Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Criminal Law Blogs -> Governing Through Crime

Criminal Law

: Governing Through Crime

Crime Politics and Racial Signals: Evidence from Houston

By Jonathan Simor

In the 1960s, racial conservatives (defenders of the Jim Crow order that was crumbling) used the language of "tough on crime" as a new discourse in which they could appeal to potential allies outside the South, without having to defend the indefensible. Politicians like Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan helped forge that link into an important anchor of the Republican Party's "Southern strategy." But forty plus years later it is clear that the discourse of crime fear has long ago slipped its bonds to racial conservatism to become a far more general logic with appeal to voters across the spectrum of opinion on racial issues. Yesterday's Houston Mayoral election was a case in point. The voters handed a solid victory to Annise Parker, a Democrat, recently that city's comptroller, and the first openly Gay or Lesbian politician to be elected mayor of one of the major American cities...continue to full post

Full post as published by Governing Through Crime on December 13, 2009 (boomark / email).