School vouchers and race

I read a book called White Flight, by Kevin Kruse. The subtitle's "Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism." It's great. (All quotes are from it, p. 132.)

The first time I read this, I had to stop because I was blown away.

In 1953, a full year before Brown, [Georgia] Governor Talmadge advanced a constitutional amendment giving the General Assembly the power to privatize the state's system of public education.

Hey! Let the market have it's way! That's cool!

In the event of court-ordered desegregation, school buildings would be closed, and students would instead receive grants to attend private, segregated schools. "We can maintain separate schools regardless of the U.S. Supreme Court," Talmadge promised, "by reverting to a private system, subsidizing the child rather than the political subdivision."

WTF?! Wasn't this exact same idea, minus the explicit racial rhetoric, what "Conservatives" were pushing in the '90s?

The General Assembly and the voters agreed, ratifying the amendment in the next elections. ... During the 1956 legislative session, ... the General Assembly strengthened the plan with several new laws. No detail was left untouched. ... If the courts ordered their schools to desegregate, the governor could thus switch everything to a nominally "private" system without missing a beat.

Shiiiiiiiiiiiiit.

The book's convincing and does an excellent job explicating Conservative rhetoric and its racial/racist roots. It's so disturbing and so great.