drop in the black poverty rate in history. The two aren’t mutually exclusive. Yes, the post-WWII economic boom had a beneficial effect for blacks as well as others in the US. But that doesn’t in any way contradict the fact that civil rights and welfare legislation starting in the 1960s angered many white voters and made them more mistrustful of government. > [@puddleglum](#): > > Because of this trust in the federal government has been lower than whites since the mid 60s. I don’t know what you actually meant to say in this sentence nor where you got your information, but if your intent was to claim something along the lines of _“levels of trust in the federal government have been lower among blacks than whites since the mid-60s”_, that is patently false. As [this Pew Research Center study on “Public Trust in Government: 1958-2017”](http://www.people-press.org/2017/12/14/public-trust-in-government-1958-2017/) shows, governmental trust levels among blacks actually **rose** to equal white levels during the mid-1960s, dropped below white levels in the 1970s through 1980s, equaled white levels again in the 1990s, dropped again in the 2000s and consistently exceeded white levels from about 2010 to 2016. ---
**Author:** ![Chisquirrel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6bbea6/32.png) [@Chisquirrel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chisquirrel)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2018, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-created-the-reagan-societal-shift-towards-governmental-mistrust/826304/28 "2018-12-19T22:57:59Z")
> [@CaptMurdock](#): > > Hey, c’mon, you just can’t have a thread mentioning Reagan without one of **Shodan** ’s revisionist hagiographies about The Gipper. :rolleyes: I prefer to call him Open-Carry-Banner. 'Cuz those black people with guns are scary or someshit. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2018, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-created-the-reagan-societal-shift-towards-governmental-mistrust/826304/29 "2018-12-20T00:04:29Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > But the social safety net, beginning back with the New Deal programs, was supposed to have been fundamentally for **white** people. We’ve [discussed](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=20788313&postcount=303) not so long ago, for example, how the Federal Housing Authority “financed Levittown, the emblem of postwar suburbanization, on the condition that none of its 17,500 homes be sold to blacks”, and [similar institutionalized racism in other social programs](https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/07/books/review/fear-itself-by-ira-katznelson.html). > That segregated “racial order”, as we’ve also [discussed recently](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=21249389&postcount=438), was itself originally a bait offered to the white working class by white elites in order to win their support for laws that favored elites: > So yes, there’s a lot of truth to the statement that civil rights legislation, and antipoverty legislation that was widely perceived as helping black people, made a lot of white voters feel betrayed on some level. They had bought into the concept of “white solidarity” and “white supremacy” that white elites worked so hard to sell them, and the realization that after all that they didn’t even get to keep their status of being automatically “better” than black people was infuriating. > > This attitude is by no means extinct among white Americans, as, for example the rising support for “white nationalism” under Trump attests. None of this supports your conclusion that Reagan supporters were a result of a backlash again black civil rights or social programs that helped blacks. That’s one of the benefits of growing up in West Virginia. We have very few black people here. So when we complain about people in the community mooching, it’s not about blacks. When police pull someone over because they were acting stupid, not because they are black, but because they showed signs of lawbreaking. I get many out of state clients who complain that they were pulled over simply because they are black. I look at the paperwork and pretty quickly conclude that, nope, you were driving at 85mph with weed smoke rolling out your windows and your music blasting and a dead tag. I get a whole bunch of white boys pulled over for that. Racism had come a long way from 1964 to 1980. It is even better now. Most white people don’t care at all about race and these types of posts and arguments are without support and continue to try to keep the racial divide alive for political purposes. ---
**Author:** ![Chisquirrel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6bbea6/32.png) [@Chisquirrel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chisquirrel)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2018, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-created-the-reagan-societal-shift-towards-governmental-mistrust/826304/30 "2018-12-20T01:19:31Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > None of this supports your conclusion that Reagan supporters were a result of a backlash again black civil rights or social programs that helped blacks. > > That’s one of the benefits of growing up in West Virginia. We have very few black people here. So when we complain about people in the community mooching, it’s not about blacks. When police pull someone over because they were acting stupid, not because they are black, but because they showed signs of lawbreaking. > > I get many out of state clients who complain that they were pulled over simply because they are black. I look at the paperwork and pretty quickly conclude that, nope, you were driving at 85mph with weed smoke rolling out your windows and your music blasting and a dead tag. I get a whole bunch of white boys pulled over for that. > > Racism had come a long way from 1964 to 1980. It is even better now. Most white people don’t care at all about race and these types of posts and arguments are without support and continue to try to keep the racial divide alive for political purposes. And despite your anecdata, statistics agree that you are more likely to be arrested and incarcerated if you have skin darker than a Starbucks coffee than if you burn if you even look outside at the sun. CRAZY! ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2018, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-created-the-reagan-societal-shift-towards-governmental-mistrust/826304/31 "2018-12-20T02:55:52Z")
> [@JB99](#): > > So it’s a well - documented fact that racial resentment played a hugely disruptive role in party politics and basically cast the Republicans into the demographic set they now represent. I see most of the posts here citing Vietnam, and other malicious things like Watergate. Those are the ‘big issues’ that I read about most often. > > Aside from these three things, to what extent did other events shape people’s thinking? The Kennedy assassination? Bay of Pigs? Intelligence oversight committees? McCarthyism? Hell, there was a feeling that EVERYTHING the government touched wound up broken. We didn’t just get a 1973 oil embargo and higher gas prices, we got EPA clean air regulations for cars. Detroit reacted with emission control systems that made every car run badly. And a 55 mph speed limit. (And just to cap things, automakers had to add those ugly crash-resistant bumpers!) That led to the rise in popularity of foreign cars, which somehow led to the resentment that government crippled the car industry. Nixon’s agricultural policy, which emphasized maximum production and foreign exports, happened to coincide with a drought that cut crop yields and led to a sharp increase in food prices in the mid-70s, so government was blamed for killing family farms AND making food more expensive. [New York City ran out of money](https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/new-york-city-stared-big-town-bankruptcy-article-1.2984790). Many saw it as a failure of big government welfare state, while others were mad at Gerald Ford’s seemingly cold-hearted response. The Equal Rights Amendment passed Congress in 1972, but was turned into a wedge issue by conservatives (Unisex bathrooms!) It’s no wonder _Doonesbury_ summed up the 70s by calling it “a kidney stone of a decade.” ---
**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2018, 2:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-created-the-reagan-societal-shift-towards-governmental-mistrust/826304/32 "2018-12-20T14:03:44Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > The 1960s and 1970s were very traumatic for America. After the great success of WW2 and the economic progress of the 1950s, government tried to take on poverty and failed miserably. I call [bullshit.](https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-poverty/historical-poverty-people.html) From Table 9: In 1960, 22.2% of Americans lived in poverty. By 1969, it was 12.1%. Since then, the poverty rate has never exceeded 15%. In the south, 35.4% were in poverty in 1959, 17.9% in 1969. Every time someone gets the urge to praise Saint Ronald of Reagan, remember these quotes: > [@](#): > > ``` > “From [Medicare] it’s a short step to all the rest of socialism, to determining his pay and pretty soon your son won’t decide when he’s in school where he will go or what he will do for a living.” > > “Write those letters now [to Congress] and call your friends and them to write … If you don’t do this and I don’t do this, one of these days we are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children, what it once was like in America when men were free.” > > ``` Medicare is a great success story, people who have it like it, but if we had listened to Saint Ronnie, the mortality and poverty rates of the elderly would be much higher than it is today ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2018, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-created-the-reagan-societal-shift-towards-governmental-mistrust/826304/33 "2018-12-20T17:01:05Z")
> [@BobLibDem](#): > > I call [bullshit.](https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-poverty/historical-poverty-people.html) > > From Table 9: > In 1960, 22.2% of Americans lived in poverty. By 1969, it was 12.1%. Since then, the poverty rate has never exceeded 15%. In the south, 35.4% were in poverty in 1959, 17.9% in 1969. > > Every time someone gets the urge to praise Saint Ronald of Reagan, remember these quotes: > Medicare is a great success story, people who have it like it, but if we had listened to Saint Ronnie, the mortality and poverty rates of the elderly would be much higher than it is today The Great Society’s war on poverty started in 1964. The percentage of people in poverty in 1954 before was about 26%. Before the war on poverty it fell 7% to 19% in 1964 and then another 7% to 12% in 1969. It then stagnated for the entire decade of the seventies and was higher in 1980 than in 1970 despite the billions of dollars that had been spent. A Stanford [study](https://inequality.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/media/_media/pdf/Reference%20Media/Finkelstein%20and%20McKnight_2008_Health%20and%20Mental%20Health.pdf)found that Medicare had no impact on the mortality rates of those covered. ---
**Author:** ![CaptMurdock](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/captmurdock/32/11736_2.png) [@CaptMurdock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CaptMurdock)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2018, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-created-the-reagan-societal-shift-towards-governmental-mistrust/826304/34 "2018-12-20T17:23:21Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > A Stanford [study](https://inequality.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/media/_media/pdf/Reference%20Media/Finkelstein%20and%20McKnight_2008_Health%20and%20Mental%20Health.pdf)found that Medicare had no impact on the mortality rates of those covered. The study you linked to only covered the first ten years of Medicare, from 1965 to 1975. Your data is therefore _forty years out of date._ :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2018, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-created-the-reagan-societal-shift-towards-governmental-mistrust/826304/35 "2018-12-20T17:45:40Z")
> [@BobLibDem](#): > > I call [bullshit.](https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-poverty/historical-poverty-people.html) > > From Table 9: > In 1960, 22.2% of Americans lived in poverty. By 1969, it was 12.1%. Since then, the poverty rate has never exceeded 15%. In the south, 35.4% were in poverty in 1959, 17.9% in 1969. > [@](#): > > The poverty rate was 11.6% when Carter took office in 1977. The poverty rate rose to 14% in 1981, when Reagan took office. The poverty rate fell to 12.8% in 1989, when Reagan left office. [Cite](https://www.econlib.org/archives/2017/06/how_much_did_po.html).So Carter inherited a poverty rate that was high, and it got worse. Reagan inherited a poverty rate that was high, and it got better (after a spike early in his first term). Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2018, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-created-the-reagan-societal-shift-towards-governmental-mistrust/826304/36 "2018-12-20T19:42:00Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > [Cite](https://www.econlib.org/archives/2017/06/how_much_did_po.html).So Carter inherited a poverty rate that was high, and it got worse. Reagan inherited a poverty rate that was high, and it got better (after a spike early in his first term). > > Regards, > Shodan Piffle. Poverty rates go up when the economy goes down. Reagan was the beneficiary of an economy that was due for a rebound, Carter the victim of an economy that was due for a downturn (also made worse by the huge increase in oil prices which were beyond our control and had to wind its way through the economy). ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2018, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-created-the-reagan-societal-shift-towards-governmental-mistrust/826304/37 "2018-12-20T20:08:39Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > None of this supports your conclusion that Reagan supporters were a result of a backlash again black civil rights or social programs that helped blacks. Nobody’s saying that white backlash against racial equality was the **only** factor contributing to Reagan-era governmental mistrust. But to claim that it wasn’t a significant factor at all is just willful blindness to a lot of well-documented research, as described, for instance, [here](https://eoinhiggins.com/the-white-backlash-to-the-civil-rights-movement-1817ff0a9fc). > [@](#): > > Change did not come without cost, unfortunately, and one of those costs was white backlash because of the erosion of the privilege they had come to view as their right. The historical scholarship of the past 22 years has shown that this backlash took many different forms, but one thread can be seen throughout: white Americans’ resistance to a changing racial reality seldom was immediate, often was veiled in non-racialized language, and always had justifications that had little to do with race. […] > > Over the past generation, scholars have investigated white backlash against the civil rights movement. To study the evolution of the scholarship on the topic of white backlash against the civil rights movement, and its effects on the conservative resurgence at the end of the 1970s, eight books will be reviewed here […] > [@UltraVires](#): > > That’s one of the benefits of growing up in West Virginia. We have very few black people here. […] > > Racism had come a long way from 1964 to 1980. It is even better now. 😃 Dude. I know you didn’t mean either of these statements the way they initially come across. But seriously, can you really be a lawyer and be that oblivious to what your wording sounds like? ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2018, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-created-the-reagan-societal-shift-towards-governmental-mistrust/826304/38 "2018-12-21T15:27:16Z")
> [@CaptMurdock](#): > > The study you linked to only covered the first ten years of Medicare, from 1965 to 1975. Your data is therefore _forty years out of date._ :dubious: The only way to study a program like Medicare is to compare those who are on it with comparable people who are not. Since all seniors in the country are now on it the only way to study is to compare mortality pre and post passage. This is what the study does and why it only covers 10 years. ---
**Author:** ![CaptMurdock](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/captmurdock/32/11736_2.png) [@CaptMurdock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CaptMurdock)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2018, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-created-the-reagan-societal-shift-towards-governmental-mistrust/826304/39 "2018-12-21T15:44:40Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > The only way to study a program like Medicare is to compare those who are on it with comparable people who are not. Since all seniors in the country are now on it the only way to study is to compare mortality pre and post passage. This is what the study does and why it only covers 10 years. Right. I’m still going to wait a while before I declare Medicare a failure in lengthening human life, if you don’t mind. 🆒 ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2018, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-created-the-reagan-societal-shift-towards-governmental-mistrust/826304/40 "2018-12-21T21:42:56Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Nobody’s saying that white backlash against racial equality was the **only** factor contributing to Reagan-era governmental mistrust. But to claim that it wasn’t a significant factor at all is just willful blindness to a lot of well-documented research, as described, for instance, [here](https://eoinhiggins.com/the-white-backlash-to-the-civil-rights-movement-1817ff0a9fc). > > 😃 Dude. I know you didn’t mean either of these statements the way they initially come across. But seriously, can you really be a lawyer and be that oblivious to what your wording sounds like? 1. So some guy named Higgins who writes a personal opinion with no citations is your authority? It is just convenient fodder to pin everything to racism. 2. Again, enough with the “you can’t be a lawyer if you do X” personal fucking insult. This is not a court and nobody here is my client. I don’t feel the need to proofread each of my posts as if I am drafting a legal brief to the United States Supreme Court. I am not giving a formal oral argument. I am simply a poster here, and say what is on my mind. I am not here in my capacity as an attorney. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-created-the-reagan-societal-shift-towards-governmental-mistrust/826304.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-created-the-reagan-societal-shift-towards-governmental-mistrust/826304.md?page=3)