Reconsidering Reagan

Racism, Republicans, and the Road to Trump

By: Daniel S. Lucks

Narrated by: Jeff Zinn

Length: 13 hrs and 17 mins

Publisher's summary

2021 Prose Award Finalist

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.

Using research from previously untapped resources including the Black press which critically covered Reagan’s entire political career, Daniel S. Lucks traces Reagan’s gradual embrace of conservatism, his opposition to landmark civil rights legislation, his coziness with segregationists, and his skill in tapping into White anxiety about race, riding a wave of “White backlash” all the way to the Presidency. He argues that Reagan has the worst civil rights record of any President since the 1920s - including supporting South African apartheid, packing courts with conservatives, targeting laws prohibiting discrimination in education and housing, and launching the “War on Drugs” - which had cataclysmic consequences on the lives of Black and Brown people.

Linking the past to the present, Lucks expertly examines how Reagan set the blueprint for President Trump and proves that he is not an anomaly, but in fact the logical successor to bring back the racially tumultuous America that Reagan conceptualized.

©2020 Daniel S. Lucks (P)2020 Random House Audio

Critic 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.... 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, director of political studies at the Niskanen Center and author of Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, from Eisenhower to the Tea Party)

Enlightening

I already knew most of the information in this book. What I have found helpful is that this puts most of the information into one book with references and documentation. I have been concerned about the whitewashing of Reagan’s legacy. I hope this book helps people stop and think.

The book is well written and meticulously researched and documented. I realize this is not a biography and was written to point out Reagan’s racism, as well as his flaws and mistakes he made. Normally, I prefer books that are unbiased and point out the good things done by a president as well as their mistakes. I believe the author is attempting to counter the attempts to whitewash the Reagan presidency, if so, he achieved his goal. This is an example why one should read a variety of books on both sides of an issue. I remember when Reagan was Governor of California, he tried to overturn the Fair Housing Act. The author reports that when Martin Luther King had his March for Poverty to Washington, D.C. Reagan said, “it was a fraud and a hoax”.

I noted some reviews written against the book that primarily made sarcastic remarks. I would have preferred to have read some examples of specific issues that have documentation where the author is incorrect either in source or analysis. I want to learn but need facts not rhetoric or sarcasm to evaluate their position. Overall, the book was easy to read and understand considering it is more of an academic book. It is well worth the read.

The book is thirteen hours and seventeen minutes. Jeff Zinn does a good job narrating the book. Zinn is an actor as well as a voice-over artist and audiobook narrator.

Spot On and Essential Reading

This is an well-written and absorbing book that is essential for understanding the GOPs embrace of Trump and white supremacy. Reagan was much different than Trump but author makes a compelling case for how he planted the seeds for our current crisis.

Outstanding "hidden" history

Really enjoyed this one. Lost in all the morning in America rhetoric is the damage these 8 years did to our values and sense of unity.

Good story but narrator took away from it!

I usually am not picky on narrators and can deal with most but this one was terrible! Sounded either robotic or slurring. The story was good but the terrible narration took away from it.