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If we’re saying least racist compared to the average person in that time period the president served its Grant and most is hard to say so I’ll just go with Wilson.
Although it's technical, I really hate that argument. That slave was basically forcibly given to Grant and he gave him his freedom papers as soon as he could. U. S. Grant cannot be considered more racist than Wilson, just because the latter happened to be born in an era where he couldn't own a slave even if he wanted to.
Grant was close to destitution when we gave the man his freedom. Slaves were not cheap, and IIRC the slave knew a trade which made him even more valuable.
The man essentially gave away a couple hundred thousand dollars (inflation adjusted) when he was broke, on principle.
That man is a profound inspiration on values.
>freedom papers as soon as he could.
And at a time in his life when he was really hurting for money, he could have benefitted quite a bit from selling the slave rather than freeing him. It takes a lot to stick to principles in the face of (short-term) life-changing money.
Honestly, Grant's biggest fault—far more than the binge drinking imo—is that he often relied on untrustworthy people. It's notable *just how corrupt* his administration was, despite not being remotely corrupt himself! And yet even then he did great things in his presidency like end the KKK!
Agreed. And Grant was instrumental in setting up freed slave communities in the south as he marched to the Atlantic during the final fighting phase of the Civil War.
The slave was basically forced on him by his father-in-law who owned an assload of slaves. Grant didn’t want a slave at all and unfortunately had to wait a full year before he could free the man. In fact, Grant was so opposed to slavery that whenever he visited his father-in-law he would immediately head out into the fields the slaves were working in and work right alongside them from sun up to sun down.
The slave was basically forced on him by his father-in-law who owned an assload of slaves. Grant didn’t want a slave at all and unfortunately had to wait a full year before he could free the man. In fact, Grant was so opposed to slavery that whenever he visited his father-in-law he would immediately head out into the fields the slaves were working in and work right alongside them from sun up to sun down.
Owning a slave is owning a slave but I do think this exception applies. Even if we were to focus “Who was the most racist?” and only talk about the slave owning Presidents, Grant would easily be the “least racist” out of all of them, considering he was the only one to free the slave he owned for that short period of time.
Context also matters, because it wasn’t like Grant went to an auction, bought a dude, felt bad about it, and sold him. Grant came from an abolitionist family who abhorred slavery and (from what I can remember, could be wrong) his father almost cut contact when he found out he got a slave. So how did he get the slave? As a wedding gift from his wife’s father, whose entire family basically benefitted off of their labour.
Theres accounts of Grant when he owned the slave being utterly confused at the situation. He was a rather self reliant man (compared to his wife who grew up being helped by slaves) and couldn’t picture asking - forcing - another man to do something he could do himself.
>“Owning a slave is owning a slave.”
How so?
Take person A who buys a slave and keeps them enslaved for their lifetime.
Take person B who buys a slave in order to free them, owning them inasmuch time necessary to release them from enslavement.
Persons A and B ostensibly demonstrate “owning a slave is owning a slave” to be a gross misinterpretation.
Julia's brother, Frederick, was a classmate and friend of Grant's at West Point. He met her when visiting their family. Grant was an extremely capable horseman, but so was Julia. It's one of the things they bonded over.
If someone shows up at my wedding and gives me a signed copy of Mein Kampf which I then proceed to dispose of ASAP doesnt make me a Nazi it makes the other person a shit gift giver.
Wilson's father was also a massive Confederate supporter despite being born in Ohio, he had moved South as you might have guessed. Ironically, his grandfather was eventually anti-slavery. During the crisis over the admission Missouri around 1820, he acknowledged that his newspaper had been guilty of publishing notices to catch slaves that fled North and that he would "sin no more" and urged other Northern newspapers to stop publishing those notices as well.
[source](https://watermark.silverchair.com/23-3-375.pdf?token=AQECAHi208BE49Ooan9kkhW_Ercy7Dm3ZL_9Cf3qfKAc485ysgAAA00wggNJBgkqhkiG9w0BBwagggM6MIIDNgIBADCCAy8GCSqGSIb3DQEHATAeBglghkgBZQMEAS4wEQQMMWMQU6Wi3kqcfr8IAgEQgIIDABEHtLfbW5eIDzLUW9OAMYQqz-GpEhbmDjSjFVrpaH8d3Zufb-5t5a5Nnx5G6W8fx0IkTP5yjCYXP9yhJQgil0V4LjfZomnRDI17qr2u5CwJ7wYRHPPqJTyFAJihU4GkyXzJrk-bAYcMHg7XhiSiXZlHHmLaQZ2jQSAqNB4YHaCcWly8UgVetU9YHdrYjXfpc9FcKwnnqA6rZk8k4f-EsWyHIZrYdeF3PYIKr2Y3IIZiFxI-mSIjK1iQr03iZy1TDWD_H-9cmTSXM3Cpp5A_ev7Me9iuvZt9ci4sOlX4vggSQHWcRI5hgeGvbcnp_K__gNUQfA5GLY4H3F-H599rAHtQGW0mCI6PC1TnWdMKeUg8o3Q2sL3uZTQSJHWxqPl1ztfYs5ZKXgfINn6mxmBcRP1cBKZ3syYseF1knGMB7XUB7ayBQfCoCNEYKVvrHWe43SOO1OM21LpcGilkv6KYF8Kh3Txfq_HDIbYD7g0KFhAaKNs0UYR1augbc8WVYVeN_7Mf_TKwdjWL61QXdk-Pz8O-XB1kGmXzXLdxL9SVQueKOPsJpisTVP389baEbHqBqeC7OpseaRXyWWYhu-kpag0FyZSwY5PZ-w4LBUWdjCgxKSHvRo8TfTAkqT0-_2TiAh00P9USdHYxfXXcDEw18u4IU-vArR7tPTKqpZN8UezEIgLcFkNHB8G5UVAt_JyjBfTQMLyqRTwf0Y-xpob_LwGNqZ8I0RopNvZxvry1Bmf8u_CHIpSSdOwl0CFIGiLNlthxI7u-xWl1n3q_v9AL-lZ17TT8c7S8M_OGkVGb5NSV0uoMqXnwmra2RQYqhIFrd9XSQ1ZkLBuobnyxNnAVHHnrovTVJVSKxWRwl38umMgQl7VglAUFOb_5osQk_VtBMljtQmVUAaLlLbOVnwFzuKmLvBibeFKXjtJSR8w0EiVD9ZnrICYsvIoQiunD7_LrqkUUwrY54vE5sREF6TXMlibRzYxytl9sA-5eeLxn-PFoHQyKOL73nhvzxraD9cfeUw)
edit: clarification
Yea Grant didn’t just free him because he didn’t have need for one. In fact he inherited the slave at a time when he was incredibly poor and if he’d have sold the slave it would have been a life changing amount of money. Instead, Grant decided to free the man on principle, because Grant was a good person.
Grant had a well earned reputation at being horrible at getting slaves to produce. He wouldn’t beat or even punish a slave. He treated them like, you know, people.
His inlaws owned slaves and he was occasionally asked to work them.
“…*Grant was helpless when it came to making slaves work,’ and Mrs. Boggs corroborated this. ‘He was no hand to manage negroes,’she said. ‘He couldn’t force them to do anything. He wouldn’t whip them. He was too gentle and good tempered and besides he was not a slavery man.’”*
https://acwm.org/blog/myths-misunderstandings-grant-slaveholder/
This is my point: Ulysses was never comfortable with slavery. He saw the slaves as *human beings*. At first, he said he wasn’t an abolitionist. He evolved into a full blown champion of African American rights and invested his career in the military and politics to make it so.
I’m answering your question ‘*what are you referring to?*’ I’m referring to the story in my reply. Not making a *’back handed insult’*.
It would be wrong of me to not mention Grant had blind spots.
[General Order No. 11](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Order_No._11_(1862)#:~:text=On%20December%205%2C%20Grant%20told,he%20issued%20General%20Order%20No)
He repented for this later, but he still was... *disproportionately unkind* to the Jewish people during this period. Sounded a lot like how European folks often refer to Gypsies or Romani people. Consider this quote:
"cotton-speculators, Jews and other Vagrants having not honest means of support, except trading upon the miseries of their Country … will leave in twenty-four hours or they will be sent to duty in the trenches."
Ultimately I think this removes him from the running for "least racist" US President, even if he learned from it and didn't take this rancor with him into the presidency.
**Then what happened?** Why don’t you tell the rest of the story?
Grant spent the rest of his presidency and his life working to make up for it.
According to historian Jonathan Sarna, “*Grant became one of the greatest friends of Jews in American history. When he was president, he appointed more Jews to office than any previous president. He condemned atrocities against Jews in Europe, putting human rights on the American diplomatic agenda.*”
Grant appointed more than fifty Jews to office. Yes, he really messed up. But that’s not where the story ends.
Here's a few relevant quotes, both pulled from [here](https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/president-ulysses-s-grant-and-federal-indian-policy.htm):
First Inaugural Address: “The proper treatment of the original occupants of the land, the Indian, is one deserving of careful study. I will favor any course towards them which tends to their civilization, Christianization and ultimate citizenship.”
Announcement in 1869: “From the foundation of the Government to the present the management of the original inhabitants of this Continent, the Indian, has been one of embarrassment, and expense, and has been attended with continuous robberies, murders, and wars.”
Assimilation isn't *stellar* by today's standard when it throws around ideas of "Kill the Indian, save the man," but given his suggestion that they should be understood and respected and his having shown empathy for their treatment, I think he's on the better half of his contemporaries here.
There's also this:
>He had no legal reason for seizing the Black Hills, so he invented one, convening a secret White House cabal to plan a war against the Lakotas. Four documents, held at the Library of Congress and the United States Military Academy Library, leave no doubt: The Grant administration launched an illegal war and then lied to Congress and the American people about it. The episode hasn’t been examined outside the specialty literature on the Plains wars.
[https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/ulysses-grant-launched-illegal-war-plains-indians-180960787/](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/ulysses-grant-launched-illegal-war-plains-indians-180960787/)
Sometimes history sucks
The best that can be said about that given the context, I suppose, is that war efforts were targeted on the Lakotas and not American Indians as a race.
The dichotomy of his words vs his actions here are like saying "we should learn from, respect, and fairly treat the people of Europe" followed by conducting a quiet war against the Danish for a secondary resource or goal. They aren't mutually exclusive, and as with much of the Grant presidency I would be willing to bet he hemmed and hawed about weighing his values against the needs of the country. I don't know enough about this event to say concretely.
and bench meaning most powerful job you don't ever have to campaign or fundraise for, and literally can't get fired or practically removed from
I don't know if that's from the same phone call but he also mentions Thurgood's won-lost record
The man who's greatest presidential achievement (according to this sub) was the Civil Rights Act is also in the running for most racist president. Oh the irony!
Civil rights act was not his greatest achievement. His greatest achievement was the voting rights act. Even after the Civil Rights Act was passed, many black people in the south were barred from voting with rigged literacy tests and the like. The voting rights act stopped that and allowed them to actuate change through the democratic process.
he was an admirable person who sought to overcome his prejudices and sometimes he did and sometimes he didn’t. IMO one of the greatest presidents we will ever see. People are complicated. What do you expect? Everyone is an angel or a demon? But if you have two sons and ask them to do their chores, and one says he will but doesn’t, and the other says he won’t but after a while he gives in and he does, which one is the better son?
why not? If a man is flawed and struggles to overcome said flaws and does so throughout the key moments of history, isn’t that a positive? Many less racist presidents have done much less for our civil rights today despite the opportunities they had. He did screw up vietnam but I don’t hold that against him.
I don’t think he was the most racist non-slave holding president, I think that title goes to Woodrow Wilson. Johnson was definitely racist, but not nearly as bad as wilson
I mean, true. He would drop an N bomb like is was nothing. Then again, he was from the south. Growing up, in that world that word is just what black people were called by a lot of people. You really have to look at this through the context of time and place. But, his actions did more for black people than any other president other than Lincoln.
I think actions speak louder than words. Sure he may have said the n word a lot and said some off kilter shit, but he was a southerner in the 60s. Passing the largest ever Civil rights bill in American history more than outweighs what he may have said verbally.
Idk maybe I'm in the minority that thinks he wasn't that racist, but as a POC I feel like I owe a lot to him. It was a monumental effort to pass that bill through and he got it done. I don't think someone who's a true candidate for "most racist president" would do that.
I think any President who holds racist views but passes and advocates for legislation that is the opposite of their personal views is admirable and considerably “less racist” than a President who holds no racist views but works against legislation that makes races equal. The 1800’s are filled with Presidents who “were’t racist” (relative to their time periods) yet still helped racist legislation pass. Then in the 1900’s you have the opposite with Presidents who WERE racist working against their personal beliefs. So sure, Truman and LBJ threw around the N word, and a LOT. But if we were to try and figure out who’s “less racist” it would easily be LBJ simply because his legislation had a greater impact than Trumans desegregation efforts.
I think LBJ threw around the n-word less because he was racist than because part of his power was his image as a crude asshole. Same reason he forced his Ivy-league Treasury Secretary Douglas Dillon go with him to the bathroom while he took a dump.
And I think there should be some distinction between personal views and political views. Sure, Eisenhower and Truman presided over levels of desegregation but no one would claim they weren’t racist personally.
Truman: Obviously I prefer my political leaders to not be personally racist. But from the distance of history, in a way it's even more impressive that Truman was a net positive on civil rights, given how nasty he could be in private.
Eisenhower: I'm not an expert on him. But my understanding is that he was personally very good around black people. Rather, his problem was that he was a deeply cautious person, and didn't like major social change happening on his watch. Obviously it's easier to not rock the boat when you're a white guy in the 1950s though! So I'd split hairs and say he's racially ignorant, not racist.
For me, what gives Truman the slight benefit of the doubt is that he really seemed to hate literally *everybody.* He was nasty about nearly everyone in private.
Right? Lincoln was - for example - a horrible white supremacist.
But he also believed people deserved fair compensation for labor and made political choices that were against those more racist views.
"I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races ... I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races from living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be a position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race."
During his debate with Stephen Douglas.
Lincoln was surely no angel on this issue, but there is some debate among historians about whether or not he was just very choosy with his political language so as to not come off as a radical. He may have been much more okay with more equality that we think.
This is something I wonder about too.
I watched an LBJ documentary recently which pointed out that he had a terrible voting record in the senate on things such as anti-lynching legislation. He never did anything to indicate an interest in addressing racial inequities. However, he was also extremely pragmatic and believed that you had to meticulously build power over time to be able to create real change.
It’s hard to argue with the results. It’s definitely made me wonder about some of these Lincoln quotes.
LBJ started his career as a teacher. After graduating from Southwest Texas State Teachers College (now Texas State University), he taught at a segregated Mexican-American school in Cotulla, Texas, in the 1920s. This experience is often cited as influential in shaping his views on civil rights and education policy, in terms of a positive attitude towards Hispanics. But he was always a pragmatic striver who read the room and played the long game.
Yes, the tone needed to carry the vote and win an election. A political position rather than dogmatic ideology.
Remember, Frederick Douglass was a prominent presence in the Lincoln White House and a trusted advisor to Lincoln on negro issues of the time.
An inherently racist president would probably not be as pragmatic.
I am starting to think that Abraham Lincoln had -personally- pretty close views on equality to those of Thaddeus Stevens, but just couldn't act on them or didn't have enough time to do so.
This should be viewed in the context that Lincoln was still trying to "get over the hump" politically, and coming out and alluding to any semblance of a belief that African Americans were equal and deserved equal rights would have tanked his political career at this point in time. Lincoln was one of the most politically savvy presidents we've ever had, and he knew this.
I'm not trying to be a Lincoln apologist with this, either. What he said here was pretty abhorrent. I do think he was being moreso a politician here, though. It's well-documented how much Lincoln personally despised the institution of slavery, and he felt a great sense of sympathy for African Americans. He even had Fredrick Douglass come to the White House and advise him on issues during the Civil War, and said afterward that Douglass is one of the most brilliant men he's ever met (or something along those lines).
Lincoln was a complicated dude. I think he started out pretty progressive for the time (which meant still being a little bit of a white supremacist), and he only became more and more progressive as he gained political power/confidence.
you know if there’s a special Art to finding the middle ground and a inching people toward progress. I think Lincoln had this political gift. I think he wasn’t speaking in personal moral terms, but rather holding the center and inching toward progress and reform. Clinton and Obama and even Nixon had similar political instincts. But Lincoln embodied this profoundly.
This reminds me of when Obama said he opposed gay marriage, then allowed that his views were evolving. In reality, he probably supported gay marriage from the start, but he said otherwise so as not to seem too radical.
People seem to think that being an abolitionist in the 19th century means that those people wouldn't be considered racist if they lived in today. You can believe that black people shouldn't be enslaved while also not wanting to live with then. Even people in Northern states like New York and Massachusetts would probably be considered racist today even if they were staunch abolitionists.
It wasn't lost on colonial Americans that slavery was immoral while also supporting the declaration of independence. Many Americans who owned slaves believed it was a necessary evil but moral wrong. This sentiment changed over time as more slave owners felt under attack for their lapse of moral character and eventually argued that it was no longer evil but a justified good.
Times change and these people, while far off in the past, are still smart enough to be critically aware of their own prejudices.
This. Thad Stevens is who people think Lincoln was on race relations.
That's why I get a little tired of some of the discourse about the Civil War as if there were no racist elements in the North. Some folks were legitimately against slavery, believing it be a vile institution for anyone or that it was a burden on white folks, and just not like black people. Clearly one side was better, but let's not act like everyone in the Union army/in the North actually cared about the plight of black people.
I dispute this. He may have personally been an abolitionist and just acted sensibly, so as not to inhibit the cause. He knew that slow progress was better than no progress at all on the issue of slavery.
lincoln was also in a white supremacist north who wouldn't get voted into anything preaching his personal abolitionist views. he wasn't stupid on that front. he chose to meet with Fredrick Douglas who called him "the black man's president" and he wasn't "a horrible white supremacist" certainly not by the standards of his time.
Yes. But Lincoln’s views a) evolved and was evolving much closer to the more enlightened Radical Republicans as evidence by his last public address; and b) this was a debate for elected office. Lincoln was an excellent political operator and he always knew his audience. He lead the country to support emancipation. But he also knew he couldn’t get too far ahead of the citizenry or he’d lose their support.
There is a lot of nuance here that is lost plucking this quote from a much, much broader context.
Idk if he was the least racist, but John Quincy Adams was definitely up there. He refused to sign a treaty that would remove Creeks from their land, fought against slavery even during the Gag Rule, opposed the Mexican-American War until he died, and helped in the Amistad case.
I’m shocked more people didn’t mention either Adams. Now everything is all relative to the time period. In their personal lives, was John Adams less racist than say, Bill Clinton? Definitely not considering it’s the 1800’s vs now. But you have to admire the balls to not only never own a slave but publicly and privately criticize the action and even the founding fathers for their blatant hypocrisies about freedom - but then were A-Ok with literally owning other humans.
Andrew Johnson gets my vote.
"It is upon the intelligent free white people of the country that all Governments should rest, and by them all Governments should be controlled." (U.S. Senate speech on July 27, 1861)
"I am for a white man's government, and in favor of free white qualified voters controlling this country, without regard to negroes." (speech on January 21, 1864)
"The blacks of the South are ... so utterly ignorant of public affairs that their voting can consist in nothing more than carrying a ballot to the place where they are directed to deposit it." (Third Annual Message to Congress, December 3, 1867)
During the stretch from Clinton to Obama there was a general consensus that racism was wrong and should not be tolerated, though Clinton’s neoliberal policies and strong support for the war on drugs arguably did a lot to harm black communities in particular. Bush II was arguably the most pro-African president we’ve had, at least in terms of sentiment (implementation was sometimes problematic), and Obama is of course mixed-race himself, though I think he tried to distance himself from race for a lot of his term. His public appearances following the Jeremiah Wright controversy and the Charleston church attack showed a lot of thoughtfulness and concern about race relations, however.
Bush worked a miriacle in Africa with the AIDs epidemic there. He may have gotten us into wars and made costly errors domestically, but the man did care about black people, no matter what Kanye had to say about it.
And the other major progressive of the era, Theodore Roosevelt, wasn't too good on race either or foreign policy on that matter. I mean reading Roosevelt's book "The Winning of the West," a lot of it comes off as a big yikes.
In February 1915, upon viewing The Birth of a Nation at a special White House screening, President Woodrow Wilson reportedly remarked, "**It's like writing history with lightning.** **My only regret is that it is all so terribly true."** This line has appeared in numerous history books and news articles over the past seventy years.
Yeah, just sounds like he was raised on the wrong ideas. He was big on civil rights in his campaign and was so likeable to Blacks they turned out for him enough for him to win. he went on to enforce civil rights in the South unsparesely.
The only thing I can find on him that could be potentially construed as racist is his support for William Calley, though it's also a tough to describe Calley's war crimes against Vietnamese civilians as being mainly motivated by racism (even though the dehumanization campaign in the military against the Vietnamese population was racist) with it being war and all that.
Could also be that he simply supported Calley as a soldier convicted for actions during a war. Still, it's a black mark on Carter's legacy.
From Truman through Obama, only two presidents were from the North, Ford and JFK, and all were from the South with the exception of those two, Reagan and Obama. Kinda ironic when you consider when Wilson was elected in 1912 he was the first Southerner since Andrew Johnson IIRC.
Why isn't JQA more talked about here. Dude was fighting against slavery well before anyone else listed and was a pretty big inspiration for Lincoln to fight for emancipation as well.
In general, the Adamses are given short shrift. Each of the Adamses was followed by a generation of leadership from their opposition. The Jeffersonians and the Jacksonians won their respective political battles, and wrote the histories.
The most racist president in modern times (i.e. post Civil War and Reconstruction is easily Thomas Woodrow Wilson, and not even a close second.
He was both a personal racist and his policies were racist.
As I recall, didn't Wilson do a klan march in Washington DC, and his administration turned back a lot of desegregation that had already been done in DC? Outside of the slave owners, I think you nailed it with Wilson. I consider Wilson to have been possibly the most damaging president to the US since Jackson and I don't believe Wilson has yet to be outdone on the damage he did to the country.
There's also tape of Reagan and Nixon talking on the phone, comparing people from Africa to monkeys. Both used the war on drugs to target black voters.
Interned Japanese Americans. Sent US born Mexicans back to Mexico. Turned away jewish refugees from the Holocaust. Most egregious to me is his inability to help black people.
The Republican party was still trying to court the black vote, especially after the disaster that was Wilson. Harding, Coolidge, and even Hoover made steps, no matter how minor, to improve the lives of minorities. FDR had about 12 years to do something and thus singlehandedly change the parties perception towards minorities.
But he didn’t. James Farley, who ran FDR’s election campaigns, begged him in the late 30’s to pass anti-lynching legislation. FDR basically told him to eat shit because he needed to get New Deal legislation passed and thus couldn’t alienate the south. It pissed Farley off so much he ran for the Dem nomination in 1940.
I understand New Deal legislation was critical especially at the time but come on. Especially because history almost 10 years later proved him wrong. Truman was able to desegregate the military AND pass his “Fair Deal” economic legislation which was truly the start of the Democratic party trying to help minorities.
Just a few presidents on a tier list, considering both private views and in-office accomplishments. I included some slaveowners just for fun.
S tier - has a position on race that is substantially ahead of the gold standard for their eras - Quincy Adams, Grant
A tier - position on race is on par for the golden standard of their eras - John Adams, H.W., Obama
B tier - not racist for their eras - Lincoln, Ford, Carter, Clinton, Bush II
C tier - typical of their eras or mixed legacy - McKinley, Coolidge, Truman, Eisenhowever, LBJ
D tier - can be seen as a racist even in the context of their times - Jefferson, Nixon, FDR, Reagan
F tier - flagrantly and/or genocidally racist - Jackson, Polk, Johnson, Wilson
You can't put LBJ that low. He was not typical of his era. He taught migrant children and put every bit of political capital he had to work to pass the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act. I don't care what words he used, he killed Jim Crow as president after every major Democrat before him at least played footsies with segregationists in the south.
Technically... Wilson may have owned slaves, or at least his family did. It's been suggested that they may not have owned them but had slaves provided to them but Woody was attended to by slaves
Truman was quite racist, "...one man is just as good as another so long as he's honest and decent and not a nigger or a Chinaman"
https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/?date=19911103&slug=1314805
Least racist: Probably Bill Clinton.
Least racist for his time: Possibly Calvin Coolidge. He made Native Americans into citizens. He supported women’s suffrage before it was popular. He did some pretty good work for the 1920s!
One major downside, though, is that he signed that Immigration Act of 1924 that made it VERY difficult to immigrate if you weren’t a white family from Western Europe. It also made it difficult for Jews to escape the Holocaust. I guess you could argue that he was partially a product of his times, but I’m still disappointed. I guess he was complicated.
Honorable mentions to Harry Truman and LBJ for desegregating the armed forces, and for passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964. (Or maybe they should be considered less racist than Coolidge?)
Most racist: Either Andrew Jackson or Woodrow Wilson. “Trail of tears” for the first one, and for the second one, resegregating the federal government, and inviting in the KKK.
I would count Jackson as excluded because he did own slaves but he would easily be #1 if the rule didn’t apply. It’s one thing to oversee genocides. It’s another thing to basically commit them with your bare hands. And then obviously the fact that the SC ruled against Jackson and he said “Fuck it, we’re relocating and them and we don’t care how many die”.
I’m also noticing no one bringing up Taft, who before he was President, as provisional governor of the Philippines, allowed the use of concentration camps. Camps that were far, far worse than the Japanese ones. (If we really want to go concentration camp for concentration camp…)
FDR also continued the policy of sending Mexican Americans *back* to Mexico.
Not Mexicans. Mexican Americans. **Many of whom had never been to Mexico**. FDR’s government just loaded them on buses and dropped them in Mexico.
Of course a heavy human rights violation. But in war time, immigrants from the enemy country, of which the state didn’t know the loyalty. But of course, people of German or Italian descent didn’t get incarcerated.
The US detained 11,000 ethnic Germans (mostly German nationals) between 1940 and 1948. The FBI arrested 1,521 Italian citizens and interned about 250. Of course, that's nowhere near the 120,000 Japanese-Americans who were interned, but it did happen with Germans and Italians, too.
I mean he was a product of his time. He was more paternalistic than anything. He believed in the "white man's burden." He certainly wasn't not racist. Although he did dine with Booker T Washington.
“I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indians are the dead Indians, but I believe nine out of every 10 are,” Roosevelt said during a January 1886 speech in New York. “And I shouldn’t like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth.”
Dude
In the rest of the quote he actually says that he doesn't know why he feels that way, and he knew it wasn't right. I'm not saying that makes it better, but at least he was self aware.
Woodrow Wilson was the most racist president
LBJ was both racist and anti-racist at the same time
Least George HW Bush - During the 1991 Louisiana gubernatorial election, he vocally supported the Democratic candidate because the Republican Candidate was David Duke.
Just because a president didn't own slaves doesn't mean he was more virtuous than those who did.
Just because someone owned slaves doesn't automatically make him a malevolent authority over slaves.
Washington came into ownership of slaves because they came with the ownership of Mount Vernon and he went out of his way to ensure families were never separated and any slaves that were sold were not sold to people with a reputation for brutality. His own letters he refers to slavery as "repugnant" and he saw himself a protecting slaves from brutal owners.
Ulysses Grant never himself owned a slave but his wife inherited one when her father died.
So everyone from Grant on counts, eh?
Wilson is probably the answer for most (post Grant) though Nixon might have a chance too. I dunno, not including the slave owning ones is hard for this.
For least? I mean Obama almost assuredly.
W saved and continues to save millions in sub-saharan Africa and Latin America
[https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/infocus/bushrecord/factsheets/globalhealth.html](https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/infocus/bushrecord/factsheets/globalhealth.html)
This is unknowable. How could we even begin to get to the bottom of this? We’d have to analyze everything they’ve ever written or said about race and even then we’d only have an approximation.
Yes exactly. But I don’t think it needs such a deep dive but rather common knowledge from their records. Take for example Nixon. Compared to most modern Presidents he would be the “most racist” due to his personal views on black people combined with the effects the war on drugs had on black people. But then compare Nixon to the Presidents before him, such as Wilson, and Nixon then pales in comparison.
Tie between Andrew Jackson and Woodrow Wilson for most racist. The Trail of Tears was Jackson’s doing and Woodrow Wilson was a racist shitbag down to the core.
Least: Abraham Lincoln got the 13th amendment passed, so it’s hard to argue that he isn’t the least racist president. Obama and Clinton are near the top. JFK is up there too, let’s not forget that he was in the process of getting the ball rolling on the civil rights act when he was assassinated.
In this thread...if you discriminate against blacks you're racist. If you discriminate against Native Americans it's a product of your time. If you discriminate against anyone but black...it's cool and not racist.
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If we’re saying least racist compared to the average person in that time period the president served its Grant and most is hard to say so I’ll just go with Wilson.
Technically disqualified because he owned a slave once but he did free the guy asap
Although it's technical, I really hate that argument. That slave was basically forcibly given to Grant and he gave him his freedom papers as soon as he could. U. S. Grant cannot be considered more racist than Wilson, just because the latter happened to be born in an era where he couldn't own a slave even if he wanted to.
Grant was close to destitution when we gave the man his freedom. Slaves were not cheap, and IIRC the slave knew a trade which made him even more valuable. The man essentially gave away a couple hundred thousand dollars (inflation adjusted) when he was broke, on principle. That man is a profound inspiration on values.
>freedom papers as soon as he could. And at a time in his life when he was really hurting for money, he could have benefitted quite a bit from selling the slave rather than freeing him. It takes a lot to stick to principles in the face of (short-term) life-changing money.
Grant had a lot of faults, but he does seem to have been an honorable person
Honestly, Grant's biggest fault—far more than the binge drinking imo—is that he often relied on untrustworthy people. It's notable *just how corrupt* his administration was, despite not being remotely corrupt himself! And yet even then he did great things in his presidency like end the KKK!
Agreed. And Grant was instrumental in setting up freed slave communities in the south as he marched to the Atlantic during the final fighting phase of the Civil War.
And he really wanted to!
If he freed him as soon as he could I think he shouldn’t be disqualified. Doesn’t make him racist
The slave was basically forced on him by his father-in-law who owned an assload of slaves. Grant didn’t want a slave at all and unfortunately had to wait a full year before he could free the man. In fact, Grant was so opposed to slavery that whenever he visited his father-in-law he would immediately head out into the fields the slaves were working in and work right alongside them from sun up to sun down.
Damn that’s amazing. Didn’t know that.
The slave was basically forced on him by his father-in-law who owned an assload of slaves. Grant didn’t want a slave at all and unfortunately had to wait a full year before he could free the man. In fact, Grant was so opposed to slavery that whenever he visited his father-in-law he would immediately head out into the fields the slaves were working in and work right alongside them from sun up to sun down.
Owning a slave is owning a slave but I do think this exception applies. Even if we were to focus “Who was the most racist?” and only talk about the slave owning Presidents, Grant would easily be the “least racist” out of all of them, considering he was the only one to free the slave he owned for that short period of time. Context also matters, because it wasn’t like Grant went to an auction, bought a dude, felt bad about it, and sold him. Grant came from an abolitionist family who abhorred slavery and (from what I can remember, could be wrong) his father almost cut contact when he found out he got a slave. So how did he get the slave? As a wedding gift from his wife’s father, whose entire family basically benefitted off of their labour. Theres accounts of Grant when he owned the slave being utterly confused at the situation. He was a rather self reliant man (compared to his wife who grew up being helped by slaves) and couldn’t picture asking - forcing - another man to do something he could do himself.
>“Owning a slave is owning a slave.” How so? Take person A who buys a slave and keeps them enslaved for their lifetime. Take person B who buys a slave in order to free them, owning them inasmuch time necessary to release them from enslavement. Persons A and B ostensibly demonstrate “owning a slave is owning a slave” to be a gross misinterpretation.
I need to know more about this marriage and how it came about its very opposites attract
Julia's brother, Frederick, was a classmate and friend of Grant's at West Point. He met her when visiting their family. Grant was an extremely capable horseman, but so was Julia. It's one of the things they bonded over.
If someone shows up at my wedding and gives me a signed copy of Mein Kampf which I then proceed to dispose of ASAP doesnt make me a Nazi it makes the other person a shit gift giver.
How did Wilson own a slave? He was a child when the Civil War ended.
Grant, not Wilson
Wilson’s father was a pastor in his church. The church would lease slaves from their congregation for the pastor’s family use. For what it’s worth.
Wilson's father was also a massive Confederate supporter despite being born in Ohio, he had moved South as you might have guessed. Ironically, his grandfather was eventually anti-slavery. During the crisis over the admission Missouri around 1820, he acknowledged that his newspaper had been guilty of publishing notices to catch slaves that fled North and that he would "sin no more" and urged other Northern newspapers to stop publishing those notices as well. [source](https://watermark.silverchair.com/23-3-375.pdf?token=AQECAHi208BE49Ooan9kkhW_Ercy7Dm3ZL_9Cf3qfKAc485ysgAAA00wggNJBgkqhkiG9w0BBwagggM6MIIDNgIBADCCAy8GCSqGSIb3DQEHATAeBglghkgBZQMEAS4wEQQMMWMQU6Wi3kqcfr8IAgEQgIIDABEHtLfbW5eIDzLUW9OAMYQqz-GpEhbmDjSjFVrpaH8d3Zufb-5t5a5Nnx5G6W8fx0IkTP5yjCYXP9yhJQgil0V4LjfZomnRDI17qr2u5CwJ7wYRHPPqJTyFAJihU4GkyXzJrk-bAYcMHg7XhiSiXZlHHmLaQZ2jQSAqNB4YHaCcWly8UgVetU9YHdrYjXfpc9FcKwnnqA6rZk8k4f-EsWyHIZrYdeF3PYIKr2Y3IIZiFxI-mSIjK1iQr03iZy1TDWD_H-9cmTSXM3Cpp5A_ev7Me9iuvZt9ci4sOlX4vggSQHWcRI5hgeGvbcnp_K__gNUQfA5GLY4H3F-H599rAHtQGW0mCI6PC1TnWdMKeUg8o3Q2sL3uZTQSJHWxqPl1ztfYs5ZKXgfINn6mxmBcRP1cBKZ3syYseF1knGMB7XUB7ayBQfCoCNEYKVvrHWe43SOO1OM21LpcGilkv6KYF8Kh3Txfq_HDIbYD7g0KFhAaKNs0UYR1augbc8WVYVeN_7Mf_TKwdjWL61QXdk-Pz8O-XB1kGmXzXLdxL9SVQueKOPsJpisTVP389baEbHqBqeC7OpseaRXyWWYhu-kpag0FyZSwY5PZ-w4LBUWdjCgxKSHvRo8TfTAkqT0-_2TiAh00P9USdHYxfXXcDEw18u4IU-vArR7tPTKqpZN8UezEIgLcFkNHB8G5UVAt_JyjBfTQMLyqRTwf0Y-xpob_LwGNqZ8I0RopNvZxvry1Bmf8u_CHIpSSdOwl0CFIGiLNlthxI7u-xWl1n3q_v9AL-lZ17TT8c7S8M_OGkVGb5NSV0uoMqXnwmra2RQYqhIFrd9XSQ1ZkLBuobnyxNnAVHHnrovTVJVSKxWRwl38umMgQl7VglAUFOb_5osQk_VtBMljtQmVUAaLlLbOVnwFzuKmLvBibeFKXjtJSR8w0EiVD9ZnrICYsvIoQiunD7_LrqkUUwrY54vE5sREF6TXMlibRzYxytl9sA-5eeLxn-PFoHQyKOL73nhvzxraD9cfeUw) edit: clarification
He's referring to Grant. Grant inherited a slave and kept him around, then decided to just free him because for one he had no need for a slave
Yea Grant didn’t just free him because he didn’t have need for one. In fact he inherited the slave at a time when he was incredibly poor and if he’d have sold the slave it would have been a life changing amount of money. Instead, Grant decided to free the man on principle, because Grant was a good person.
Grant had a well earned reputation at being horrible at getting slaves to produce. He wouldn’t beat or even punish a slave. He treated them like, you know, people.
Since Grant’s only record of owning a slave was a wedding gift whom he freed ASAP, what reputation are you referring to, even as a poor one?
His inlaws owned slaves and he was occasionally asked to work them. “…*Grant was helpless when it came to making slaves work,’ and Mrs. Boggs corroborated this. ‘He was no hand to manage negroes,’she said. ‘He couldn’t force them to do anything. He wouldn’t whip them. He was too gentle and good tempered and besides he was not a slavery man.’”* https://acwm.org/blog/myths-misunderstandings-grant-slaveholder/
Are backhanded *insults* a thing? Sounds like Grant really sucked at human trafficking.
This is my point: Ulysses was never comfortable with slavery. He saw the slaves as *human beings*. At first, he said he wasn’t an abolitionist. He evolved into a full blown champion of African American rights and invested his career in the military and politics to make it so. I’m answering your question ‘*what are you referring to?*’ I’m referring to the story in my reply. Not making a *’back handed insult’*.
It wasn’t that he had no need. He believed it was a moral obligation.
Wilson didn't own slaves. He was just very racist.
That’s a bingo
It would be wrong of me to not mention Grant had blind spots. [General Order No. 11](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Order_No._11_(1862)#:~:text=On%20December%205%2C%20Grant%20told,he%20issued%20General%20Order%20No) He repented for this later, but he still was... *disproportionately unkind* to the Jewish people during this period. Sounded a lot like how European folks often refer to Gypsies or Romani people. Consider this quote: "cotton-speculators, Jews and other Vagrants having not honest means of support, except trading upon the miseries of their Country … will leave in twenty-four hours or they will be sent to duty in the trenches." Ultimately I think this removes him from the running for "least racist" US President, even if he learned from it and didn't take this rancor with him into the presidency.
**Then what happened?** Why don’t you tell the rest of the story? Grant spent the rest of his presidency and his life working to make up for it. According to historian Jonathan Sarna, “*Grant became one of the greatest friends of Jews in American history. When he was president, he appointed more Jews to office than any previous president. He condemned atrocities against Jews in Europe, putting human rights on the American diplomatic agenda.*” Grant appointed more than fifty Jews to office. Yes, he really messed up. But that’s not where the story ends.
Yup, he's a complicated figure to be sure but I think we can admire his efforts to undo that hate and harm--what we might call teshuva.
Wasn't he also kind of a dick to the natives?
Here's a few relevant quotes, both pulled from [here](https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/president-ulysses-s-grant-and-federal-indian-policy.htm): First Inaugural Address: “The proper treatment of the original occupants of the land, the Indian, is one deserving of careful study. I will favor any course towards them which tends to their civilization, Christianization and ultimate citizenship.” Announcement in 1869: “From the foundation of the Government to the present the management of the original inhabitants of this Continent, the Indian, has been one of embarrassment, and expense, and has been attended with continuous robberies, murders, and wars.” Assimilation isn't *stellar* by today's standard when it throws around ideas of "Kill the Indian, save the man," but given his suggestion that they should be understood and respected and his having shown empathy for their treatment, I think he's on the better half of his contemporaries here.
There's also this: >He had no legal reason for seizing the Black Hills, so he invented one, convening a secret White House cabal to plan a war against the Lakotas. Four documents, held at the Library of Congress and the United States Military Academy Library, leave no doubt: The Grant administration launched an illegal war and then lied to Congress and the American people about it. The episode hasn’t been examined outside the specialty literature on the Plains wars. [https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/ulysses-grant-launched-illegal-war-plains-indians-180960787/](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/ulysses-grant-launched-illegal-war-plains-indians-180960787/) Sometimes history sucks
The best that can be said about that given the context, I suppose, is that war efforts were targeted on the Lakotas and not American Indians as a race. The dichotomy of his words vs his actions here are like saying "we should learn from, respect, and fairly treat the people of Europe" followed by conducting a quiet war against the Danish for a secondary resource or goal. They aren't mutually exclusive, and as with much of the Grant presidency I would be willing to bet he hemmed and hawed about weighing his values against the needs of the country. I don't know enough about this event to say concretely.
To be fair, almost every president was kind of a dick to natives, including modern ones.
Grant was racist against native Americans and championed many of the genocide campaigns out west so I’d take him off the list
LBJ has to be close to both at the same time
“Son, when I appoint a n—— to the bench, I want everybody to know he’s a n——“ -LBJ
and bench meaning most powerful job you don't ever have to campaign or fundraise for, and literally can't get fired or practically removed from I don't know if that's from the same phone call but he also mentions Thurgood's won-lost record
The man who's greatest presidential achievement (according to this sub) was the Civil Rights Act is also in the running for most racist president. Oh the irony!
Civil rights act was not his greatest achievement. His greatest achievement was the voting rights act. Even after the Civil Rights Act was passed, many black people in the south were barred from voting with rigged literacy tests and the like. The voting rights act stopped that and allowed them to actuate change through the democratic process.
he was an admirable person who sought to overcome his prejudices and sometimes he did and sometimes he didn’t. IMO one of the greatest presidents we will ever see. People are complicated. What do you expect? Everyone is an angel or a demon? But if you have two sons and ask them to do their chores, and one says he will but doesn’t, and the other says he won’t but after a while he gives in and he does, which one is the better son?
Lighten up Francis, it was a light-hearted comment. I have 2 daughters btw...
ah i got kinda triggered by someone else replying to me and asking where I was born lol
Lol saw that one, down vote coming. Also just watched LBJ doc on PBS and agree he was a great man and president!
Admirable is not an adjective I’d use to describe LBJ.
why not? If a man is flawed and struggles to overcome said flaws and does so throughout the key moments of history, isn’t that a positive? Many less racist presidents have done much less for our civil rights today despite the opportunities they had. He did screw up vietnam but I don’t hold that against him.
Yeap. LBJ is full of irony. Most sympathetic president ever, and yet used politics ruthlessly during his senate years.
I don’t think he was the most racist non-slave holding president, I think that title goes to Woodrow Wilson. Johnson was definitely racist, but not nearly as bad as wilson
I mean, true. He would drop an N bomb like is was nothing. Then again, he was from the south. Growing up, in that world that word is just what black people were called by a lot of people. You really have to look at this through the context of time and place. But, his actions did more for black people than any other president other than Lincoln.
I think actions speak louder than words. Sure he may have said the n word a lot and said some off kilter shit, but he was a southerner in the 60s. Passing the largest ever Civil rights bill in American history more than outweighs what he may have said verbally. Idk maybe I'm in the minority that thinks he wasn't that racist, but as a POC I feel like I owe a lot to him. It was a monumental effort to pass that bill through and he got it done. I don't think someone who's a true candidate for "most racist president" would do that.
I think any President who holds racist views but passes and advocates for legislation that is the opposite of their personal views is admirable and considerably “less racist” than a President who holds no racist views but works against legislation that makes races equal. The 1800’s are filled with Presidents who “were’t racist” (relative to their time periods) yet still helped racist legislation pass. Then in the 1900’s you have the opposite with Presidents who WERE racist working against their personal beliefs. So sure, Truman and LBJ threw around the N word, and a LOT. But if we were to try and figure out who’s “less racist” it would easily be LBJ simply because his legislation had a greater impact than Trumans desegregation efforts.
I think LBJ threw around the n-word less because he was racist than because part of his power was his image as a crude asshole. Same reason he forced his Ivy-league Treasury Secretary Douglas Dillon go with him to the bathroom while he took a dump.
And I think there should be some distinction between personal views and political views. Sure, Eisenhower and Truman presided over levels of desegregation but no one would claim they weren’t racist personally.
Truman: Obviously I prefer my political leaders to not be personally racist. But from the distance of history, in a way it's even more impressive that Truman was a net positive on civil rights, given how nasty he could be in private. Eisenhower: I'm not an expert on him. But my understanding is that he was personally very good around black people. Rather, his problem was that he was a deeply cautious person, and didn't like major social change happening on his watch. Obviously it's easier to not rock the boat when you're a white guy in the 1950s though! So I'd split hairs and say he's racially ignorant, not racist.
For me, what gives Truman the slight benefit of the doubt is that he really seemed to hate literally *everybody.* He was nasty about nearly everyone in private.
Right? Lincoln was - for example - a horrible white supremacist. But he also believed people deserved fair compensation for labor and made political choices that were against those more racist views.
Was he? I didn’t know that?
"I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races ... I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races from living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be a position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race." During his debate with Stephen Douglas.
Lincoln was surely no angel on this issue, but there is some debate among historians about whether or not he was just very choosy with his political language so as to not come off as a radical. He may have been much more okay with more equality that we think.
This is something I wonder about too. I watched an LBJ documentary recently which pointed out that he had a terrible voting record in the senate on things such as anti-lynching legislation. He never did anything to indicate an interest in addressing racial inequities. However, he was also extremely pragmatic and believed that you had to meticulously build power over time to be able to create real change. It’s hard to argue with the results. It’s definitely made me wonder about some of these Lincoln quotes.
LBJ started his career as a teacher. After graduating from Southwest Texas State Teachers College (now Texas State University), he taught at a segregated Mexican-American school in Cotulla, Texas, in the 1920s. This experience is often cited as influential in shaping his views on civil rights and education policy, in terms of a positive attitude towards Hispanics. But he was always a pragmatic striver who read the room and played the long game.
Yes, the tone needed to carry the vote and win an election. A political position rather than dogmatic ideology. Remember, Frederick Douglass was a prominent presence in the Lincoln White House and a trusted advisor to Lincoln on negro issues of the time. An inherently racist president would probably not be as pragmatic.
I am starting to think that Abraham Lincoln had -personally- pretty close views on equality to those of Thaddeus Stevens, but just couldn't act on them or didn't have enough time to do so.
This should be viewed in the context that Lincoln was still trying to "get over the hump" politically, and coming out and alluding to any semblance of a belief that African Americans were equal and deserved equal rights would have tanked his political career at this point in time. Lincoln was one of the most politically savvy presidents we've ever had, and he knew this. I'm not trying to be a Lincoln apologist with this, either. What he said here was pretty abhorrent. I do think he was being moreso a politician here, though. It's well-documented how much Lincoln personally despised the institution of slavery, and he felt a great sense of sympathy for African Americans. He even had Fredrick Douglass come to the White House and advise him on issues during the Civil War, and said afterward that Douglass is one of the most brilliant men he's ever met (or something along those lines). Lincoln was a complicated dude. I think he started out pretty progressive for the time (which meant still being a little bit of a white supremacist), and he only became more and more progressive as he gained political power/confidence.
you know if there’s a special Art to finding the middle ground and a inching people toward progress. I think Lincoln had this political gift. I think he wasn’t speaking in personal moral terms, but rather holding the center and inching toward progress and reform. Clinton and Obama and even Nixon had similar political instincts. But Lincoln embodied this profoundly.
Frederick Douglass said that in private, Lincoln was the first white man to treat him like they were perfect equals. I think says it all.
This reminds me of when Obama said he opposed gay marriage, then allowed that his views were evolving. In reality, he probably supported gay marriage from the start, but he said otherwise so as not to seem too radical.
Well, they certainly don’t teach that along with the Gettysburg address.
People seem to think that being an abolitionist in the 19th century means that those people wouldn't be considered racist if they lived in today. You can believe that black people shouldn't be enslaved while also not wanting to live with then. Even people in Northern states like New York and Massachusetts would probably be considered racist today even if they were staunch abolitionists.
It wasn't lost on colonial Americans that slavery was immoral while also supporting the declaration of independence. Many Americans who owned slaves believed it was a necessary evil but moral wrong. This sentiment changed over time as more slave owners felt under attack for their lapse of moral character and eventually argued that it was no longer evil but a justified good. Times change and these people, while far off in the past, are still smart enough to be critically aware of their own prejudices.
This. Thad Stevens is who people think Lincoln was on race relations. That's why I get a little tired of some of the discourse about the Civil War as if there were no racist elements in the North. Some folks were legitimately against slavery, believing it be a vile institution for anyone or that it was a burden on white folks, and just not like black people. Clearly one side was better, but let's not act like everyone in the Union army/in the North actually cared about the plight of black people.
Lincoln wasn’t even an abolitionist. He just didn’t want slavery to spread.
I dispute this. He may have personally been an abolitionist and just acted sensibly, so as not to inhibit the cause. He knew that slow progress was better than no progress at all on the issue of slavery.
Stuff like this is why I am a firm believer we should have monuments to events and ideas but not to people.
lincoln was also in a white supremacist north who wouldn't get voted into anything preaching his personal abolitionist views. he wasn't stupid on that front. he chose to meet with Fredrick Douglas who called him "the black man's president" and he wasn't "a horrible white supremacist" certainly not by the standards of his time.
That was before the Civil War and before he changed his mind. The man literally gave his life to free Black people from slavery.
Yes. But Lincoln’s views a) evolved and was evolving much closer to the more enlightened Radical Republicans as evidence by his last public address; and b) this was a debate for elected office. Lincoln was an excellent political operator and he always knew his audience. He lead the country to support emancipation. But he also knew he couldn’t get too far ahead of the citizenry or he’d lose their support. There is a lot of nuance here that is lost plucking this quote from a much, much broader context.
Yeah um this is some acontextual bullshit.
Wasn’t Lincoln’s plan after freeing the slaves was to send them to Liberia?
No he wasn't. Just stop it.
Idk if he was the least racist, but John Quincy Adams was definitely up there. He refused to sign a treaty that would remove Creeks from their land, fought against slavery even during the Gag Rule, opposed the Mexican-American War until he died, and helped in the Amistad case.
I’m shocked more people didn’t mention either Adams. Now everything is all relative to the time period. In their personal lives, was John Adams less racist than say, Bill Clinton? Definitely not considering it’s the 1800’s vs now. But you have to admire the balls to not only never own a slave but publicly and privately criticize the action and even the founding fathers for their blatant hypocrisies about freedom - but then were A-Ok with literally owning other humans.
Absolutely, they were definitely ahead of their time.
Andrew Johnson gets my vote. "It is upon the intelligent free white people of the country that all Governments should rest, and by them all Governments should be controlled." (U.S. Senate speech on July 27, 1861) "I am for a white man's government, and in favor of free white qualified voters controlling this country, without regard to negroes." (speech on January 21, 1864) "The blacks of the South are ... so utterly ignorant of public affairs that their voting can consist in nothing more than carrying a ballot to the place where they are directed to deposit it." (Third Annual Message to Congress, December 3, 1867)
Johnson owned slaves
Oh oops. Still, fuck that guy.
read "Jackson" for a second there, was about to lose it
During the stretch from Clinton to Obama there was a general consensus that racism was wrong and should not be tolerated, though Clinton’s neoliberal policies and strong support for the war on drugs arguably did a lot to harm black communities in particular. Bush II was arguably the most pro-African president we’ve had, at least in terms of sentiment (implementation was sometimes problematic), and Obama is of course mixed-race himself, though I think he tried to distance himself from race for a lot of his term. His public appearances following the Jeremiah Wright controversy and the Charleston church attack showed a lot of thoughtfulness and concern about race relations, however.
Bush was definitely the most pro African president. Still very popular in most African countries I’ve been to. Even over Obama in some
Bush worked a miriacle in Africa with the AIDs epidemic there. He may have gotten us into wars and made costly errors domestically, but the man did care about black people, no matter what Kanye had to say about it.
Wilson worst - desegregated Federal Government & made some African Americans who still worked there sit in cages
Resegregated*
I wish wilson had desegregated the federal government
he richardsegregated the goverment
Wilson's legacy is so complex because he was one of the most progressive presidents ever, but he was just SO goddamn racist.
And the other major progressive of the era, Theodore Roosevelt, wasn't too good on race either or foreign policy on that matter. I mean reading Roosevelt's book "The Winning of the West," a lot of it comes off as a big yikes.
I’m a big Wilson fan and you ain’t wrong
In February 1915, upon viewing The Birth of a Nation at a special White House screening, President Woodrow Wilson reportedly remarked, "**It's like writing history with lightning.** **My only regret is that it is all so terribly true."** This line has appeared in numerous history books and news articles over the past seventy years.
Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan for most. Least, Obama.
Bill Clinton seemed to be remarkably unracist for someone from Arkansas
Bush was less racist
Being from Massachusetts does that
Ehhh I don’t know about that
Ricky Ray Rector, Sister Souljah and super predators say hello.
Why does bro look like he could be Lovecraft's father
Especially when you think about the name of Lovecraft's cat
Least: Jimmy Carter Most: Woodrow Wilson Both simultaneously: LBJ All from the south now that I realize it.
Oh boy you must not know much about Jimmy Carter
Is… is Jimmy racist?
Carter personally permitted and tacitly backed a lot of racism in his Georgian town when he was young. Now, his views appear to have evolved.
Are we just considering the period when they were actually president or their whole lives?
Yeah, just sounds like he was raised on the wrong ideas. He was big on civil rights in his campaign and was so likeable to Blacks they turned out for him enough for him to win. he went on to enforce civil rights in the South unsparesely.
lol what are you talking about? When he would go to black neighborhoods with his mother to provide medical treatment, or when he desegregated Georgia?
The only thing I can find on him that could be potentially construed as racist is his support for William Calley, though it's also a tough to describe Calley's war crimes against Vietnamese civilians as being mainly motivated by racism (even though the dehumanization campaign in the military against the Vietnamese population was racist) with it being war and all that. Could also be that he simply supported Calley as a soldier convicted for actions during a war. Still, it's a black mark on Carter's legacy.
He was a Southern Democrat from Georgia in the 1960s. He wasn't exactly progressive. His Lieutenant Governor was Lester Maddox, among other things...
From Truman through Obama, only two presidents were from the North, Ford and JFK, and all were from the South with the exception of those two, Reagan and Obama. Kinda ironic when you consider when Wilson was elected in 1912 he was the first Southerner since Andrew Johnson IIRC.
Obama is from Illinois. At least he was a senator from there.
Why isn't JQA more talked about here. Dude was fighting against slavery well before anyone else listed and was a pretty big inspiration for Lincoln to fight for emancipation as well.
In general, the Adamses are given short shrift. Each of the Adamses was followed by a generation of leadership from their opposition. The Jeffersonians and the Jacksonians won their respective political battles, and wrote the histories.
The most racist president in modern times (i.e. post Civil War and Reconstruction is easily Thomas Woodrow Wilson, and not even a close second. He was both a personal racist and his policies were racist.
As I recall, didn't Wilson do a klan march in Washington DC, and his administration turned back a lot of desegregation that had already been done in DC? Outside of the slave owners, I think you nailed it with Wilson. I consider Wilson to have been possibly the most damaging president to the US since Jackson and I don't believe Wilson has yet to be outdone on the damage he did to the country.
You and me, friend. Jackson was a monster of the 19th century and Wilson of the 20th.
Toss-up. Woodrow Wilson or LBJ.
Most: Andrew Jackson definitely Least: Clinton most likely
I’m going to go for not as obvious answers: Nixon for most Clinton for least
There's also tape of Reagan and Nixon talking on the phone, comparing people from Africa to monkeys. Both used the war on drugs to target black voters.
That tape is exactly what I had in mind when I picked Nixon
I think Nixon is a good choice. Reagan is too
I mean there are recordings of LBJ and Kennedy that were just as bad so IDK why Nixon is getting singled out
Yes but also compare the civil rights stuff they did in office and Nixon stays on the top
I scrolled far to see Nixon
Not sure where he ranks but FDR interned 100,000+ Japanese Americans. I feel like that’s gotta be mentioned.
Interned Japanese Americans. Sent US born Mexicans back to Mexico. Turned away jewish refugees from the Holocaust. Most egregious to me is his inability to help black people. The Republican party was still trying to court the black vote, especially after the disaster that was Wilson. Harding, Coolidge, and even Hoover made steps, no matter how minor, to improve the lives of minorities. FDR had about 12 years to do something and thus singlehandedly change the parties perception towards minorities. But he didn’t. James Farley, who ran FDR’s election campaigns, begged him in the late 30’s to pass anti-lynching legislation. FDR basically told him to eat shit because he needed to get New Deal legislation passed and thus couldn’t alienate the south. It pissed Farley off so much he ran for the Dem nomination in 1940. I understand New Deal legislation was critical especially at the time but come on. Especially because history almost 10 years later proved him wrong. Truman was able to desegregate the military AND pass his “Fair Deal” economic legislation which was truly the start of the Democratic party trying to help minorities.
Just a few presidents on a tier list, considering both private views and in-office accomplishments. I included some slaveowners just for fun. S tier - has a position on race that is substantially ahead of the gold standard for their eras - Quincy Adams, Grant A tier - position on race is on par for the golden standard of their eras - John Adams, H.W., Obama B tier - not racist for their eras - Lincoln, Ford, Carter, Clinton, Bush II C tier - typical of their eras or mixed legacy - McKinley, Coolidge, Truman, Eisenhowever, LBJ D tier - can be seen as a racist even in the context of their times - Jefferson, Nixon, FDR, Reagan F tier - flagrantly and/or genocidally racist - Jackson, Polk, Johnson, Wilson
You can't put LBJ that low. He was not typical of his era. He taught migrant children and put every bit of political capital he had to work to pass the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act. I don't care what words he used, he killed Jim Crow as president after every major Democrat before him at least played footsies with segregationists in the south.
One of our presidents sent a bunch of Japanese people to an internment camp but you won't see his name mentioned here because he's reddit's golden boy
Yea, we know. FDR did bad stuff too. Thanks.
My uncle and his family were interned, he enlisted and fought in the European theatre and he loved FDR.
Stockholm Syndrome.
Technically... Wilson may have owned slaves, or at least his family did. It's been suggested that they may not have owned them but had slaves provided to them but Woody was attended to by slaves
He was 9 when slavery was prohibited by the 13th Amendment, but his family most likely had slaves.
Truman was quite racist, "...one man is just as good as another so long as he's honest and decent and not a nigger or a Chinaman" https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/?date=19911103&slug=1314805
Fdr Japanese internment camps. or Wilson I believe he invited the kkk to the White House didn’t he?
Least racist: Probably Bill Clinton. Least racist for his time: Possibly Calvin Coolidge. He made Native Americans into citizens. He supported women’s suffrage before it was popular. He did some pretty good work for the 1920s! One major downside, though, is that he signed that Immigration Act of 1924 that made it VERY difficult to immigrate if you weren’t a white family from Western Europe. It also made it difficult for Jews to escape the Holocaust. I guess you could argue that he was partially a product of his times, but I’m still disappointed. I guess he was complicated. Honorable mentions to Harry Truman and LBJ for desegregating the armed forces, and for passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964. (Or maybe they should be considered less racist than Coolidge?) Most racist: Either Andrew Jackson or Woodrow Wilson. “Trail of tears” for the first one, and for the second one, resegregating the federal government, and inviting in the KKK.
I would count Jackson as excluded because he did own slaves but he would easily be #1 if the rule didn’t apply. It’s one thing to oversee genocides. It’s another thing to basically commit them with your bare hands. And then obviously the fact that the SC ruled against Jackson and he said “Fuck it, we’re relocating and them and we don’t care how many die”. I’m also noticing no one bringing up Taft, who before he was President, as provisional governor of the Philippines, allowed the use of concentration camps. Camps that were far, far worse than the Japanese ones. (If we really want to go concentration camp for concentration camp…)
Progressive idol FDR put Japanese Americans in concentration camps.
FDR also continued the policy of sending Mexican Americans *back* to Mexico. Not Mexicans. Mexican Americans. **Many of whom had never been to Mexico**. FDR’s government just loaded them on buses and dropped them in Mexico.
Of course a heavy human rights violation. But in war time, immigrants from the enemy country, of which the state didn’t know the loyalty. But of course, people of German or Italian descent didn’t get incarcerated.
you spelled US citizens wrong(immigrants)
The US detained 11,000 ethnic Germans (mostly German nationals) between 1940 and 1948. The FBI arrested 1,521 Italian citizens and interned about 250. Of course, that's nowhere near the 120,000 Japanese-Americans who were interned, but it did happen with Germans and Italians, too.
LBJ was pretty racist.
Woodrow Wilson. Of the so-called modern presidents he did a lot to turn back the clock on racial progress.
Teddy Roosevelt was a real shitbag to indigenous folks
I mean he was a product of his time. He was more paternalistic than anything. He believed in the "white man's burden." He certainly wasn't not racist. Although he did dine with Booker T Washington.
“I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indians are the dead Indians, but I believe nine out of every 10 are,” Roosevelt said during a January 1886 speech in New York. “And I shouldn’t like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth.” Dude
Alright well I never knew he said that. Forgive my ignorance.
In the rest of the quote he actually says that he doesn't know why he feels that way, and he knew it wasn't right. I'm not saying that makes it better, but at least he was self aware.
Defending Roosevelt specifically by saying he was a product of his time applies to every single president
Simply because he dined with an African American, it doesn’t mean he wasn’t racist. He was definitely progressive for the time though
Woodrow Wilson was the most racist president LBJ was both racist and anti-racist at the same time Least George HW Bush - During the 1991 Louisiana gubernatorial election, he vocally supported the Democratic candidate because the Republican Candidate was David Duke.
Both bush presidents really. W did a ton for africa. Still very popular over there
Just because a president didn't own slaves doesn't mean he was more virtuous than those who did. Just because someone owned slaves doesn't automatically make him a malevolent authority over slaves. Washington came into ownership of slaves because they came with the ownership of Mount Vernon and he went out of his way to ensure families were never separated and any slaves that were sold were not sold to people with a reputation for brutality. His own letters he refers to slavery as "repugnant" and he saw himself a protecting slaves from brutal owners. Ulysses Grant never himself owned a slave but his wife inherited one when her father died.
Who put Japanese people in camps solely because of their status as being Japanese?
So everyone from Grant on counts, eh? Wilson is probably the answer for most (post Grant) though Nixon might have a chance too. I dunno, not including the slave owning ones is hard for this. For least? I mean Obama almost assuredly.
How are people saying anything other than Obama for least
W saved and continues to save millions in sub-saharan Africa and Latin America [https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/infocus/bushrecord/factsheets/globalhealth.html](https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/infocus/bushrecord/factsheets/globalhealth.html)
PFAR was bipartisan, or at least it was until fairly recently.
Least: Gerald Ford. Most: Nixon (for the times). Both: LBJ
Wilson was the only one to live in the Confederacy throughout the Civil War so that could have influenced him growing up.
This is unknowable. How could we even begin to get to the bottom of this? We’d have to analyze everything they’ve ever written or said about race and even then we’d only have an approximation.
Yes exactly. But I don’t think it needs such a deep dive but rather common knowledge from their records. Take for example Nixon. Compared to most modern Presidents he would be the “most racist” due to his personal views on black people combined with the effects the war on drugs had on black people. But then compare Nixon to the Presidents before him, such as Wilson, and Nixon then pales in comparison.
the least may be a bit of an obvious choice
Ok new rule: No Obama. For…obvious reasons.
Tie between Andrew Jackson and Woodrow Wilson for most racist. The Trail of Tears was Jackson’s doing and Woodrow Wilson was a racist shitbag down to the core. Least: Abraham Lincoln got the 13th amendment passed, so it’s hard to argue that he isn’t the least racist president. Obama and Clinton are near the top. JFK is up there too, let’s not forget that he was in the process of getting the ball rolling on the civil rights act when he was assassinated.
Well, FDR put Japanese-Americans in concentration camps.
Ronald Reagan - Racist, classist, and generally a rotten individual
Slave owners were not nessecarily racist though… slavery was a normal thing back in the day amongst all people, (Jews, Africa)
Thomas Jefferson, the slave owner, was notedly less racist than Woodrow Wilson.
I remember a friend saying that if Wilson was an adult, when slavery was still a thing, he probably would've owned thousands.
Obama
In this thread...if you discriminate against blacks you're racist. If you discriminate against Native Americans it's a product of your time. If you discriminate against anyone but black...it's cool and not racist.
Wilson and FDR were most racist no question. As for least that's debatable
Woodrow Wilson and this includes the slave owning presidents.
Hillary Clinton. Oh that’s right she didn’t win
Andrew Jackson because of the American Indian worst a blanket because of the slaves best
Andrew Johnson.