Newly released Nixon tape includes Nixon and Reagan using racist language

[Dill]

(08-02-2019, 03:21 PM)Beaker Wrote: I didnt say he was right for saying it, but I dont see the use in going back 50 years and finding a racist quote from a dead president. Im sure the farther back you go, the more frequent the racist quotes will become. Its no secret that racism was more prevalent the farther back you go. I just think we have enough on our plate today with racism. Its no secret that it exists, but in my opinion, the first step to overcoming it is to stop making everything about it. Call me a man, not a black man or a white man. If I disobey the cops and get beat, make it about my actions, not my skin color, etc.

You are correct that the further back we go, the more likely we are to hear racist statements from presidents.  Woodrow Wilson was an outright White Nationalist. And we don't need to "overhear" private conversations to determine that.

One possible point for making public the Reagan/Nixon discussion, however, is that those two are not so ancient history. In public they comported themselves, post Civil Rights Act, as opponents of racism. Unlike Wilson, Reagan would have agreed with your point: "Call me a man, not black man or a white man" etc. Perhaps he genuinely believed law should work like that, while privately thinking that Africans were nevertheless inferior to whites. Perhaps this assumption was expressed in policy as well, as in his notorious veto of the Anti-Apartheid Act in 1985. Legitimate to wonder about that.

We still have a racist problem on our plate today because of past investments in it. Feelings and beliefs didn't change immediately because laws do, though laws may make them more difficult to put into policy. So it behooves us to understand whether, why and/or how racism continues, as population trends move more people to identify as white and fret over imminent loss of majority status. Very hard to answer those questions without knowing where racism came from, why it takes hold, and the various forms it has taken. Such inquiry is not just "looking for racist satements" though.

Now there is disagreement about causes and effects. Some think think that racism is largely gone, and talking about it stirs up no longer valid grievances. Others think it continues in implicit rather than explicit forms, and to deny recognizing this perpetuates it. Trump seems to bring this conflict to a head. Given what he says publicly, one suspects that in private one might hear things that would shock Reagan and Nixon.  And one wonders whether, or more likely how, his beliefs affect policy.