Editing Openai/68533883-5b20-8009-82e7-70823b20c603 (section)

===== 1. Southern Strategy was designed to target ''you''. =====
* Nixon’s “law and order” policies directly appealed to white resentment of Black progress.
* Reagan’s racial dog whistles—“welfare queen,” “young bucks buying T-bone steaks”—were aimed at stirring fear and resentment in Southern whites.
* Central Texas was a hotbed for this messaging, and schools, police, and churches absorbed it.
# Mass incarceration and the drug war hit ''Black men hardest''.
* Republican-led crackdowns (Reagan, Bush Sr.) established the carceral architecture that disproportionately locked up Black men.
* In Texas, these policies were often coupled with police overreach, underfunded defense, and no reintegration support.
# Deregulation and anti-labor policies gutted economic pathways.
* Reagan’s trickle-down model devastated Black working-class stability. Public sector job shrinkage, union busting, and tax cuts for the wealthy led to: - Lower wages - Shrinking upward mobility - Wealth concentrating far away from Black communities
# Ongoing scapegoating and structural racism
* GOP rhetoric today often centers immigrants, CRT, and “urban crime” as threats, further entrenching Black men as the problem in public narrative—without ever offering solutions.