“As you can imagine,” Nixon confided in Rogers, “there’s strong feeling that we just shouldn’t, as said, he saw these, as he said, he saw these-” Nixon stammered, choosing his words carefully-“these, uh, these cannibals on television last night, and he says, ‘Christ, they weren’t even wearing shoes, and here the United States is going to submit its fate to that,’ and so forth and so on.”
Right after hanging up with Reagan, Nixon sought out Secretary of State William Rogers.Įven though Reagan had called Nixon to press him to withdraw from the United Nations, in Nixon’s telling, Reagan’s complaints about Africans became the primary purpose of the call. Nixon used Reagan’s call as an excuse to adapt his language to make the same point to others. But what happened next showed the dynamic power of racism when it finds enablers. Had the story stopped there, it would have been bad enough. His own State Department blamed factors other than African voting, including maneuvering by the British and French behind the scenes, for the loss.
Nixon’s anger at the UN delegations from African nations for the loss was misplaced. “Just turn it off, on the ground that I will be out of town.” “Don’t even submit to me the problem that it’s difficult to turn it off since we have already accepted it,” Nixon exclaimed. Earlier that day, Nixon had called his deputy national security adviser, Al Haig, to cancel any future meetings with any African leader who had not voted with the United States on Taiwan, even if they had already been scheduled. Reagan’s slur touched an already raw nerve. Nixon was asleep when Reagan called, so they spoke the next morning.
RONALD REAGAN LIBRARY MONKEY FULL
to withdraw from full participation immediately. Reagan despised the United Nations, which he described as a “kangaroo court” filled with “bums,” and he wanted the U.S. Reagan, a devoted defender of Taiwan, was incensed, and tried to reach Nixon the night of the vote. When the UN took its vote to seat a delegation from Beijing instead of from Taiwan in 1971, members of the Tanzanian delegation started dancing in the General Assembly. Last year, as a researcher, I requested that the conversations involving Ronald Reagan be rereviewed, and two weeks ago, the National Archives released complete versions of the October 1971 conversations involving Reagan online. Reagan’s death, in 2004, eliminated the privacy concerns. Not until 2017 or 2018 did the National Archives begin a general rereview of the earliest Nixon tapes. A court order stipulated that the tapes be reviewed chronologically the chronological review was completed in 2013. When the National Archives originally released the tape of this conversation, in 2000, the racist portion was apparently withheld to protect Reagan’s privacy. The exchange was taped by Nixon, and then later became the responsibility of the Nixon Presidential Library, which I directed from 2007 to 2011. The most novel aspect of President Donald Trump’s racist gibes isn’t that he said them, but that he said them in public. This October 1971 exchange between current and future presidents is a reminder that other presidents have subscribed to the racist belief that Africans or African Americans are somehow inferior. The past month has brought presidential racism back into the headlines.
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