From the Nixon Files: Richard Nixon, Champion of Racial Equality

From the Nixon White House Tapes (May 13, 1971): Richard Nixon discussing welfare and racial issues with John Ehrlichman and H.R. Haldeman.

NIXON: I have the greatest affection for them [blacks], but I know they're not going to make it for 500 years. They aren't. You know it, too. The Mexicans are a different cup of tea. They have a heritage. At the present time they steal, they're dishonest, but they do have some concept of family life. They don't live like a bunch of dogs, which the Negroes do live like.

EHRLICHMAN: The Mexican American is not as good as the Mexican. You go down to Mexico--they're clean, they're honest, they're moral.

NIXON: Mexico is a much more moral country.

EHRLICHMAN: Monterrey, Cuernavaca. Go into slum areas, and by God they come out with clean shirts on a Sunday morning.

NIXON: The church. You find a helluva lot less marijuana use in Mexico than the United States.

Above: Nixon trying his hand at badminton.

From the Nixon White House Tapes (July 11, 1971): Richard Nixon discussing race issues with Assistant to the President Donald Rumsfeld.

NIXON: The second point is that coming out--coming back and saying that black Americans aren't as good as black Africans--most of them , basically, are just out of the trees. Now, let's face it, they are.