The media is filled with enough correct information needed to intelligently discuss health care reform. Therefore, it is hard to believe some Americans are protesting socialism and euthanasia.

By all reports, most of the protesters are conservative Republicans. First, we have to understand the history of the Republicans. A cursory look at President Richard M. Nixon’s Southern Strategy will reveal the root of conservatism that exists today.

Nixon’s 1968 strategy, built on racism, has played a central role in American politics since he realized he could advance Republicans’ fortunes by appealing to the racial fears of working-class whites.

Capitalizing on white resentment, Republican conservatives seized the initiative to launch a major legislative and legal assault calculated to nullify or reverse gains of blacks, arguing that black progress was achieved by infringing on the rights of whites. Nothing epitomized this assault on black progress more than the rhetoric and policy initiatives of America’s most beloved President Ronald Reagan. It was Reagan who skillfully injected terms like “black racism” and “reverse discrimination” in the political discourse.

Racism in America is spoken obliquely through cultural words. The Republicans have appealed to conservative values and used cultural issues such as gay marriage, abortion and religion to mobilize their base. Now, they speak in couched terms of “wanting my country back,” National TEA Party and the “birthers” — who believe or want to believe that President Obama was not born in America.

These health care reform protesters, who are mostly participants in the government-run programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, know as much about government finances and how government is run as a third-grader.

President Obama and others are accused of not communicating the issues of health care reform to America. They cannot communicate because health care reform is not the issue. Racism’s 517-year legacy is the issue. They want black President Barack H. Obama to fail, even if it means they will join those 20,000 who die each year because they cannot afford to see a doctor or the other 700,000 a year who go bankrupt because of their medical bills.

To be informative and do its job, the media needs to eliminate what sells and discuss the political operators who are exploiting whites’ anxiety to further the economic interests of their backers.

Key organizers are the two “Astroturf”  (fake grassroots) organizations: Freedom Works, run by former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, and a new organization called Conservatives for Patients’ Rights, run by Rick Scott, the former head of Columbia/HCA. This is a for-profit hospital chain. He was forced out of that job amid a financial investigation. The company eventually pleaded guilty of overbilling state and federal health plans and paid $1.7 billion in fines.

This disinformation of euthanasia for the elderly is coming directly from the House Republicans leaders. It is a shame that this disinformation campaign could cause millions of Americans to continue to be without health care, including some of the protesters.

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Thelma Sims Dukes, author, is a former resident of Vicksburg who lives in Jackson. E-mail reaches her at taseti1942@yahoo.com.