Top 5 Most Racist Ron Paul Quotes

Did the Libertarian presidential candidate make a series of anti-black comments?

Did he or didn’t he?

That’s the question the public is asking about Ron Paul after a series of racist newsletters bearing his name have sparked controversy. The newsletters were published in the 1980s and ’90s and include disparaging remarks about African Americans. While Paul now says he didn’t personally write the newsletters, a Huffington Post investigation suggests that in 1996 the Texas congressman didn’t deny making the comments.

Old videos from that year, when Paul launched his first presidential campaign, reportedly show the libertarian plugging the newsletters. The only complaint he shares in the recordings are that his words have been taken out of context.

So what racially insensitive remarks has Paul supposedly made about blacks and civil rights in his newsletters and elsewhere?

Here’s a list:

• The Ron Paul Political Report newsletter stated the public should bear arms to protect themselves against carjackings by “urban youth who play whites like pianos.” Note that the terms “black” or “African American” aren’t used in this newsletter sample. However, the racially coded term “urban” and reference to “whites” makes it easy for the reader to ascertain what skin color the youth in question have. The newsletter, written in the first-person, continued on this topic with the following assertion: “I’ve urged everyone in my family to know how to use a gun in self-defense. For the animals are coming.” Now these animal wouldn’t be blacks, would they?

• In another newsletter, Paul described most black men in Washington, D.C., as “semi-criminal or entirely criminal.”

• Talking Points Memo reported that in December 1990, Paul suggested that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. sexually molested girls and boys, remarking: “And we are supposed to honor this ‘Christian minister’ and lying socialist with a holiday that puts him on par with George Washington?” 

• In a 1993 Ron Paul Survival Report newsletter, alarm was raised about “The Disappearing White Majority.” The newsletter referenced the growing birth rate of people of color and expressed a pro-segregation stance with this comment: “It is human nature that like attracts likes. But whites are not allowed to express this same human impulse. Except in a de facto sense, there can be no white schools, white clubs, or white neighborhoods. The political system demands white integration, while allowing black segregation.”

• In May 2011, Paul told MSNBC that he would have voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which ended Jim Crow. He questioned the act because it took authority away from property owners. Evidently, Paul values the rights of racist property owners over those of African Americans whose housing, employment, schooling and leisure activities were all dictated by Jim Crow.