Perspective: 'Not a racist bone in his body': The origins of the default defense against racism
Sen. Howard Baker, left, President Ronald Reagan, Speaker of the House Thomas"Tip" O'Neill, Rep. Jim Wright, with back to camera, left, and Edwin Meese talk during a budget summit in Washington on April 28, 1982. By Christopher Petrella and Justin Gomer April 11 at 6:00 AM Every few weeks, it seems, a public figure accused of practicing or condoning racism invokes the “racist bone” defense. “I don’t have a racist bone in my body,” they say.
And, of course, in 2017, after President Trump was publicly lambasted for describing a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville as a protest with “very fine people, on both sides,” then-Sen. Orrin G. Hatch offered up a similar defense, saying in an interview: “I know Donald Trump. I don’t think there’s a racist bone in his body.”
Hatch invoked the trope multiple times to defend Reagan. In one case, Attorney General William French Smith joined Hatch in asserting that Reagan did not have “a racist bone in his body.” This embrace of colorblindness — a selective and distorted reading of what King actually advocated — enabled Reagan to frame his relentless attacks on civil rights as motivated by a morally righteous and apolitical commitment to equality. In doing so, Reagan was adopting a tactic that white anti-busing segregationists and affirmative action opponents had developed during the prior decade. This tactic emerged in a climate in which explicit racism was no longer openly tolerated in U.S.
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