Looking at the shitty stunts that racist whites still pull in the South to this very date when black rights are considered, they'll drive a good old pickup truck through any loopholes, however tight they're thought to be.
My guess is that the go-to pretext would be "freedom of association". Surely a man is entitled to decide who gets to enter his property and who he agrees to do business with [gendered language deliberate] without the nanny state interfering in the matter?If your question is 'how late could desegregation be delayed' I think its entirely possible for desegregation to remain a current issue in the present day - just as opposition to LGBT rights are now often cast by the Right as 'freedom of religion', is it so hard to imagine that segregationist laws might be couched in non-racialist terms, espousing 'community rights' or something? just a lot more home owners associations
France and its rampant segregation offers a pretty interesting pathway to doing it.My guess is that the go-to pretext would be "freedom of association". Surely a man is entitled to decide who gets to enter his property and who he agrees to do business with [gendered language deliberate] without the nanny state interfering in the matter?
I think you have weird historical myopia regarding this specific election’s role in the grand scheme of the American civil rights movement but I’ll answer.
1. The Taft example is irrelevant. After Eisenhower the party establishment was firmly moderate and eastern. Goldwater benefited from a string of good luck and burgeoning small-scale conservative activism. Considering how Goldwater barely won OTL, just put him up against a less divided opposition field or a primary opponent with fewer skeletons and more political sense than Nelson Rockefeller.
2. If the Bobby Baker scandal blew up or the public got wind of all of Kennedy’s shit or the Democratic Party split or the GOP ran a stronger candidate. The result wasn’t set in stone, Kennedy wasn’t winning every single poll conducted in late 1963.
Sorry for the late reply, but
1. Thing is, Goldwater had one thing that Taft never had: A conservative movement, centered around the National Review. In addition, conservatives had already taken over the Young Republicans. As said in https://books.google.com/books?id=6vwvCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA1392&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false,
"at the YR convention in Denver, Rusher and White saw through the election of an alliance that was overtly anti-Rockefeller, anti-Eastern, and anti-liberal".
He barely won at the convention. If you still think his nomination was historically inevitable I literally don’t know what to tell you.
He didn't really barely win. Let us see all anti-Goldwater delegates at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1964_Republican_National_Convention#Presidential. If you got all of them behind a single candidate, Goldwater would still have won.
I do believe that Goldwater could have been stopped but only as a compromise at the convention had he lost both New Hampshire and California. The most obvious candidate is Nixon.
I can see a situation where segregation survives until the 90s where a Southern President with a trifecta could put what seems like a decisive end to it. Then, much like Roe v Wade, the opposing side shouts THIS IS EVIL BOO up until the present day, but never decisively moves to decapitate it (ETA - desegregation, that is), even with a clear majority on the Court.If your question is 'how late could desegregation be delayed' I think its entirely possible for desegregation to remain a current issue in the present day - just as opposition to LGBT rights are now often cast by the Right as 'freedom of religion', is it so hard to imagine that segregationist laws might be couched in non-racialist terms, espousing 'community rights' or something? just a lot more home owners associations
First, the USA wanted allies among the newly independent African nations. Ending segregation was essential for that.
Second, the Southern segregationists simpy didn't have the national influence or organization of the NRA.
Third, according to https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/wi-no-1964-civil-rights-act.324118/post-9504902, white backlash outside of the South only began with housing in 1966. It's hard to see that being included in any strong bill that they wanted to pass.
And of course, the segregationists- and many fellow travelers outside the South- saw the Civil Rights movement as a soviet backed plot. The idea that they should give up on segregation to beat the communists fundamentally didn't make sense to them.
The belief that any internal dissent is manufactured when it receives foreign support (or sometimes when it doesn't) is hardly unique to white supremacists. It's downright ubiquitous.The idea that the black Africans had their own hopes, wishes and dreams were utterly alien to the mindset of white supremacists.
Does McLaughlin v. Florida and Loving v. Virginia still occur in this TL? If not, then I could see most Southern US states getting rid of their anti-miscegenation laws by the end of the 20th century. Perhaps several of them could get this done in the 1970s or 1980s, thus making a constitutional amendment that allows for interracial sex and interracial marriage nationwide throughout the US possible by the end of the 1980s. I do think that the odds of such a constitutional amendment being passed and ratified by the end of the 20th century would have been pretty decent, of course.Let's assume that due to no one with the legislative genius of LBJ being in office, Southern Democratic senators keep successfully filibustering civil rights bills much later than 1964.
With no federal action, would reformist Southern governors and legislatures have started repealing segregation themselves, or would that remain a political non-starter at the state level?