Nicole Cardoza Nicole Cardoza

Know our racist presidential history.

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Choose one U.S. President and research their lives, using the following guidelines:

How did this president support the livelihood of non-white people in America?

Which laws / policies did they establish (or rescind) that affected the rights of non-white people?

How did they demonstrate racism on an interpersonal level?

What actions did they take that created or upheld systems of advantage based on skin color?

Share what you learned on Facebook or Instagram using the hashtag #antiracismdaily so we can all learn from each other.

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By Nicole Cardoza

In a virtual town hall with the Service Employees International Union yesterday, Biden bluntly said that Trump is the country’s first racist president, admonishing his racist statements against the Asian community when referencing COVID-19 (Washington Post).

“No sitting president has ever done this. Never, never, never. No Republican president has done this. No Democratic president. We’ve had racists, and they’ve existed, they’ve tried to get elected president. He’s the first one that has”.

Joe Biden

Trump has been wielding racism for political gain (which we covered in a previous newsletter) for his entire presidency, so I can see the strategic value of Biden doing the same. And since polarizing statements grab headlines (another tactic Trump uses), big statements like this get people talking about Trump’s impact as a president. I also appreciate that Biden’s statement says what many other political leaders and media have been afraid to – that President Trump is racist (especially because, as the Washington Post notes, Biden has tiptoed around naming this in the past).

And although I can see the strategic value, I don’t condone it. Because here’s the thing. Racism is not just a political tactic. Racism is a global pandemic. Racism is a public health crisis. Racism murders innocent people, incarcerates vulnerable youth, and displaces entire communities. It robs us of our right to breathe and leaves us with trauma that lasts generations. So as we watch racism unfold during election season, don’t let its effect on the polls come before its impact on those most marginalized. Yes, we need to vote. And we need to keep doing the work to dismantle systemic oppression each and every day. 

Also, Biden’s statement isn’t true. Trump is absolutely racist, to be clear (and has not “done more for Black Americans than anybody with the possible exception of Abraham Lincoln”). But so are many other presidents from our history. For starters, 12 of our nation’s presidents — over 25% — enslaved people during their lifetimes. Of these, eight held enslaved people while in office (History). Aside from John Adams and his son John Quincy Adams, every president from George Washington to Ulysses Grant owned enslaved people (History). Andrew Jackson, the seventh president of the U.S., once offered $50 for the return of a runaway enslaved person and $10 extra “for every hundred lashes any person will give him, to the amount of 300” (Associated Press). He also focused on forcibly removing Indigenous communities from their tribal lands towards the west, creating the “Trail of Tears,” a treacherous 5,000-mile route that Indigenous communities were forced to use (Business Insider).

But it doesn’t end there. Woodrow Wilson used his time in office to re-segregate multiple agencies of the federal government, creating “separate but equal” facilities at the Department of Treasury, Post Office Department, and Railway Mail Service. He personally fired 15 out of 17 black supervisors in his own service and replaced them with white people. The head of the Internal Revenue division in Georgia fired all his black employees, saying, "there are no government positions for Negroes in the South. A Negro's place in the cornfield." And by 1914, all job applications for the federal government required a photo to be considered (Vox).

FDR supported the internment of Japanese-Americans in California during World War I (NYMag). Nixon believed in a hierarchy of races, with whites and Asians much higher up than people of African descent and Latinos, which influenced his policy decisions on welfare reform in 1971 (The Atlantic). George H.W. Bush’s “War on Drugs” disproportionately, and intentionally, targeted people of color (Harvard).

And while we’re here, let’s take a quick look at the White House real quick, which was also built by enslaved people. At least nine presidents brought their existing enslaved people to live at the White House as "chefs, gardeners, stable hands, maids, butlers, lady’s maids, valets, and more" and lived in uncomfortable, damp, rodent-infested spaces (White House History).

“I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves”.

First Lady Michelle Obama, 2016 DNC Speech

There are so many more instances we can add to this list, but I think you get the point. And remember that the goal isn’t to create some type of competition to choose the “most racist president”. That’s the wrong line of thinking. Any type of racism, no matter how nuanced, still creates and perpetuates systemic racism. Instead of trying to minimize or maximize harm on a scale, we must acknowledge all of the instances of racism our presidents have contributed to the foundation of our nation.

Some people will argue that because things back in the day “weren’t consider racist,” they don’t count as we look at history with a modern-day lens. But racism is not up for interpretation. Racism, by its standard definition, means “a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race” and “a political or social system founded on racism” (Merriam-Webster). And there’s evidence of this weaved into every example mentioned above – both the individual prejudice our nation’s presidents had, and how they used them to create and reinforce systems. Regardless of how many people felt during this time period, or what these actions were called, racism was still very much happening, lying the foundation for the inequities we experience today.

And this definition of racism doesn’t paint the full picture. The definitions Merriam-Webster offer demonstrates how racism perpetuates, but not the imbalance of power that comes with it. And as we know after reading the Anti-Racism Daily for the past 50 days (🙃) it’s the disparities that stem from racism that disproportionately affect non-white people in our society.

That’s why Kennedy Mitchum, 22 years old at the time, emailed Merriam-Webster to ask them to expand the definition to further define racism as “a system of advantage based on skin color” (The Atlantic). From her perspective, “there is a system, and then there is individual bias. There are structures that perpetuate racism and then people who give in to that system. These two things should go hand in hand” (NYTimes). Her insight may be why more people have been using the term “white supremacy” when discussing racism to emphasize the imbalance. The dictionary company agreed with Mitchum’s definition and should have an updated entry shortly (NYTimes). So re-read the examples above and consider – how did these presidents contribute to the systems of advantage people experience based on skin color today?

KEY TAKEAWAYS

  • Biden called Trump our "first" racist president, which doesn't acknowledge the long line of racism in our nation's leadership

  • Even if we didn't call actions from past presidents racist back then, they're still a part of the racism in our society today

  • Any type of racism, no matter how nuanced, still creates and perpetuates systemic racism.

  • Our definition of racism is evolving to account for the power that some benefit from as a result of racism

  • Trump is still racist and we're still not voting for him this November

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