.....
as a Reagan biographer and historian, one who has published eight books and countless articles on the man, I’ve been asked to respond. What to make of this? How to interpret it?
To begin with, I personally cannot defend that statement. It needs to be condemned, certainly as written.
It’s very important to know, however, that Ronald Reagan was not a racist. This is the only — and I mean
only — statement that I’ve ever read from him like this (and I’ve read just about everything). It’s so out of the norm that I find it hard to believe. Unlike nasty statements from the likes of LBJ and Harry Truman and Woodrow Wilson or even from
Hillary Clinton (who jokes of Cory Booker and Eric Holder: “
I know, they all look alike”) and Bill Clinton.
Naftali himself concedes, “Reagan’s racism appears to be documented only once on the Nixon tapes, and never in his own diaries.”
Why did Ronald utter this on this one occasion, which was completely out of character for him amid a very public life in which we have billions of on-the-record words from him, including thousands of private letters? Naftali says that Reagan was angry and frustrated in this instance, and thus expressed himself in a way that was insensitive and offensive. He says that Reagan “vented his frustration at the [African UN] delegates who had sided against the United States.”
I can’t say that I fully agree with that interpretation. I’ve carefully
listened to the audio multiple times. Reagan doesn’t sound angry at all. It sounds like he might be mocking a racist stereotype. I honestly can’t tell for certain. Given that Reagan never spoke this way, and didn’t think this way, one ought to be inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. (
Click and listen for yourself. The comment comes around the halfway point of a 12-minute conversation.)
To repeat, Ronald Reagan was absolutely no racist. This can be demonstrated at length in actions and statements literally from the time of his childhood. There are so many actions and statements that I’ve considered doing a book on Reagan and race, simply to show how unusual he was for his times — i.e., there wasn’t a racist bone in his body. I have a box, stuffed with folders, labeled “Reagan and race.” It’s loaded with examples that show Reagan to have been completely against racial prejudice and highly supportive of black Americans and their struggles, especially black actors in Hollywood when he ran the Screen Actors Guild.
The problem, frankly, with responding to charges like this in a single article is that you just can’t begin to sufficiently respond, especially when the jury is packed with emotional liberals who want to see a racist under every Republican bed.
On Ronald Reagan’s ‘Racism’ | The American Spectator | Politics Is Too Important To Be Taken Seriously.
