Nish Kumar Quotes
We were in denial about the extent to which Britain had cured itself of the poison of racism.
Kumar, Nish. "Nish Kumar: 'We were in denial about the extent to which Britain had cured itself of the poison of racism'." Interview by Rachel Aroesti. The Guardian, 21 Dec. 2018.
Moynihan was actually not the political originator of the "benign neglect" phrase which became so controversial. It had been first used by The Earl of Durham in his 1839 Durham Report on the English policy towards Canada.
Amazing as it is to most Americans today, the first time there was an interracial kiss depicted on television was on the Science Fiction TV Show Star Trek in the late 1960s. Although the public reaction was not as hostile as the television executives and politicians of the time feared, there were organized boycotts of NBC and many death threats to the actors, writers, producers and executives.
This quotation was one of the major reasons Carswell was rejected by the Senate.
Note that Nixon attributed Rogers views on Blacks to the fact that Roers was from New York City which Nixon viewed as a hotbed of liberals and minorities. This quotation was uncovered in 2010 when more of the Nixon White House tapes were released. Nixon tended to have the worst stereotyped view of all minority groups. The implication of the inbreeding is a high percentage of mental retardation. It was never been established that the Black slaves in America were inbred as they came from many different tribes and slave owners did not attempt to have slaves of a single or even two tribes. There was a great deal of diversity. If anything Southern Whites were in danger of inbreeding as it was the custom for many first cousins to marry. This was just another of Nixon’s hateful, racial remarks based on no foundation of fact.
Jessie Helms was his young assistant who drafted this race baiting ad. There are two vicious but subtle aspects to this kind of attach ads. First, not that the ad does not address the problem of white men working along side of blacks. It only refers to wives and daughter. This interracial sex innuendo played on and increased the fear of whites that Blacks would commonly rape white women. The second nasty aspect of the ad is the specific attack on the opponent. Instead of saying that he favored desegregation, the phrase “mingling of the races” was used which implied that Graham was in favor of biracial intermarriage and children—again another sex innuendo. When integration of the workforce finally occurred in the South, there was no increase in Black men sexually assaulting white women. There has been a substantial increase in racial intermarriage however as racial bigotry has diminished in America.
Taft, very progressive on racial matters, was a little too optimistic. The “intelligent” Southerners were in the small minority. Only a week after Taft made this statement, Joseph Gorden, a Negro, was lynched outside Greenwood, Mississippi.
Nishant Kumar is a British stand-up comedian and radio presenter. He has hosted BBC Two's The Mash Report, BBC Radio 4 Extra's topical comedy show Newsjack, the Comedy Central series Joel & Nish vs The World, the BBC Radio 4 programme The News Quiz and Hello America on Quibi.
