The Washington Post (7/31/19) suggests that a new tape of Ronald Reagan calling Africans “monkeys” might make us rethink whether his attacks on “welfare queens” were actually racist.
In the wake of Ronald Reagan being discovered on the Nixon tapes calling African diplomats “monkeys” who are “still uncomfortable wearing shoes,” the Washington Post (7/31/19) quotes Reagan’s biographer saying there was “no hint that the president would hold the kinds of views he conveyed to Nixon.”
“In all of my very careful research into his private papers, I never found an instance where I felt that Reagan was racist,” claims Robert Spitz, author of Reagan: An American Journey. “Generally when someone says, ‘I don’t have a racist bone in my body,’ I’m instantly skeptical, but in this case, after all my work, I found myself kind of nodding my head.”
Says the Post: “Some of Reagan’s most divisive policies—like embracing the apartheid government of South Africa and inventing the trope of the ‘welfare queen’—may take on a different light now.”
Paul Krugman wrote a good response to this nonsense—12 years ago, in 2007 (Conscience of a Liberal, 11/10/07):
When he went to Philadelphia, Mississippi, in 1980, the town where the civil rights workers had been murdered, and declared that “I believe in states’ rights,” he didn’t mean to signal support for white racists….
When he went on about the welfare queen driving her Cadillac, and kept repeating the story years after it had been debunked…it was all just an innocent mistake.
When, in 1976, he talked about working people angry about the “strapping young buck” using food stamps to buy T-bone steaks at the grocery store…the appearance that Reagan was playing to Southern prejudice was just an innocent mistake….
When Reagan declared in 1980 that the Voting Rights Act had been “humiliating to the South”…when Reagan intervened on the side of Bob Jones University, which was on the verge of losing its tax-exempt status because of its ban on interracial dating…when Reagan fired three members of the Civil Rights Commission…it was all an innocent mistake.
This is far from an exhaustive catalog of Reagan’s race-baiting. When he ran for governor of California in 1966, he declared, “If an individual wants to discriminate against Negroes or others in selling or renting his house, it is his right to do so.” Spitz must have missed that one in all his fruitless search for Reagan’s racist bone.
The historical amnesia that allows people to be surprised that Ronald Reagan was a racist does more than sanitize the image of a historical figure. If you imagine that Donald Trump invented the political technique of appealing to white supremacy, you’re going to have a hard time figuring out an effective way to overcome it.
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Is it “historical amnesia”
Or historical amenability?
I have to say that I personally date the ‘reversal point’ in the US’ flirtation with humanistic political policies to the election of Reagan. In the late 60’s thru mid 70’s there was a semi-liberal zeitgeist in the US and even when a red-baiting Republican like Nixon was elected twice, he had to portray himself as caring about some relatively liberal policies even if he didn’t mean it, and Congress was relatively liberal so some good legislation was passed. That all started getting reversed with the ascendancy of the right-wing conservatives with RR as their dim-witted front-man/puppet.
Of all that I’ve read, I am beginning to think that President Reagan’s brain was gone long before he retired. It might be that Nancy Reagan was acting like Mrs Wilson when she held everyone at bay as President Wilson’s brain was mentally gone long before the world knew. I always wondered if the Nancy Reagan story was similar to Mrs. Wilson’s.
Unfortunately, this is part of a much wider problem.
Lyndon Johnson made plenty of racist comments too, even in the 1960s.
It is worth bearing in mind that Johnson was certainly no friend of civil rights. He changed his position on this issue because he wanted to help ensure that he would be the nominee in 1964. He also knew that African-Americans represented a significant voting block in California, Illinois, New York, New Jersey etc. These were swing states in those days.
As for Nixon, his anti-Semitism is very much in evidence on the White House tapes.
I am saddened by your lack of will to call out past mistakes of Presidents faults. How can we trust your reporting
I have always known that Reagan was a racist. His policies have hurt my community and have no sympathy for those who still are in denial about Reagan being a racist.
Is there a fee to subscribe to your publication? If there is, I would like to receive at least a few publications to determine if I want to subscribe.
Many thanks.
Barb Alotis
Ronald Reagan a racist!!! Shocking! Just a shocking revelation! NOT!! He was a dithering racist fool when he was Governor.
When Reagan legally and illegally trained, armed and financed death squads, torturers and scorched-earth armies in the 1980s — warning Americans that Nicaraguan communists were only three days’ march from Texas (do I hear an echo at the border?) — that killed tens of thousands of non-white, non-English-speaking Central Americans, it was all an innocent mistake.