Similarities Between Lincoln And Reagan By Professor Shastri

In his article “On race relations, Republicans can’t be the party of both Lincoln and Reagan“, Professor Shastri argues that these two presidents held opposite positions on the cultural and economic dimensions regarding race relations. First of all, he discusses how they differ on the way they intervened in the South. This ties with the topic of federalism, since Lincoln used the national abolishment of slavery as a medium to unite the states that wanted to rule themselves instead of being part of the Union. He valued equality more than democracy because obeying the racist majority in this case meant taking away the rights of the Black Americans. On the other hand, Reagan focused on the rights of the states to handle racial discrimination the way they thought most convenient. Reagan emphasized order over the other values that make up the American political culture. Then Shastri develops his argument by analyzing the approaches of both presidents to economic decisions that affected African

I personally found it disrespectful how enthusiastically he alleged his support for “states’ rights” (which spread racism) in Neshoba County when the KKK had killed civil rights’ workers there 16 years earlier. Southern racists often supported states’ rights so they could be free to have slaves since there would be no national standard to obey. Long after it was enacted, Reagan attempted to weaken the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which outlawed literacy tests and prerequisites to vote. Providing the states the liberty whether to give blacks the right to vote or not would be like mocking all the progress and sacrifices we made in the Civil War. Indeed, Abraham Lincoln risked everything to preserve the very foundations of this country and used slavery as his main tool to accomplish this seemingly impossible