Recently released transcripts from the Nixon White House tapes show President Richard Nixon had a penchant for racist, anti-Semitic, and other prejudicial remarks. Recorded between February and March 1973 and recently released along with thousands of pages of previously classified materials from the Nixon administration, the tapes show a President who harbored pronounced stereotypes about blacks, Jews, and other ethnic minorities.
Speaking with advisor Charles Colson on February 13, 1973, Nixon said that he had recently recognized that all people have certain traits. The Jews have certain traits, he pointed out, adding later that Jewish people are just a very aggressive and abrasive and obnoxious personality.
Speaking at another time to his longtime secretary Rose Mary Woods, the President said that Jews were, by and large, insecure people: Basically, Rose, most of our Jewish friends are all basically people who have a sense of inferiority and have got to compensate.
Later, during preparations for a dinner he was hosting for Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, the President instructed Woods about who he wanted to invite to the Jewish dinner, adding, I don’t want any Jew at that dinner who didn’t support us in that campaign. Is that clear? No Jew who did not support us.
Speaking to Colson about his reluctance to offer amnesty to young American men who had avoided the draft by fleeing to Canada and Sweden, the President indicated that, at least in part, his reasoning was based on how many Jews he thought were among the number. I didn’t notice many Jewish names coming back from Vietnam on any of those lists, he said. I don’t know how the h*** they avoid it. If you look at the Canadian-Swedish contingent, they were very disproportionately Jewish. The deserters.
Moving on to the Irish, the President opined to Colson that the Irish cant drink. What you always have to remember with the Irish is they get mean. Virtually every Irish Ive known gets mean when he drinks. Its sort of a natural trait.
As for Italians, Nixon said that they just dont have their heads screwed on tight. They are wonderful people, but he trailed off, at an obvious loss for words.
And in a society that had striven painfully to disentangle itself from the bondage of racism, Nixon’s attitude toward blacks seemed to reflect that of an entirely different historical period. Commenting to Woods on his Secretary of States warm interaction with blacks, the President said, Bill Rogers has got a sort of blind spot on the black thing because hes been in New York. He says, well, They are coming along, and that after all, they are going to strengthen our country in the end because they are strong physically and some of them are smart. So forth and so on.
Continued the President, My own view is I think hes right if you’re talking in terms of 500 years. I think its wrong if you’re talking in terms of 50 years. What has to happen is they have to be, frankly, inbred. And that’s the only thing that’s going to do it, Rose.
This is not the first time that President Nixon could be heard making comments of a negative nature toward blacks. In previously released tapes, President Nixon can be heard telling Colson that he believed there were times when abortion was necessary, such as when you have a black and a white.
Recorded some 16 months before Nixon resigned the presidency over the now-infamous Watergate crimes and scandals, the most recently released tapes were some of the last recorded on Nixon’s secret system before it was dismantled in July 1973. Timothy Naftali, executive director of the Nixon Library, said the historic audio recordings reflect a crucial period in Nixon administration before it was devoured by Watergate.
Photo of Richard Nixon: AP Images
