Ronald Reagan’s daughter says her father would have ‘asked for forgiveness’ for calling Africans ‘monkeys’ in newly-unearthed tapes

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Ronald Reagan’s daughter Patti Davis wrote in a Washington Post op-ed published Thursday that her father would have "asked for forgiveness" for using racist language against Africans in newly-unearthed tapes from 1971.
In the tapes, which were uncovered by New York University history professor Tim Naftali and published in The Atlantic, Reagan referred to Tanzanian UN delegates as "monkeys" in a phone call with Richard Nixon
Davis wrote, "there is no defense, no rationalization, no suitable explanation for what my father said on that taped phone conversation."
She wrote that Reagan "would have asked for forgiveness. He would have said, ‘I deeply regret what I said — that’s not who I am.’ He would have sought to make amends for the pain his words caused."
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Ronald Reagan’s daughter Patti Davis wrote in a Washington Post op-ed published Thursday that her father would have "asked for forgiveness" for using racist language against Africans in newly-unearthed tapes from 1971.

In the tapes, which were uncovered by New York University history professor Tim Naftali and published in The Atlantic, Reagan — then the governor of California — expressed frustration with African delegates from the United Nations in a 1971 conversation with former President Richard Nixon and referred to them as "monkeys."

"Last night, I tell you, to watch that thing on television as I did," Reagan said to Nixon in a conversation about delegates from Tanzania celebrating on the floor of the UN General Assembly after opposing the United States in voting for a motion to seat the UN delegation from Beijing instead of Taiwan.

In the Atlantic, Naftali explained that the context behind the tape was that Reagan, who sided with Taiwan over the People’s Republic of China, was angered by the Tanzanian delegation celebrating having voted for the motion to only recognize the delegation from the PRC and remove the delegates from Taiwan.

"To see those, those monkeys from those African countries — damn them, they’re still uncomfortable wearing shoes!" he added, prompting laughter from Nixon, who originally recorded the call.

In The Post op-ed, Davis wrote that she "wanted to immediately go back in time to before I heard my father’s voice saying those words," adding, "there is no defense, no rationalization, no suitable explanation for what my father said on that taped phone conversation."

She added that the anti-racist ideals her father instilled in her "doesn’t remove the knife cut of the words I heard him say on that tape," and added that Reagan "would have asked for forgiveness."

"He would have said, ‘I deeply regret what I said — that’s not who I am,’" she wrote. "He would have sought to make amends for the pain his words caused."

Naftali, who directed the Nixon Presidential Library from 2007 to 2011 and requested that the full tapes of Nixon and Reagan be released from the National Archives last year, wrote that after his conversation with Reagan, Nixon turned around and used similarly racist language in a conversation with an adviser.

"Racist venting is still racist. But what happened next showed the dynamic power of racism when it finds enablers," he wrote, adding that Nixon called the Tanzanian delegation "cannibals" in a subsequent phone call with then-Secretary of State William Rogers.

Writing about how her father had been accused of racism many times in his career, Davis wrote, "Legacies are complicated, though, and for people to be judged fairly, the landscape of a lifetime has to be looked at …. in reaching for forgiveness in myself, my hope is that others will forgive my father for words that should never have been uttered in any conversation."

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Source: Business Insider – gpanetta@businessinsider.com (Grace Panetta)