Further evidence that racism and “white supremacy” are not acceptable in US society and have not been for quite a while. If they were acceptable, Reagan would have said this in public and the thoughts would not be broadly condemned today.
You must abase yourself publicly every time you see a person of color, and pledge all future earnings to black liberation. Obviously! 
I don’t know where the idea that you lack humor started, but the people who say that are clearly wrong.
Both of those statements seem to be wild conjectures not supported by the evidence you provided in the OP. They may even be true for all I know, but they aren’t supported either by that evidence or any other evidence I’ve seen.
Thank you! I suspect that many who disagree with me see me as strident and perhaps harsh with my views, but I recognize that we’re all people, and very few of us are monsters. Even most racists and white supremacists are just people who have been exposed to a profoundly bigoted (IMO) society and culture and just internalized much or all of it rather than recognizing and fighting agaainst the bad parts. I focus on this stuff because I think it’s so harmful, not because the people who tolerate or even support it are all evil. They’re mostly just wrong, but they’re still just people – highly flawed people who probably love their families and neighbors and would likely stop to help a bleeding person on the side of the road. Growing up in Louisiana and Arkansas, I knew many such folks. They weren’t evil, but they were wrong in a way that is profoundly harmful to society and to many other Americans, when such beliefs are so commonly held. IMO, of course.
YMMV, but I think it’s supported by this quote, Reagan’s policy towards South Africa, and other words and policies. It’s still conjecture, but I think it’s conjecture supported by words and actions.
No, the terms are not synonymous. White supremacy involves the belief that white people should be in control, should be dominant. It’s possible to be racist without holding that particular belief.
I endorse this question. Many old, white guys were/are racist. Is that somehow new information?
He made a racist joke about some people he was angry with. It was a different time and people were much looser with ethnic and racial jokes.
He was a national political figure for decades, wrote columns, had a radio spot, gave thousands of speeches, and one racist joke is the evidence that he was a white supremacist.
It has nothing to do with anything now. Lots of democrats were openly saying horribly racist things back then and it tells you nothing about how democrats feel now.
It used to be common, and maybe still is, for Americans to think of the people of Africa as primitive savages, running around with a spear and a loincloth and a bone in their nose. If you’re old enough, you may remember seeing black “savage” or “cannibal” characters in cartoons. Maybe some of the people who honestly thought that way weren’t racist, just xenophobic or just plain ignorant, but a lot of them were.
Reagan’s remark strikes me as being in this “tradition.” Does it prove he was a racist, or even a white supremacist? By itself I don’t think it rises to the level of proof—but it is, indeed, hard for me to imagine someone who wasn’t racist saying what he said.
And if so: I didn’t know Reagan was a racist, but it doesn’t surprise me particularly. And I knew Nixon was a nasty man.
You can believe that if you want. People can argue the semantics of both terms, but they are commonly understood to be synonymous.
Again, if you want to argue differently, that’s your choice, but it’s my choice to ignore it because they’re commonly understood to be synonymous.
I agree that Reagan’s words, here, are racist.
I’m not sure what is the proposed solution or action though. To rename Reagan Airport or the USS Ronald Reagan carrier? For conservatives to stop praising the economic growth and revival of the 1980s?
In other words, racism used to be more common than it is now. The fact that it’s “tradition” doesn’t make it less racist. Christ, look at what you’re writing and think about it for more than a minute.
“One racist joke”? Black people have been saying for years Reagan was racist because he opposed the Voting Rights Act, vetoed the Civil Rights Restoration Act, said Jefferson Davis was a hero of his, supported apartheid South Africa and ‘states rights’ and used racist appeals in all of his campaigns. Now we have Reagan being clearly as racist as you can get (and just because other people made “jokes” like this, that doesn’t mean they weren’t racist - it was simply “acceptable”) and people still make excuses.
I would posit that there’s no need to rename anything. Reagan, like Woodrow Wilson, achieved some measure of good which cannot be taken away from him. I’ve always personally felt Reagan was a shitty, overrated president and it had nothing to do with what I’ve always suspected was closet racism - long before what we’ve just uncovered.
Legacies are complex. We don’t have to completely rewrite a legacy based on an obvious flaw, even if it’s offensive. But we should acknowledge the character flaw, and we shouldn’t just accept it because other people of Reagan’s generation were racist too. So what? There were plenty of other people, including Republicans, who were not racist during that time and fought hard to improve what most decent people knew to be a terrible social and political injustice in this country - something which Reagan apparently worked hard to fight against.
Looks to me like the cite you just quoted supports me. “racist ideology may include … supremacism.” When one category includes another, they’re not synonymous. (“A is a subset of B” is different from “A is equal to B.”)
That wasn’t Johnson who said that. It was Ford’s Secretary of Agriculture, Earl Butz.
This is the kind of thing that needs to be said. I was relatively young and apolitical during the Reagan years, so I wasn’t particularly aware of the evidence for Reagan’s racism; so pointing this stuff out now is helpful.
and, btw, Fuck the National Archives:
It’s not their job to sanitize history
I had always heard that attributed to LBJ, so I stand corrected and appreciate the Straight Dope on that.
:o