Will McCorkle: Is Race-baiting setting back racial and national progress?

  If you look at U.S. political history, there is a common theme. The rich and powerful have to find a way for the poor and middle class to support their cause and economic ideas. To do this, they often use race. One example would be the way poor Southern whites supported the Confederacy during the Civil War, even though the economic system of plantations and slavery was actually limiting their own possibilities. The poor southerners would at least be more powerful and not have to worry about the African-Americans around them if the system continued the way it was. Another famous example was Nixon's Southern Campaign, where he used the Republican's own opposition to the Civil Rights Movement to convince white southerners to switch to the Republican Party... and it worked.