Reconsidering Reagan: Racism, Republicans, and the Road to Trump
A long-overdue and sober examination of President Ronald Reagan's racist politics that continue to harm communities today and helped shape the modern conservative movement.
Ronald Reagan is hailed as a transformative president and an American icon, but within his 20th century politics lies a racial legacy that is rarely discussed. Both political parties point to Reagan as the "right" kind of conservative but fail to acknowledge his political attacks on people of color prior to and during his presidency. Reconsidering Reagan corrects that narrative and reveals how his views, policies, and actions were devastating for Black Americans and racial minorities, and that the effects continue to resonate today.
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Praise and Reviews
“Throughout his political career, Ronald Reagan was on the wrong side of almost every civil rights question. Too many accounts of his life have downplayed or ignored his shameful record on civil and human rights. In this powerful and persuasive book, Daniel Lucks shines an honest, uncompromising light on Reagan’s disgraceful legacy and draws a straight line from Reagan to Donald Trump.”
—Robert Mann, author of Becoming Ronald Reagan: The Rise of a Conservative Icon
“Deeply researched and forcefully written, Reconsidering Reagan provides a bracing reexamination of Reagan’s attitudes, rhetoric, and policies toward the question of civil rights and racial injustice. Lucks gives a searing indictment of Reagan’s leadership of the conservative movement that’s sure to revise our understanding of who Reagan was and what he stood for.”
—Matthew Dallek, author of The Right Moment: Ronald Reagan’s First Victory and the Decisive Turning Point in American Politics
“An elegantly written, powerfully argued, and unsparing indictment of Reagan’s racial record across his entire political career. It is also a comprehensive account of conservatism’s unswerving opposition to the civil rights movement and its consistent cultivation of white racial anxieties. This history ought to trouble the consciences of principled conservatives and should be required reading for all Americans who seek to understand the trajectory of the Republican Party since Reagan.”
—Geoffrey Kabaservice, author of Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, from Eisenhower to the Tea Party
—Robert Mann, author of Becoming Ronald Reagan: The Rise of a Conservative Icon
“Deeply researched and forcefully written, Reconsidering Reagan provides a bracing reexamination of Reagan’s attitudes, rhetoric, and policies toward the question of civil rights and racial injustice. Lucks gives a searing indictment of Reagan’s leadership of the conservative movement that’s sure to revise our understanding of who Reagan was and what he stood for.”
—Matthew Dallek, author of The Right Moment: Ronald Reagan’s First Victory and the Decisive Turning Point in American Politics
“An elegantly written, powerfully argued, and unsparing indictment of Reagan’s racial record across his entire political career. It is also a comprehensive account of conservatism’s unswerving opposition to the civil rights movement and its consistent cultivation of white racial anxieties. This history ought to trouble the consciences of principled conservatives and should be required reading for all Americans who seek to understand the trajectory of the Republican Party since Reagan.”
—Geoffrey Kabaservice, author of Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, from Eisenhower to the Tea Party