John Wayne was racist.
This belief comes primarily from a statement he made during a 1971 interview with Playboy magazine when he said, “I believe in white supremacy until the blacks are educated to a point of responsibility. I don't believe in giving authority and positions of leadership and judgment to irresponsible people.”
But people tend to take this statement out of context, as he also said, “we can't all of a sudden get down on our knees and turn everything over to the leadership of blacks.” Which is true, and it is not a racist statement. He believed in gradual integration, and I think an honest look at just about any black ghetto will support that view.
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He believed that blacks had an honest right to feel resentment toward and to dissent regarding their treatment. Hardly the view of a racist. He worked with many blacks, including Scatman Crothers and Roscoe Lee Brown, and got along quite well with them. One should also take into account that not only did he have black friends (like Sammy Davis Jr.), but he had no problem in casting blacks in his films (such as James Watkins, who played J.C. in the film McQ, and Sidney Poitier in one of his first films and cast by Wayne in a lead role), and was married to three Latin American women during his life.
He did not dislike blacks for the sake of being black, and he tended to accept people based on their character rather than the color of their skin. So no, he wasn’t racist. He may have been racially insensitive from a politically correct standpoint, but he was far from racist.