If South Carolina can take down the confederate flag then why can't DC rename it's airport. There is a long history of racism in the Ronald Reagan closet. His 1980 campaign manager Lee Atwater employed the "New Southern Strategy" to peel off working class whites, these voters eventually became known as Reagan Democrats. Here is what Lee Atwater had to say in 1981 about using coded language to win those white votes
"You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”
Reagan used this language heavily during his term in the White House and many of these same talking points are still being employed by the Republican Party, in fact nearly every Republican elected official has signed a pledge written by Grover Norquist refusing to raise taxes.
In fact Ronald Reagan launched his 1980 campaign at the Neshoba County Fiar, just a few miles outside Philadelphia, MS. This is the location of the infamous murders of 3 civil rights workers in the 1960's. Two of those workers were Jewish and one was African American. Ronald Reagan spoke directly of State's Rights in that speech which was code words for keeping schools segregated.
Ronald went on to fabricate stories of impoverished African American women driving expensive cars and young men spending their government money on booze and T-Bone steaks. These stories were not true, they were phony anecdotes designed to ping white fears and stoke anger at the government for helping folks in poverty.
Ronald Reagan hired and worked with well known racists and anti-semites. People like Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmond, Jerry Falwell, Pat Buchanon, Mel Bradford and Robert Bork.
Isn't it time Ronald Reagan's legacy of racism was more thoroughly examined? If Andrew Jackson is being pulled off the $20 bill for his support of slavery and his outright extermination efforts of American Indians why should our nations capital have an airport named after a racist like Ronald Reagan?