Former US First Daughter Pens Op-ed Following Audio Leak of Dad's Racist Remarks
“To see those, those monkeys from those African countries—damn them, they’re still uncomfortable wearing shoes!”
Former U.S. first daughter Patti Davis, wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post after an audio was leaked to the public; which confirmed her father, former U.S. president Ronald Reagan, was racist. In the audio from 1971, Reagan can be heard calling United Nations diplomats “monkeys.”
The audio, unearthed by historian Tim Naftali, captures the then governor of California, in conversation with Richard Nixon (who was U.S. president at the time), exclaiming: “To see those, those monkeys from those African countries—damn them, they’re still uncomfortable wearing shoes!”
The taped phone call was first published by The Atlantic on July 30th. According to The Atlantic, when the National Archives were originally released in 2000, the racist portion had been removed from the audio to protect Reagan’s privacy.
In reaction to the inexcusable comments by her father, Davis wrote, “There is no defense, no rationalization, no suitable explanation for what my father said on that taped conversation.”
Current President Donald Trump, a Reagan admirer, has yet to tweet about the audio. And, it’s unlikely that he will. In 2018, the president came under fire after calling African nations, Haiti, and El Salvador “shithole countries” during a meeting about immigration.
For those of us born after the Nixon years, the audio served as a history lesson of sorts. The catalyst for Reagan’s racism: The United Nations voting to recognize the People’s Republic of China, thanks to the voting bloc power of African nations.
In recent years, China-Africa relations have been at the forefront of the news. Forty-eight years after the United Nations vote, the headlines betwixt the two are less about Davis’ tears over her father, whose policies have long since been cited as racist; and more about the continent’s indebtedness to Bejing.
The larger reminder from the audio: What does China owe Africa?