LAUSR

This essay argues that Senator Rand Paul’s address at Howard University in April 2013, meant to bridge racial divides between the Republican Party and Black voters, actually represented a second-generation Southern Strategy. After tracing the original Southern Strategy, designed to polarize the electorate based on fears of Black enfranchisement, to the GOP in the 1960s, the essay defines its new form as a rhetoric depending on selective amnesia, neoliberalism, and postracialism. After demonstrating how each of those characteristics surfaced in Paul’s address, the essay discusses the implications of his speech and his later attempts to learn from his failures.