Nixon was not the Last Racist
The scary thing to me about Nixon's beliefs is not only that Richard Nixon felt that biracial people should basically not be allowed to exist all those years ago, but that people still feel the same way today. We are fooling the world into thinking we are a non-racist society, because we have a black president, but there are actually KKK members calling for the assassination of our president on You-Tube. (And, no there will not be a link to a hate-filled clip like that.) There are places in the south that still have school-sanctioned segregated proms. How can we have seemingly come so far and actually gotten nowhere in some places of the country?
In Canada, which I think is a fairly tolerant country for the most part, a CBC television show got in trouble for joking about the possibility of Obama being assassinated. One of the shows hosts said, "We're not racists. It will be good to have a Negro in the White House. It will be practical. Black on white, it will be easier to shoot him." The hosts claimed they were only trying to satirize racists themselves, but I doubt that real racists have high enough IQs to differentiate between fact and fiction in cases like this. And are assassination jokes really all that funny?
However you feel about abortion, it sickens me to think that Nixon (who was mostly against allowing a woman the right to choose) would have really believed that abortions were necessary in the case of a biracial pregnancy.
I know I probably sound preachy and some may say that I am ignorant to the reality of life in the south, but it's attitudes like this that make it difficult for people of color to live in this society. And, yes, in case you are wondering, I am a white, liberal who lives in an area of the country dominated by white liberals, but have traveled around the US, Europe, and Asia.
