Did Republicans shut down the government because the president is black?
The Conservative Southern takeover of the Republican party has created the Tea Party whose leading spokesperson is Ted Cruz. The severe conservative shift of the Republican Party is highly affiliated with deep seeded racism in American history.
A 2005 study showed that racial hostility among Southern whites was “more racially conservative than whites elsewhere on every measure of racial attitudes ordinarily used in national surveys.”
In one experiment at Brown University, Michael Tesler found that there was a 20 point higher racial gap on health policy in 2009 than ten years earlier. In Tesler’s study, subjects’ reactions to statements about health policy were “significantly more racialized” when the statements were connected to President Obama than to former president, Bill Clinton.
Ari Berman stated in a recent edition of The Nation that, “Today, white Southern Republicans account for ninety-seven members out of the 233-member House GOP majority.” Berman explains that the percentage of Southerners in the GOP House increases every election.