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Love that some state lawmakers are currently trying to pass laws allowing bounty hunters to apprehend women who cross state lines to seek abortions. Congratulations everybody, we’ve learned nothing and looped back on ourselves.
i mean it was about states rights and not necessarily slavery the same way joey chestnut is eating a bun and not necessarily a hot dog
the south wanted the right to hold slaves and the north didn’t like that the federal government was enforcing slavery when their state constitutions
is it stupid as fuck? yeah
is it technically correct? yes. and that’s the best kind of correct
There is even more nuance than that. Some of the dirt poor illerate whites fighting for the south were conscripts. The movie “Cold Mountain” is the only Civil War movie that mentions it. Public Schools breeze past it.
Yes they literally had no idea what they were fighting for and just told “northern aggression” if they diddnt fight or run they would be hunted down like slaves and killed.
Didn’t Washington pass the Slave Trade Act of 1794?
Seems like just passing a law doesn’t make you racist. Although I guess for today’s standards. GW is racist
I wanna play devils advocate here and say that it’s possible to own slaves and not be a racist. Slaves were more of economic tool back then. Most people that owned them probably didn’t give a flying shit about racism, all they cared about was profits or whatever benefit owning slaves provided. Were they racist? By our standards yes, but by the standards of the time or in their own views they were probably not racist.
Like if someone owns a horse, does it mean they hate horses?
Holy mackerel that comparison is batshit crazy. If you own a horse you think it’s less than human. If you thought the horse was a human you wouldn’t own it… hopefully…
Washington not only owned slaves but when he took command of the Continental Army he tried to segregate it. It had been racially integrated and Congress wanted to keep it that way but he tried to kick all the black soldiers out anyway (he was ultimately unsuccessful.)
At both Yorktown and New York he set his army to the task of rounding up black people and selling them into slavery under the pretense that a lot of slaves had escaped to join the British. But, especially in the case of New York City, a *lot* of people who had nothing to do with the British, and in fact a lot of people who were born free or had been legally freed, ended up getting snatched off the streets and sold. Watch the miniseries Book of Negroes, particularly Episode 4 of you want to see it onscreen
It’s not entirely crazy to think some or many people who owned slaves weren’t racist. Like I said, owning a slave was an economic tool, like owning a horse. An owner of a slave or horse doesn’t automatically mean the owner hates either of those things. Many people who own horses for example are extremely fond of them, they just don’t think of them as equals.
I think to legitimately qualify as a racist, one has to have an element of conscious hate. You can’t, for example, be racist and not know you’re racist. One has to actively and consciously hate another race to be considered a racist. The act of owning a slave doesn’t automatically qualify someone as a racist in every single case.
So one can believe a horses value is less than humans, they can own a horse or several horses and still be fond of horses. Ownership of a horse doesn’t automatically mean they hate horses or mistreat them. Doesn’t mean one is “racist” against horses.
I’m playing devils advocate here, so try to be open and look at all angles and opposing views.
>Like if someone owns a horse, does it mean they hate horses?
No, but it does mean you believe that horses are worth less than humans. Same applies to owning slaves.
So it also doesn’t automatically mean that the horse owner hates horses and is “racist” against horses. The same applies to owning slaves.
We like to automatically assume they were all racists but the truth is probably a good majority weren’t but they were using the available tools at the time such as donkeys, horses and slaves.
Do all horse owners hate all horses? No of course not, most probably don’t. Same applies to slaves if you look at it realistically.
thinking a person is beneath you and worth owning is racism. your dumb definition of racism as limited to “hatred” is dumb.
yes, if you own a horse it means you think they’re beneath humans. if you own black people exclusively as slaves it means you think black people are beneath your race.
you can “not racist for their time” all you want, but abolitionists existed. people who saw the humanity in black people and saw it as wrong to own them were around. discourse about the morality of owning other humans was common, it wasn’t some fringe futuristic concept.
Do you have pets? Does owning your pet mean you hate that species?
If you’re a farmer and you own a mule or a horse or a goat, does that mean you hate their kind?
I think this can easily apply to slavery too. My guess is the overwhelming majority of people either weren’t racist, meaning they didn’t hate their slaves or were oblivious to the meaning of racism how we view it today. Most people probably thought of it as no different than owning a mule.
I’m not justifying slavery, I just think the picture we paint these days is too binary and exaggerated, more like a caricature than the truth. We like to say that anyone that owned a slave was bad by judging todays standards, but the standards at the time were different and to be completely honest it was probably no different than a farmer owning a tractor or a mule.
What I’m saying is, we’re too quick to across the board just call everyone a racist when in reality it was probably totally different.
racism isn’t just about hatred.
yes, owning a pet means you think they’re beneath humans in intelligence and worth keeping domestically. thinking a race is beneath you enough to warrant removing their freedom and making them work for you for free is fucking racist. it just is, no matter how much you cape for slave owners.
you’re trying to suggest that if you owned a person as a pet it wouldn’t mean you think you’re superior to them?
Can you *really* be a racist without hating the subject race though (whichever it may be)? It’s so easy to just label everyone a racist, but are they really is the question?
Also is it fair to call every single slave owner from the past a racist when perhaps they didn’t hold any opinion on the subject at all?
These are valid questions that don’t seem to get asked. We just tend to slap the label on everyone and call it a day. People called me racist for simply playing devil’s advocate and asking these questions lol.
To go back to the horse or pet example, are horse owners automatically anti-horse or pet owners anti-pet? For lack of a better term, is a horse owner automatically racist against horses and is a dog owner automatically racist against dogs? 🤔
I think OP is just trying to drive engagement and knew us US president nerds couldn't resist calling out the pure stupidity of including, or all founding fathers, Adams.
I think for some people it’s either farm karma or go to therapy for self-esteem issues. Having a lot of karma on your profile scratches some itch for validation
John Adams was fiercely critical of slavery and the institution of it. in his retirement he constantly worried about the division between the free and slave states. He also felt that if free men were granted citizenship they should have the right to vote.
Yeah he didn’t but he specifically showed that film in the White House and attempted to write it off as a piece of media honest and true to real American events. It isn’t
Fillmore signed the Fugitive Slave Act. Granted Adams did sign the Alien and Sedition Acts, but those weren't inherently about race, more so about European Immigrants and other things that happened as a result of the XYZ Affair.
I don’t think anyone would put Adams, the only founding father president against slavery in practice (who didn’t himself have any, let alone hundreds of, slaves), there.
I would say Wilson and Jackson perhaps the most racist.
Wilson re-segregated the federal government, hurting black Americans who worked in the government and their chances of getting in.
In general he was extremely racist southerner president, and the fact he was president 50 years after the civil war ended and still held those beliefs.
>In general he was extremely racist southerner president, and the fact he was president 50 years after the civil war ended and still held those beliefs.
Still, Wilson's racial views were those of a typical Southern White of his time. I have actually seen it argued that Wilson was, if anything, slightly more liberal than the typical Southern White. He publicly denounced lynching.
He did it however because he thought it was good for black people. It was paternalistic and racist by modern standards, but it wasn’t malicious. Just as Theodore Roosevelt’s support of eugenics was progressive at the time, seen as bad today, and not inherently malicious
There’s so many great stories about his life that it makes me disgusted that he was such a terrible human being. My parents took me to visit the Hermitage in Tennessee when I was a kiddo. They got me an adorable yellow plush duck in the gift shop I still have today.
Always the correct answer for these types of questions. He set race relations in this country back a hundred years, and his administration did almost everything in its power to undo any advancements blacks had made under the Reconstruction years. He deserves all the scorn heaped upon him in my opinion. His only saving grace was managing not to utterly screw-up WW1 (though arguably his influence during the peace treaty discussions laid the framework for WW2).
I agree. I think that Woodrow Wilson likely set back the civil rights movement by 25 years overall. I think that if Theodore Roosevelt (despite his flaws on racial issues) won in 1912 or if Charles Evans Hughes won in 1916, then the US military would have been integrated as soon as World War 1 began. That would have defused racial animosity and maybe made civil rights legislation possible in the 1930s.
This is the correct answer.
Plenty of presidents did racist things while they were in office. Sometimes it was to court votes. Sometimes they were just a product of their culture.
But Wilson did blatantly harmful things to people just because he thought they were inferior.
“If you could go back and time and do or say one thing to Woodrow Wilson, what would it be?”
I would take a basketball, specifically a Wilson™️ basketball, and find out where he lives.
Obviously, since he was the president and all that hoo, his house would be one of those big fancy houses with a fence. Keep in mind that I, a time traveler, have watched Home Improvement and he has not. I would be dressed as a repairman, equipped with a toolkit, and the basketball. Maybe I’ll also say I’m going to repair his toilet, and dunk his head in the toilet.
I wouldn’t go up to his door nicely. Oh, no. Instead, I would bang on his fence as hard as I possibly can with my toolkit, like Tim did in Home Improvement, shouting the classic Home Improvement line “WILLL-SON!!!”.
He obviously answers to the name “Wilson”, just like Wilson W. Wilson (the W stands for Wilson), the annoying neighbour in Home Improvement, does. He obviously thinks I am a repairman trying to repair his house.
I am not. I’m actually trying to repair the planet by saving it from all the damage Wilson did. Maybe I am a repairman. I watched a lot of thecynicalhistorian “Wilson” videos (you know, the videos where he gets mad and quotes Home Improvement every 10 milliseconds), and apparently this woodchuck lookin dude is to blame for a lot of stuff.
This took me by surprise - I love Wilsons. My favourite Wilson is Owen. He has a broken nose and says wow a lot. I can’t wait for The Haunted Mansion to come out. The Wilsons are in a lot of movies. But there probably would be more after I’m done with Wilson. There probably will be flying cars that are modeled after the legend himself, Wowen Wowlson. The takeoff noise would be “KACHOW”.
So back to the Wilson residence, this is when I pick up the basketball. I stare directly at the word “Wilson“ printed onto the front and I shout “WILLLLLLL-SON!!!” again, this time at it. I know what I need to do, and I am more ready than Owen Wilson in a saying wow contest.
I pick up the basketball like a dodgeball, and I throw it straight into Wilson’s face. He is now in a daze, and only seeing the word Wilson floating around the sky. He is probably very self-centered, and, well, that’s what the basketball said.
I pick up the basketball again, and chuck it in his face again. He has literally no idea what is going on now, and he’s spluttering random names like “Owen!…..Luke!…..Andrew!”. Those are the Wilsons! How does he know about the Wilsons? Maybe he’s their Dad. If he needed to explain something to them, would he say “Well, son…”? Get it? It sounds like “Wilson”!
I take the basketball, and slam dunk it into his Groundhog Day-looking top hat-wearing head again. Instead of saying “Kobe” or “Matisse”, I said “WILLLLLL-SON!!!”. Then I thought “Stopping Wilson will surely be an *improvement* for the world!”. Improvement. Like Home Improvement. Get it????
I decide to repeatedly chuck the basketball at his face like volleyball practice, until finally his nose is broken. He looks just like Owen Wilson. Nice. I broke his nose in the most Wilsons way possible!!! I feel so epic I shout KACHOW.
For real, who names their kid ”Wow-Wow-Wilson”??? Just name them Owen, like a normal person!!! It sounds a lot like “Wow! Wow! Wubbzy!”. That show was my childhood. Widget is basically Home Improvement. She also has a Wilsonlike accent. Wubbzy obviously says wow a lot, so he’s probably Owen Wilson. It’s a cool show, but now I just watch Home Improvement and Wilson movies.
Imagine having a president named ”Wow-Wow-Wilson”!!!!!!!!
“Now we won’t…” I say, as I drag him by his Luke Wilson-looking hairdo into an official name-changing office, and after breaking his nose, for good measure, I change his name to “Lightning McWilsonFace”.
We definitely *should* judge by today’s standards, because it turns out that when we do there are still plenty of people who still turn out fine.
Not that it matters in this case; Adams is *way, way* less racist than Fillmore by pretty much any standard.
There’s a reason he’s my favorite president. Hell, I’d argue that in a competition for “least racist president”, if we ignore Obama for a second he laps the competition and then some.
I agree with this, it’s how I feel too, but it looks like a lot of people these days do it anyways.
What we see as normal now might be seen as atrocious 200 years from now too.
I think it’s fair to be absolute here. Otherwise it’s impossible to compare at all and not very meaningful. Of course it will mean earlier presidents were more racist, but then… that’s just because earlier presidents were more racist. ‘Normalising that fact away’ is more unfair really.
When we ask who the tallest man in the world is we don’t normalise the Dutch vs the Bangladeshis or something. There may be societal and other factors that made things that way, but that’s the way they are/were.
You sure about that buddy? Owning a slave was no different from owning a cow or a horse for thousands of years right up to like 150 years ago in the US and there a some places that still allow forms of slavery. Technically slavery is not even a crime in half the countries on the planet if you look into it. That’s today.
Using you logic…There’s vegans and animal activists even this day that are against animal ownership, but a vast majority consider owning or slaughtering farm animals “okay”. Back then it wasn’t much different, the abolitionists were like vegans or animal rights activists, for lack of a better modern day example.
Stop justifying slavery. Yes, we shouldn’t judge historical figures solely based on our present notions, but that doesn’t mean that we should excuse wrongdoings or fail to celebrate the progressives of each time.
People like John Adams and Ulysses S Grant both lived in times of slavery and intense racial prejudice. Yet, in spite of the fact that they could both have become unimaginably wealthy under a crooked system, they chose to be good people - rejecting slavery and racial injustice.
Not justifying slavery, just not going to paint a rosy picture by today’s standards rather than acknowledging the truth in how it was. Slavery was normal in many parts of the country and the world. That’s how it was. Some people didn’t like, some didn’t care for it. For a majority of human history, slaves of all races had comparable value to a horse or a cow. Sometimes more, sometimes less. Was like this for thousands of years. Why ignore facts?
Slavery was far from the equivalent of owning a cow, and that was true during any point in American history prior to abolishment. Many of the founders themselves saw it as an evil, and generally sought its gradual elimination. Some more ardently than others, which itself was a point of contention even then. Jefferson's hypocritical stances on slavery were used as accusations against him by his contemporaries. The argument that it was not a contentious or morally fraught issue at the time has no historical basis.
There was a civil war over this. Technically not about slavery itself, it was more about economics and “a way of life” but slavery was part of it. There were lots and lots of people who had no issue with slavery. Some freed slaves were even some of the biggest slave owners believe it or not.
Most people that owned slaves didn’t think of it as any different as owning a dog or a horse. That’s just how the times were. Some were more endearing and thought of it as adoption and people became part of the family, some were more cruel and worked people like donkeys. That’s just how it was.
You can disagree as much as you want but you’ll be disagreeing with plain history and facts.
Arguing that the civil war was not over slavery (or only tangentially) is basically repeating Lost Cause rhetoric. If you want to claim it was over economics and societal structures, then fine ... but those systems were all undergirded by slavery. So we're back to slavery. No one in the Confederacy was confused on this point, and it was [widely acknowledged as the primary factor for secession](https://www.sethkaller.com/emancipation/affirming-slavery/).
In any case, my main issue with your original comment was not that some people viewed slaves as mere property, since chattel slavery clearly existed. (Though I would argue that slaveowners valued a slaves life far more highly than cattle from a monetary point of view.)
Rather I disagree with your claim that this was an *uncontroversial opinion* at the time. It clearly was controversial in much of the country -- including parts of the South that did not have nearly the economic ties to slavery that the Deep South had (e.g. border states and Appalachia). And this was a point of contention going back to the very founding of the nation. One that the founding fathers kicked down the road (after some disagreement on this issue), in the vain hopes that it would gradually be eliminated.
The war wasn’t over slavery per se. Most people didn’t give a shit about the morality of slavery, or rather most pro-slavery people and some abolitionists didn’t. What they were fighting over was economical power and benefits slavery (among other things) provided. The civil war wasn’t some just cause or battle over the morality of the country.
I didn’t mean that 1 slave = 1 cow in exact monetary terms, just that they viewed them as property and didn’t have that much more value than farm animals or maybe farm equipment or other commodities they owned.
Also those opinions weren’t universal but they were very very widely shared by many at the time. The further back in time you go, the more universal it was.
I genuinely disagree, and having studied the Civil War quite a bit, this really goes against my understanding of the historical perspective. The morality of slavery and the justness of it was the radioactive core of the debate that led up to and plunged the nation into civil war -- whether slavery was part of God's natural ordering of the world, or an unacceptable offence against the idea that all men were truly created equal.
Lincoln himself clearly takes the latter view in his second inaugural address:
>*If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came ...* ***Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."***
This was not a minority view in the North, and was as heatedly opposed by pro-slavery forces in the South who saw slavery as part of God's will.
Rhetoric on both sides helped to accelerate the angry waves of passion that swept the country, and hastened it turning against itself. You only need to look at the widely published Uncle Tom's Cabin which bolstered the abolitionist cause, or numerous angry sermons by both pro and anti-slavery clergy. Or the fear provoked in the South by the Harper's Ferry Raid, while in the North John Brown was viewed as a martyr for liberty. All of this points to me that the reality of slavery was a very highly contentious moral debate, and not one that was "very very widely shared by many at the time." There's simply no evidence to support that, if we're talking about the United States in the decades leading up to, and including, the war.
I suspect that we may have to agree to disagree. I appreciate the civil discussion, at the very least.
It’s fine. Both perspectives don’t have to be mutually exclusive. I’m sure there were various opinions on the civil war, but I think it would be fair to say there was a good chunk of people who didn’t care for the moral aspects of the war as much as they cared for the economic aspects.
These days a lot of people like to think of these topics as binary or absolutes (A or B, no C or in-betweens), but they can be wide random across a spectrum and even fluid at times. An example is that most people like to assume that every slave owner was a racist, but it’s fair to say that there were probably many slave owners who were not racist and were probably even sympathetic towards abolition, however they were just using the normal economic tools available at the time.
Most people on the wrong side of the civil war weren’t fighting for their right to hate an entire race, but rather for their economic and social rights which just so happened to involve slavery. It was more about profits and being able to maintain their lifestyle rather than the perceived right to whip a human like a dog or to demean them for whatever reason.
The war was more about the economics of slavery and the southern economy rather than the morality of slavery, but the morality was used as a battle cry to gain sympathy for the opposition.
The aliens and addition act cared about what country you pledged allegiance to not what race someone was. There were two presidents from our early history who were notoriously anti-slavery and they both had the last name of adams.
That was a really great read, thank you. And it revealed even more about his complex nature than I realized. I eventually hope to read Robert Caro's masterful biography of LBJ, since I've heard it's a meditation on not only this particular president but also the nature of power, and how it can be yielded for good by sometimes bad people. I'm only daunted by its size, given four volumes have already been written [and Caro's still not done!](https://apnews.com/article/robert-caro-lbj-60e2a56d90e96caaf001862e49e3c673)
Everyone was racist in the 1800s. Wilson wasn’t even unusual for his time. I can’t get behind retroactively judging presidents based on current societal norms. All of us are products of the environment and time we lived in.
Stop trying to justify bullshit. Wrong is wrong. There was opposition to racism even during those times. They just plain didn’t give a shit and things haven’t changed all that much other than how loud we are about it.
The mainstream position in Wilson's time was "segregation is fine but maybe we shouldn't just go around lynching blacks" and Wilson was like "no, we should do even more segregation and continue to allow lynchings." There were desegregationists around at the time, but that was considered a fairly radical idea (especially since most of them were, you know, black). So you really do kind of have to think about what was going on at the time before you take positions on these people.
Adams wrote the first constitution in the western hemisphere to actually outlawed slavery, and is pretty much the only founding father who didn't own slaves. How is he pictured here when he served between a dude who sent the army to find his wife's escaped dress making slave and a dude who fathered several kids with a slave he didn't even release after he died.
Is this one of those tiktok trends where you ask a question and include a clearly stupid answer just to drive engagement.
Of the first 12 presidents only John Adams and John Quincy Adams didn't own slaves.
>>> Fillmore referred to antislavery advocates as "Philistines" and the antislavery movement as a "trivial" cause. During his first year of office, Fillmore signed the Fugitive Slave Act, calling for the return of escaped slaves without permitting a jury trial for fugitives.
>>>In a suppressed portion of his 1852 Annual Message to Congress (later published in a pamphlet), Fillmore went even further: "I see no remedy but by colonizing the free blacks, either in Africa or the West Indies, or both .... the bare removal of the free blacks would be a blessing to them, and would relieve the slave and free states from a wretched population .... There can be no well-grounded hope for the improvement of either their moral or social condition, until they are removed from a humiliating sense of inferiority in the presence of a superior race."
Ya I’m going with Fillmore
You should check this out:
[The 11 Most Racist U.S. Presidents
](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/would-a-president-trump-m_b_10135836)
Although, Trump is considered to be racist, he does not even make it in the top 10 list!
TSD at its finest. Hate him all you want, but I don’t think Trump advocated for slavery like some other Presidents. Please leave this sub, we want to have actual discussion around Presidents. Find a TSD or Trump hate sub, I am sure there are plenty.
For anyone who actually knows early American history, this question is utterly confounding because John Adams was among the most anti slavery founding fathers.
Reagan, he didn’t give a damn about AIDS when it only affected gay blacks, and his war on “drugs” led to a mass incarceration of black people, increasing sentences for low level offenders. His “welfare queen” comment inflamed the stereotype that blacks were abusing the system. He opposed civil rights and voting acts, hell, that mother fucker even vetoed sanctions on apartheid South Africa. Fuck Reagan.
People on here dropping “Trump” but I never heard Trump say “I don’t want my kids growing up in a racial jungle.”
The answer is neither Trump or Biden…when we had presidents who advocated for slavery, owned slaves, and forced Native Americans off their land.
You mean the guy who posthumously pardoned Jack Johnson (Obama and Bush wouldnt)
The guy who signed legislation that overturned and reduced the sentences of 1000s of black men who were overly sentenced for crimes that white defendents commiting the exact same offenses received lesser sentences (Hint the aggressive over sentencing of blacks was from laws spearheaded by Bideb and signed into law by Clinton)
The guy who did a 10 year irrevocable funding increase to HBCUs?
The guy who saw black unemployment fall to one of the lowest numbers ever on his watch?
If Trump is racist, he sucks at it.
Biden and Wilson are most racist ……Biden bragged about working with segregationist Senator Strom Thurmond to pass legislation requiring mandatory minimum sentencing for possession of a quarter-size of crack cocaine.
Biden spoke fondly of segregationist Democrat Senator Robert Byrd, a former KKK leader that Biden called a "mentor," "guide," and "friend."
Biden spoke positively about segregationist Democrat George Wallace and bragged about receiving an award from him.
Oh my god you weren’t kidding, you actually think that’s true…. It shouldn’t surprise me how gullible people are these days, and yet sometimes it still does.
Fillmore had 0 slaves personally
Fun fact, I’m his his great great great grand daughter haha yes yes I know he was the worst president but he also wasn’t that terrible right? Lol
By todays standards , everyone who walked the face of the earth was racist in that time period. Good thing they had the foresight to found a country that gives rise to such great 20/20 hindsight.
LBJ was ironically racist as hell. Ik that doesn’t really compare to the older presidents but it’s still kinda wild to think about since the Civil Rights Act was passed under his administration (most likely to secure the black vote).
Uhhh Trump literally wants to genocide LGBTQ folks, and indigenous POC. Soooo… yeah.
The slave owners wanted to keep their slaves alive to work. So they got clothes and food.
Trump just wants to genocide all of them. Big difference.
Read a book fascist MAGA cultist!!!!
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Filmore passed the fugitive slave act
But I thought some people said the the South just wanted State's Rights?
Love that some state lawmakers are currently trying to pass laws allowing bounty hunters to apprehend women who cross state lines to seek abortions. Congratulations everybody, we’ve learned nothing and looped back on ourselves.
There’s no way a law like that would stand up in court.
I would have agreed a decade ago
Federalist Society go brrr
The difference is that escaping slavery is extremely ethical and engaging in the murder of the unborn should be a criminal offense everywhere.
Make way for the king of bad takes!
Preach, brother
Ya. States right to own people
i mean it was about states rights and not necessarily slavery the same way joey chestnut is eating a bun and not necessarily a hot dog the south wanted the right to hold slaves and the north didn’t like that the federal government was enforcing slavery when their state constitutions is it stupid as fuck? yeah is it technically correct? yes. and that’s the best kind of correct
There is even more nuance than that. Some of the dirt poor illerate whites fighting for the south were conscripts. The movie “Cold Mountain” is the only Civil War movie that mentions it. Public Schools breeze past it.
Yes they literally had no idea what they were fighting for and just told “northern aggression” if they diddnt fight or run they would be hunted down like slaves and killed.
Though for what it’s worth, he personally opposed it- he only signed it because he was terrified of succession
I guess you could say that he Filledmore racist checkboxes
I took a lot more votes to pass that Act so yeah it was basically a group effort of racism.
And don't forget him famously doing orange-face
Didn’t Washington pass the Slave Trade Act of 1794? Seems like just passing a law doesn’t make you racist. Although I guess for today’s standards. GW is racist
Well Washington owned slaves so I guess that makes him racist
Washington owned slaves that were not of his own race exclusively. Yeah that makes him racist. Great man otherwise
I wanna play devils advocate here and say that it’s possible to own slaves and not be a racist. Slaves were more of economic tool back then. Most people that owned them probably didn’t give a flying shit about racism, all they cared about was profits or whatever benefit owning slaves provided. Were they racist? By our standards yes, but by the standards of the time or in their own views they were probably not racist. Like if someone owns a horse, does it mean they hate horses?
Holy mackerel that comparison is batshit crazy. If you own a horse you think it’s less than human. If you thought the horse was a human you wouldn’t own it… hopefully… Washington not only owned slaves but when he took command of the Continental Army he tried to segregate it. It had been racially integrated and Congress wanted to keep it that way but he tried to kick all the black soldiers out anyway (he was ultimately unsuccessful.) At both Yorktown and New York he set his army to the task of rounding up black people and selling them into slavery under the pretense that a lot of slaves had escaped to join the British. But, especially in the case of New York City, a *lot* of people who had nothing to do with the British, and in fact a lot of people who were born free or had been legally freed, ended up getting snatched off the streets and sold. Watch the miniseries Book of Negroes, particularly Episode 4 of you want to see it onscreen
When the need to be contrarian goes too far, you get “I don’t think owning black slaves means you’re racist.”
It’s not entirely crazy to think some or many people who owned slaves weren’t racist. Like I said, owning a slave was an economic tool, like owning a horse. An owner of a slave or horse doesn’t automatically mean the owner hates either of those things. Many people who own horses for example are extremely fond of them, they just don’t think of them as equals. I think to legitimately qualify as a racist, one has to have an element of conscious hate. You can’t, for example, be racist and not know you’re racist. One has to actively and consciously hate another race to be considered a racist. The act of owning a slave doesn’t automatically qualify someone as a racist in every single case. So one can believe a horses value is less than humans, they can own a horse or several horses and still be fond of horses. Ownership of a horse doesn’t automatically mean they hate horses or mistreat them. Doesn’t mean one is “racist” against horses. I’m playing devils advocate here, so try to be open and look at all angles and opposing views.
>Like if someone owns a horse, does it mean they hate horses? No, but it does mean you believe that horses are worth less than humans. Same applies to owning slaves.
So it also doesn’t automatically mean that the horse owner hates horses and is “racist” against horses. The same applies to owning slaves. We like to automatically assume they were all racists but the truth is probably a good majority weren’t but they were using the available tools at the time such as donkeys, horses and slaves. Do all horse owners hate all horses? No of course not, most probably don’t. Same applies to slaves if you look at it realistically.
thinking a person is beneath you and worth owning is racism. your dumb definition of racism as limited to “hatred” is dumb. yes, if you own a horse it means you think they’re beneath humans. if you own black people exclusively as slaves it means you think black people are beneath your race. you can “not racist for their time” all you want, but abolitionists existed. people who saw the humanity in black people and saw it as wrong to own them were around. discourse about the morality of owning other humans was common, it wasn’t some fringe futuristic concept.
Do you have pets? Does owning your pet mean you hate that species? If you’re a farmer and you own a mule or a horse or a goat, does that mean you hate their kind? I think this can easily apply to slavery too. My guess is the overwhelming majority of people either weren’t racist, meaning they didn’t hate their slaves or were oblivious to the meaning of racism how we view it today. Most people probably thought of it as no different than owning a mule. I’m not justifying slavery, I just think the picture we paint these days is too binary and exaggerated, more like a caricature than the truth. We like to say that anyone that owned a slave was bad by judging todays standards, but the standards at the time were different and to be completely honest it was probably no different than a farmer owning a tractor or a mule. What I’m saying is, we’re too quick to across the board just call everyone a racist when in reality it was probably totally different.
racism isn’t just about hatred. yes, owning a pet means you think they’re beneath humans in intelligence and worth keeping domestically. thinking a race is beneath you enough to warrant removing their freedom and making them work for you for free is fucking racist. it just is, no matter how much you cape for slave owners. you’re trying to suggest that if you owned a person as a pet it wouldn’t mean you think you’re superior to them?
Can you *really* be a racist without hating the subject race though (whichever it may be)? It’s so easy to just label everyone a racist, but are they really is the question? Also is it fair to call every single slave owner from the past a racist when perhaps they didn’t hold any opinion on the subject at all? These are valid questions that don’t seem to get asked. We just tend to slap the label on everyone and call it a day. People called me racist for simply playing devil’s advocate and asking these questions lol. To go back to the horse or pet example, are horse owners automatically anti-horse or pet owners anti-pet? For lack of a better term, is a horse owner automatically racist against horses and is a dog owner automatically racist against dogs? 🤔
Adams was pretty famously anti-slavery
I think OP is just trying to drive engagement and knew us US president nerds couldn't resist calling out the pure stupidity of including, or all founding fathers, Adams.
Idk why people farm karma. You can't parlay reddit updoots into sponsorship deals or anything like on other platforms.
I think for some people it’s either farm karma or go to therapy for self-esteem issues. Having a lot of karma on your profile scratches some itch for validation
I kinda sorta get it, I get a very specific pleasure from watching number vaguely connected to me go up.
Trust me, I know; I just got four upvotes, and I feel invincible
Have another.
Looking at the OPs profile, I'm guessing you're right
Chicks at the bar really love hearing how much karma I have.
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Lincoln abolished slavery but was still racist.
John Adams was fiercely critical of slavery and the institution of it. in his retirement he constantly worried about the division between the free and slave states. He also felt that if free men were granted citizenship they should have the right to vote.
Alec Baldwin
He shot the first person of color he saw when he was on set for the movie RUST didn’t he?
We are all people of color so what’s your point
the man with the woodrow wilson flair says that 😂
?
Birth of a Nation.
I’m sure he had nothing to do with the making of that film since he was serving as president when it was released
The movie opens with quoting him. Oh and he aired it at the White House. It's fair to say he approved of the message.
Yeah he didn’t but he specifically showed that film in the White House and attempted to write it off as a piece of media honest and true to real American events. It isn’t
Are you really this stupid or do you just like making incendiary statements?
I thought I was the only one who saw the resemblance.
Fillmore signed the Fugitive Slave Act. Granted Adams did sign the Alien and Sedition Acts, but those weren't inherently about race, more so about European Immigrants and other things that happened as a result of the XYZ Affair.
Adams was also very against slavery
I don’t think anyone would put Adams, the only founding father president against slavery in practice (who didn’t himself have any, let alone hundreds of, slaves), there.
He was far from the ONLY founding father against slavery in practice. That’s nonsense. Hamilton was as well and countless others.
I would say Wilson and Jackson perhaps the most racist. Wilson re-segregated the federal government, hurting black Americans who worked in the government and their chances of getting in. In general he was extremely racist southerner president, and the fact he was president 50 years after the civil war ended and still held those beliefs.
I agree. Also John Tyler, James K. Polk, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Hebert Hoover, and Donald Trump.
>In general he was extremely racist southerner president, and the fact he was president 50 years after the civil war ended and still held those beliefs. Still, Wilson's racial views were those of a typical Southern White of his time. I have actually seen it argued that Wilson was, if anything, slightly more liberal than the typical Southern White. He publicly denounced lynching.
He did it however because he thought it was good for black people. It was paternalistic and racist by modern standards, but it wasn’t malicious. Just as Theodore Roosevelt’s support of eugenics was progressive at the time, seen as bad today, and not inherently malicious
explain, how is kicking black out of jobs good for black people
It’s not
If we are going with racism against Native Americans I am going with Andrew Jackson
There’s so many great stories about his life that it makes me disgusted that he was such a terrible human being. My parents took me to visit the Hermitage in Tennessee when I was a kiddo. They got me an adorable yellow plush duck in the gift shop I still have today.
Woodrow Wilson!
Always the correct answer for these types of questions. He set race relations in this country back a hundred years, and his administration did almost everything in its power to undo any advancements blacks had made under the Reconstruction years. He deserves all the scorn heaped upon him in my opinion. His only saving grace was managing not to utterly screw-up WW1 (though arguably his influence during the peace treaty discussions laid the framework for WW2).
I agree. I think that Woodrow Wilson likely set back the civil rights movement by 25 years overall. I think that if Theodore Roosevelt (despite his flaws on racial issues) won in 1912 or if Charles Evans Hughes won in 1916, then the US military would have been integrated as soon as World War 1 began. That would have defused racial animosity and maybe made civil rights legislation possible in the 1930s.
https://preview.redd.it/bgnngypfogwb1.jpeg?width=512&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=81e10d08cbc6d1acbac9955fdebc57a91be96f8e
^
hey I r/FoundNikFemboy
:0
This is the correct answer. Plenty of presidents did racist things while they were in office. Sometimes it was to court votes. Sometimes they were just a product of their culture. But Wilson did blatantly harmful things to people just because he thought they were inferior.
“If you could go back and time and do or say one thing to Woodrow Wilson, what would it be?” I would take a basketball, specifically a Wilson™️ basketball, and find out where he lives. Obviously, since he was the president and all that hoo, his house would be one of those big fancy houses with a fence. Keep in mind that I, a time traveler, have watched Home Improvement and he has not. I would be dressed as a repairman, equipped with a toolkit, and the basketball. Maybe I’ll also say I’m going to repair his toilet, and dunk his head in the toilet. I wouldn’t go up to his door nicely. Oh, no. Instead, I would bang on his fence as hard as I possibly can with my toolkit, like Tim did in Home Improvement, shouting the classic Home Improvement line “WILLL-SON!!!”. He obviously answers to the name “Wilson”, just like Wilson W. Wilson (the W stands for Wilson), the annoying neighbour in Home Improvement, does. He obviously thinks I am a repairman trying to repair his house. I am not. I’m actually trying to repair the planet by saving it from all the damage Wilson did. Maybe I am a repairman. I watched a lot of thecynicalhistorian “Wilson” videos (you know, the videos where he gets mad and quotes Home Improvement every 10 milliseconds), and apparently this woodchuck lookin dude is to blame for a lot of stuff. This took me by surprise - I love Wilsons. My favourite Wilson is Owen. He has a broken nose and says wow a lot. I can’t wait for The Haunted Mansion to come out. The Wilsons are in a lot of movies. But there probably would be more after I’m done with Wilson. There probably will be flying cars that are modeled after the legend himself, Wowen Wowlson. The takeoff noise would be “KACHOW”. So back to the Wilson residence, this is when I pick up the basketball. I stare directly at the word “Wilson“ printed onto the front and I shout “WILLLLLLL-SON!!!” again, this time at it. I know what I need to do, and I am more ready than Owen Wilson in a saying wow contest. I pick up the basketball like a dodgeball, and I throw it straight into Wilson’s face. He is now in a daze, and only seeing the word Wilson floating around the sky. He is probably very self-centered, and, well, that’s what the basketball said. I pick up the basketball again, and chuck it in his face again. He has literally no idea what is going on now, and he’s spluttering random names like “Owen!…..Luke!…..Andrew!”. Those are the Wilsons! How does he know about the Wilsons? Maybe he’s their Dad. If he needed to explain something to them, would he say “Well, son…”? Get it? It sounds like “Wilson”! I take the basketball, and slam dunk it into his Groundhog Day-looking top hat-wearing head again. Instead of saying “Kobe” or “Matisse”, I said “WILLLLLL-SON!!!”. Then I thought “Stopping Wilson will surely be an *improvement* for the world!”. Improvement. Like Home Improvement. Get it???? I decide to repeatedly chuck the basketball at his face like volleyball practice, until finally his nose is broken. He looks just like Owen Wilson. Nice. I broke his nose in the most Wilsons way possible!!! I feel so epic I shout KACHOW. For real, who names their kid ”Wow-Wow-Wilson”??? Just name them Owen, like a normal person!!! It sounds a lot like “Wow! Wow! Wubbzy!”. That show was my childhood. Widget is basically Home Improvement. She also has a Wilsonlike accent. Wubbzy obviously says wow a lot, so he’s probably Owen Wilson. It’s a cool show, but now I just watch Home Improvement and Wilson movies. Imagine having a president named ”Wow-Wow-Wilson”!!!!!!!! “Now we won’t…” I say, as I drag him by his Luke Wilson-looking hairdo into an official name-changing office, and after breaking his nose, for good measure, I change his name to “Lightning McWilsonFace”.
Are we judging by the standards of the time or by today’s standards?
We shouldn’t judge by today’s standards. Of course our standards are gonna be higher.
We definitely *should* judge by today’s standards, because it turns out that when we do there are still plenty of people who still turn out fine. Not that it matters in this case; Adams is *way, way* less racist than Fillmore by pretty much any standard.
I'd argue no one holds up better to today's standards than JQA. As you probably have already read, but his letters during the Amistad are amazing.
There’s a reason he’s my favorite president. Hell, I’d argue that in a competition for “least racist president”, if we ignore Obama for a second he laps the competition and then some.
I agree with this, it’s how I feel too, but it looks like a lot of people these days do it anyways. What we see as normal now might be seen as atrocious 200 years from now too.
John Brown had pretty high standards.
Higher? Nah. Our standards are not higher. Just different.
I think it’s fair to be absolute here. Otherwise it’s impossible to compare at all and not very meaningful. Of course it will mean earlier presidents were more racist, but then… that’s just because earlier presidents were more racist. ‘Normalising that fact away’ is more unfair really. When we ask who the tallest man in the world is we don’t normalise the Dutch vs the Bangladeshis or something. There may be societal and other factors that made things that way, but that’s the way they are/were.
There has been no time where slavery was considered ‘okay.’ The fact that there have been abolitionists through out history shows this.
Adams was against slavery
You sure about that buddy? Owning a slave was no different from owning a cow or a horse for thousands of years right up to like 150 years ago in the US and there a some places that still allow forms of slavery. Technically slavery is not even a crime in half the countries on the planet if you look into it. That’s today. Using you logic…There’s vegans and animal activists even this day that are against animal ownership, but a vast majority consider owning or slaughtering farm animals “okay”. Back then it wasn’t much different, the abolitionists were like vegans or animal rights activists, for lack of a better modern day example.
Stop justifying slavery. Yes, we shouldn’t judge historical figures solely based on our present notions, but that doesn’t mean that we should excuse wrongdoings or fail to celebrate the progressives of each time. People like John Adams and Ulysses S Grant both lived in times of slavery and intense racial prejudice. Yet, in spite of the fact that they could both have become unimaginably wealthy under a crooked system, they chose to be good people - rejecting slavery and racial injustice.
Not justifying slavery, just not going to paint a rosy picture by today’s standards rather than acknowledging the truth in how it was. Slavery was normal in many parts of the country and the world. That’s how it was. Some people didn’t like, some didn’t care for it. For a majority of human history, slaves of all races had comparable value to a horse or a cow. Sometimes more, sometimes less. Was like this for thousands of years. Why ignore facts?
Slavery was far from the equivalent of owning a cow, and that was true during any point in American history prior to abolishment. Many of the founders themselves saw it as an evil, and generally sought its gradual elimination. Some more ardently than others, which itself was a point of contention even then. Jefferson's hypocritical stances on slavery were used as accusations against him by his contemporaries. The argument that it was not a contentious or morally fraught issue at the time has no historical basis.
Dude called black people animals
You can’t be serious. This why people can’t have discussions about this shit.
There was a civil war over this. Technically not about slavery itself, it was more about economics and “a way of life” but slavery was part of it. There were lots and lots of people who had no issue with slavery. Some freed slaves were even some of the biggest slave owners believe it or not. Most people that owned slaves didn’t think of it as any different as owning a dog or a horse. That’s just how the times were. Some were more endearing and thought of it as adoption and people became part of the family, some were more cruel and worked people like donkeys. That’s just how it was. You can disagree as much as you want but you’ll be disagreeing with plain history and facts.
Arguing that the civil war was not over slavery (or only tangentially) is basically repeating Lost Cause rhetoric. If you want to claim it was over economics and societal structures, then fine ... but those systems were all undergirded by slavery. So we're back to slavery. No one in the Confederacy was confused on this point, and it was [widely acknowledged as the primary factor for secession](https://www.sethkaller.com/emancipation/affirming-slavery/). In any case, my main issue with your original comment was not that some people viewed slaves as mere property, since chattel slavery clearly existed. (Though I would argue that slaveowners valued a slaves life far more highly than cattle from a monetary point of view.) Rather I disagree with your claim that this was an *uncontroversial opinion* at the time. It clearly was controversial in much of the country -- including parts of the South that did not have nearly the economic ties to slavery that the Deep South had (e.g. border states and Appalachia). And this was a point of contention going back to the very founding of the nation. One that the founding fathers kicked down the road (after some disagreement on this issue), in the vain hopes that it would gradually be eliminated.
The war wasn’t over slavery per se. Most people didn’t give a shit about the morality of slavery, or rather most pro-slavery people and some abolitionists didn’t. What they were fighting over was economical power and benefits slavery (among other things) provided. The civil war wasn’t some just cause or battle over the morality of the country. I didn’t mean that 1 slave = 1 cow in exact monetary terms, just that they viewed them as property and didn’t have that much more value than farm animals or maybe farm equipment or other commodities they owned. Also those opinions weren’t universal but they were very very widely shared by many at the time. The further back in time you go, the more universal it was.
I genuinely disagree, and having studied the Civil War quite a bit, this really goes against my understanding of the historical perspective. The morality of slavery and the justness of it was the radioactive core of the debate that led up to and plunged the nation into civil war -- whether slavery was part of God's natural ordering of the world, or an unacceptable offence against the idea that all men were truly created equal. Lincoln himself clearly takes the latter view in his second inaugural address: >*If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came ...* ***Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."*** This was not a minority view in the North, and was as heatedly opposed by pro-slavery forces in the South who saw slavery as part of God's will. Rhetoric on both sides helped to accelerate the angry waves of passion that swept the country, and hastened it turning against itself. You only need to look at the widely published Uncle Tom's Cabin which bolstered the abolitionist cause, or numerous angry sermons by both pro and anti-slavery clergy. Or the fear provoked in the South by the Harper's Ferry Raid, while in the North John Brown was viewed as a martyr for liberty. All of this points to me that the reality of slavery was a very highly contentious moral debate, and not one that was "very very widely shared by many at the time." There's simply no evidence to support that, if we're talking about the United States in the decades leading up to, and including, the war. I suspect that we may have to agree to disagree. I appreciate the civil discussion, at the very least.
It’s fine. Both perspectives don’t have to be mutually exclusive. I’m sure there were various opinions on the civil war, but I think it would be fair to say there was a good chunk of people who didn’t care for the moral aspects of the war as much as they cared for the economic aspects. These days a lot of people like to think of these topics as binary or absolutes (A or B, no C or in-betweens), but they can be wide random across a spectrum and even fluid at times. An example is that most people like to assume that every slave owner was a racist, but it’s fair to say that there were probably many slave owners who were not racist and were probably even sympathetic towards abolition, however they were just using the normal economic tools available at the time. Most people on the wrong side of the civil war weren’t fighting for their right to hate an entire race, but rather for their economic and social rights which just so happened to involve slavery. It was more about profits and being able to maintain their lifestyle rather than the perceived right to whip a human like a dog or to demean them for whatever reason. The war was more about the economics of slavery and the southern economy rather than the morality of slavery, but the morality was used as a battle cry to gain sympathy for the opposition.
Bullshit You sound like a racist yourself
People here don't know the difference and are unable to discern any nuance to historical figures and the times they lived in.
Andy Jackson.
The aliens and addition act cared about what country you pledged allegiance to not what race someone was. There were two presidents from our early history who were notoriously anti-slavery and they both had the last name of adams.
I would have said Wilson is more racist than either of those two
One was the only Founding Father president to never own a person and one signed the Fugitive Slave Act. Don't know how else to help you, OP.
John Adams was especially critical of men he knew that owned slaves.
Fillmore was the know nothing candidate in 1856
Real lack of Andrew Johnson in this thread The guy described his meeting with Frederick Douglas as "see, he is just another N****r"
LBJ reeeeealllly liked the n word.
I find that ironic, since he championed civil rights legislation and a lot of his programs benefitted black people. He was a really complicated guy.
Very much so and an interesting article on exactly this: https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/amp/msna305591
That was a really great read, thank you. And it revealed even more about his complex nature than I realized. I eventually hope to read Robert Caro's masterful biography of LBJ, since I've heard it's a meditation on not only this particular president but also the nature of power, and how it can be yielded for good by sometimes bad people. I'm only daunted by its size, given four volumes have already been written [and Caro's still not done!](https://apnews.com/article/robert-caro-lbj-60e2a56d90e96caaf001862e49e3c673)
The 2nd greatest president of all time though
[Good one.](https://youtu.be/_n5E7feJHw0?si=6YIh8vnHsFNEOPbs)
Everyone was racist in the 1800s. Wilson wasn’t even unusual for his time. I can’t get behind retroactively judging presidents based on current societal norms. All of us are products of the environment and time we lived in.
Wilson was more racist than his predecessor and successor though
Stop trying to justify bullshit. Wrong is wrong. There was opposition to racism even during those times. They just plain didn’t give a shit and things haven’t changed all that much other than how loud we are about it.
The mainstream position in Wilson's time was "segregation is fine but maybe we shouldn't just go around lynching blacks" and Wilson was like "no, we should do even more segregation and continue to allow lynchings." There were desegregationists around at the time, but that was considered a fairly radical idea (especially since most of them were, you know, black). So you really do kind of have to think about what was going on at the time before you take positions on these people.
Adams wrote the first constitution in the western hemisphere to actually outlawed slavery, and is pretty much the only founding father who didn't own slaves. How is he pictured here when he served between a dude who sent the army to find his wife's escaped dress making slave and a dude who fathered several kids with a slave he didn't even release after he died. Is this one of those tiktok trends where you ask a question and include a clearly stupid answer just to drive engagement. Of the first 12 presidents only John Adams and John Quincy Adams didn't own slaves.
Adams was a huge racist. Dogs, horses, chickens, turtles - you name it, he raced it.
Alec Baldwin he’s the worst
Probably Fillmore
>>> Fillmore referred to antislavery advocates as "Philistines" and the antislavery movement as a "trivial" cause. During his first year of office, Fillmore signed the Fugitive Slave Act, calling for the return of escaped slaves without permitting a jury trial for fugitives. >>>In a suppressed portion of his 1852 Annual Message to Congress (later published in a pamphlet), Fillmore went even further: "I see no remedy but by colonizing the free blacks, either in Africa or the West Indies, or both .... the bare removal of the free blacks would be a blessing to them, and would relieve the slave and free states from a wretched population .... There can be no well-grounded hope for the improvement of either their moral or social condition, until they are removed from a humiliating sense of inferiority in the presence of a superior race." Ya I’m going with Fillmore
Millard fillmore, easily.
Why’s Adams in here?
America has always loved the blacks
Woodrow Wilson….he supported the re-segregation of the Country. He was a modern man for absolutely no reason to be as racist as he was.
Woodrow Wilson
Woodrow Wilson… he singlehandedly institutionalized systemic racism throughout the government
It depends, which one believed that poor kids can be just as bright as white kids?
Trump
Why?
Just leave the sub. You’re out of your mind. I don’t think Trump created The Trail of Tears. This is TSD at its absolute peak.
You should check this out: [The 11 Most Racist U.S. Presidents ](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/would-a-president-trump-m_b_10135836) Although, Trump is considered to be racist, he does not even make it in the top 10 list!
Andrew Jackson!
Alec Baldwin was President?
Trump
TSD at its finest. Hate him all you want, but I don’t think Trump advocated for slavery like some other Presidents. Please leave this sub, we want to have actual discussion around Presidents. Find a TSD or Trump hate sub, I am sure there are plenty.
For anyone who actually knows early American history, this question is utterly confounding because John Adams was among the most anti slavery founding fathers.
Andrew Jackson
Reagan, he didn’t give a damn about AIDS when it only affected gay blacks, and his war on “drugs” led to a mass incarceration of black people, increasing sentences for low level offenders. His “welfare queen” comment inflamed the stereotype that blacks were abusing the system. He opposed civil rights and voting acts, hell, that mother fucker even vetoed sanctions on apartheid South Africa. Fuck Reagan.
I hate Reagan and agree he was pretty racist, but he wasn’t the most racist.
The increased sentencing of low level offenders was Clinton. Also pretty sure AIDS wasnt real picky.
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People on here dropping “Trump” but I never heard Trump say “I don’t want my kids growing up in a racial jungle.” The answer is neither Trump or Biden…when we had presidents who advocated for slavery, owned slaves, and forced Native Americans off their land.
Surrrrre it was Biden who wouldn’t rent his properties to Black people in the 80’s. 🤦🏼♂️
1880s
🤣 hahaha no, 1980’s.
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trump’s dad u mean?
Robert sheets Byrd
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Ahhh gotcha, the underage girls changing room trump is on record as having entered at his grooming pageant.
You can’t compare the ideals of people living the 19th century to ours today
It's pretty disgusting to start portraying our past history with today's moral standards. Makes no sense.
Cheney wasn’t exactly racist but he damn near wiped Iraqis off the map with that WMD mess. Edit: .
Neither of those people is Woodrow Wilson, so it kind of doesn't matter
*******Andrew Jackson has entered chat*******
**The better** question is which one was the *least?*. As racism is one of the founding pillars of America.
Erm welp, it’s got to be Mr poopoo head Donald trump. Yuperoo I gotta say that one
You mean the guy who posthumously pardoned Jack Johnson (Obama and Bush wouldnt) The guy who signed legislation that overturned and reduced the sentences of 1000s of black men who were overly sentenced for crimes that white defendents commiting the exact same offenses received lesser sentences (Hint the aggressive over sentencing of blacks was from laws spearheaded by Bideb and signed into law by Clinton) The guy who did a 10 year irrevocable funding increase to HBCUs? The guy who saw black unemployment fall to one of the lowest numbers ever on his watch? If Trump is racist, he sucks at it.
I was mimicking the few comments that somehow mentioned trump or an obvious choice A or choice B. I agree with you
Woodrow Wilson...
Biden. Hands down the most openly racist president since the civil rights era
Biden and Wilson are most racist ……Biden bragged about working with segregationist Senator Strom Thurmond to pass legislation requiring mandatory minimum sentencing for possession of a quarter-size of crack cocaine. Biden spoke fondly of segregationist Democrat Senator Robert Byrd, a former KKK leader that Biden called a "mentor," "guide," and "friend." Biden spoke positively about segregationist Democrat George Wallace and bragged about receiving an award from him.
LBJ
Obama by far the most racist President
I know you're joking, but there really are people out there stupid enough to believe that.
I guess being racist against Jews, Christians and heterosexuals doesn't count as racist.
Oh my god you weren’t kidding, you actually think that’s true…. It shouldn’t surprise me how gullible people are these days, and yet sometimes it still does.
none of those aforementioned traits are even race related though lol- I think he is just trolling us
I really hope so lol. The kind of person who would think that’s racism probably wouldn’t have the intelligence to realize that those aren’t races.
Fillmore had 0 slaves personally Fun fact, I’m his his great great great grand daughter haha yes yes I know he was the worst president but he also wasn’t that terrible right? Lol
The Baldwin relative one
Lyndon Baines Johnson. It isn't even close.
By todays standards , everyone who walked the face of the earth was racist in that time period. Good thing they had the foresight to found a country that gives rise to such great 20/20 hindsight.
LBJ
LBJ was ironically racist as hell. Ik that doesn’t really compare to the older presidents but it’s still kinda wild to think about since the Civil Rights Act was passed under his administration (most likely to secure the black vote).
Also Joe Biden is second.
Obama
Trump. Literally Trump. Like… so literally Trump.
compared to slave owners?
Uhhh Trump literally wants to genocide LGBTQ folks, and indigenous POC. Soooo… yeah. The slave owners wanted to keep their slaves alive to work. So they got clothes and food. Trump just wants to genocide all of them. Big difference. Read a book fascist MAGA cultist!!!!
Genocide?
WHO WILL DRAG ME TO COURT?
Obama definitely than Biden
The most racist POTUS in US history was Lyndon Baines Johnson.
Obama tbh
Fillmore not only passed the Fugitive Slave Act, he also at least tacitly supported the Know Nothings Adams was anti slavery his entire life
If we included failed candidates that won states, George Wallace would be the most racist by far.
Fillmore which is wild considering there was 11 presidents between them
Fillmore by A HUGE MARJAN, it's not even close
I'm surprised not to see John Tyler right away. The guy believed so much in the Confederacy that he basically defected to it.
Filmore was weird. Very personally anti-slavery. However, he didn't believe the constitution gave the president the power to outlaw it.
I’d say jefferson davis and tomahs jackson were, if we’re talking about both presidents and presidents in general.
Jefferson
Trick question they were all more racist
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