All Episodes
Previous Next
March 22, 2021 - Radio Renaissance - Jared Taylor
08:49
What the Founders Really Thought About Race
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Hello, I'm Jared Taylor with American Renaissance.
Most people think that the United States was, from the very beginning, dedicated to the idea of racial equality.
Yes, they say there was slavery and segregation, but we were always working to fulfill the promise of all men are created equal.
Of course, Thomas Jefferson, who wrote those words, was a slaveholder who didn't think the races were equal at all.
But that phrase from the Declaration of Independence will haunt his memory forever.
Not many people know that in 1776 there were black slaves in all 13 colonies and in the entire New World, from Canada to the tip of South America.
In 1770, 40% of the white households in Manhattan owned slaves, and there were more slaves in the colony of New York than in Georgia.
Nine of the first eleven presidents were slaveholders.
The two exceptions were John Adams and John Quincy Adams.
Jefferson thought slavery was a bad thing and that slaves would eventually be freed, but he wanted freed slaves sent back to Africa.
There's a quotation from him on the wall of the Jefferson Memorial that goes like this: Jefferson didn't stop there, adding,
That part has been conveniently forgotten.
He wanted blacks deported and separated from whites so that they would be, and I quote, James Madison agreed.
He wanted the U.S. government to buy up every slave and deport them.
After he served as president, He ran the American Colonization Society, which was set up to send blacks back to Africa.
At the inaugural meeting of the Society, Henry Clay explained its purpose, quote, to rid our country of a useless and pernicious, if not dangerous, portion of the population.
Some of the most famous early Americans were not just members of the Colonization Society, they were officers.
Besides Madison, there were Andrew Jackson, Daniel Webster, Stephen Douglas, William Seward, Francis Scott Key, Winfield Scott, and John Marshall.
James Monroe worked so hard to help freed American slaves leave the country and establish Liberia that grateful Liberians named their capital Monrovia in his memory.
The founders wanted blacks out and whites in.
After the U.S. Constitution was ratified, The very first United States Congress had to decide who could be an American.
They passed a law that said only, quote, free white persons could be citizens of the new country.
Blacks couldn't be citizens even if they had been living in the colonies for generations.
It took an amendment to the Constitution in 1868 for blacks to become citizens.
And American Indians didn't find to become U.S. citizens until 1924.
From colonial times on, there was strong opposition to mixed-race marriage.
Massachusetts prohibited miscegenation from 1705 to 1843 and repealed the ban only because people thought it wasn't needed.
They thought the idea of mixing was so repellent that no one would do it even if it were legal.
Of the 50 United States, 44 at one time had laws prohibiting interracial marriage.
White people did not want blacks to vote.
In 1855, there were 31 states in the Union, but blacks could vote only in four.
All of them were in New England, and together they had only 4% of the total black population of the country.
The federal government made sure that blacks couldn't vote in the territories.
When Oregon joined the Union in 1859, Its constitution stated that no black person could come live in or even visit the state.
But Abraham Lincoln, the great emancipator, didn't he believe in racial equality?
No. During the Lincoln-Douglas debates, he said this:"I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors out of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people.
There is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality.
Lincoln agreed with Jefferson.
He wanted to free the slaves and then deport them.
In 1862, Lincoln had the Civil War on his hands.
But he was so worried about what to do with free blacks that he named a Commissioner on Immigration.
And sent him off to look for countries that would take in the blacks he wanted to be rid of.
He also sent a message to Congress calling for free blacks to be deported.
U.S. presidents usually say only bland, non-controversial things.
Well, this is what some of them said about race.
James Garfield wrote: I have a strong feeling of repugnance when I think of the Negro being made our political equal and I would be so glad if they could be colonized, sent to heaven, or got rid of in any decent way.
Theodore Roosevelt wrote that he had"not been able to think out any solution to the terrible problem offered by the presence of the Negro on this continent." As for Indians, he said, I don't go so far as to think that the only good Indians are the dead Indians,
but I believe nine out of ten are, and I shouldn't inquire too closely into the health of the tenth.
William Howard Taft once told a group of black college students, Your race is adapted to be a race of farmers, first, last, and for all times.
Warren Harding thought the races would always be separate.
This is not a question of social equality, but a question of recognizing a fundamental, eternal, inescapable difference.
Harry Truman wrote, I am strongly of the opinion that Negroes ought to be in Africa, yellow men in Asia, and white men in Europe and America.
He also referred to the black servants in the White House as, quote, an army of coons.
Dwight Eisenhower told Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren he understood why Southerners wanted segregated schools.
They didn't want, quote, their sweet little girls to sit in schools alongside some big black box.
He said that what he regretted most about his eight years as president was sending federal troops to Little Rock, Arkansas to enforce school integration.
It's not until John Kennedy, Elected in 1960, that we have a president with views on race that just might be considered acceptable today.
Because now, of course, we are supposed to think that race doesn't even exist.
And, even if it did, it would be immoral to base any decision on race.
As I think I've made clear, this is a very recent way of thinking.
From colonial times right up through the mid-20th century, virtually all white people believed race was an essential part of the American identity.
They understood that people of different races are different and build different kinds of societies.
They thought only Europeans would make the United States the kind of country that they would want to pass on to their children.
So, there are two views.
There is the consensus on race that lasted for more than 300 years.
And there's today's view that races are perfectly equal and interchangeable and that America can become black, Hispanic, Asian, Muslim, Hindu, anything at all.
And not only will it be still America, it'll be better than ever.
Well, which view is correct?
Just look around.
Read the news.
I think you'll find the answer.
▲
Export Selection