[He was the first president to appoint a Jewish cabinet member—Secretary of Commerce and Labor, Oscar Solomon Straus, who served from 1906 to 1909. Straus, who had helped co-found the Immigration Protective League in 1898, was the Roosevelt Administration's cabinet official overseeing immigration; he helped secure the passage and implementation of the Immigration Act of 1907.[188][189][190]
In 1886, Roosevelt criticized the morals of Indians he had seen:
I don't go so far as to think that the only good Indians are dead Indians, but I believe nine out of ten are, and I shouldn't like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth. The most vicious cowboy has more moral principle than the average Indian. Turn three hundred low families of New York into New Jersey, support them for fifty years in vicious idleness, and you will have some idea of what the Indians are. Reckless, revengeful, fiendishly cruel, they rob and murder, not the cowboys, who can take care of themselves, but the defenseless, lone settlers on the plains.[191]
Regarding African-Americans, Roosevelt told a civil rights leader:
I have not been able to think out any solution of the terrible problem offered by the presence of the Negro on this continent, but of one thing I am sure, and that is that inasmuch as he is here and can neither be killed nor driven away, the only wise and honorable and Christian thing to do is to treat each black man and each white man strictly on his merits as a man, giving him no more and no less than he shows himself worthy to have.[192]
Roosevelt appointed numerous African Americans to federal offices, such as Walter L. Cohen of New Orleans, a leader of the Black and Tan Republican faction, whom Roosevelt named register of the federal land office.[193]
Contrasting the European conquest of North America with that of Australia, Roosevelt wrote: "The natives [of Australia] were so few in number and of such a low type, that they practically offered no resistance at all, being but little more hindrance than an equal number of ferocious beasts";[194] however, the Native Americans were "the most formidable savage foes ever faced ever encountered by colonists of European stock".[195] He regarded slavery as "a crime whose shortsighted folly was worse than its guilt" because it "brought hordes of African slaves, whose descendants now form immense populations in certain portions of the land".[196] Contrasting the European conquest of North America with that of South Africa, Roosevelt felt that the fate of the latter's colonists would be different because, unlike the Native American, the African "neither dies out nor recedes before their advance", meaning the colonists would likely "be swallowed up in the overwhelming mass of black barbarism".[197] Race suicide and eugenics
Roosevelt was intensely active in warning against race suicide, and held a Neo-Lamarkist viewpoint.[198] When Roosevelt used the word 'race', he meant the entirety of the human race or Americans as one race and culture. Americans, he repeatedly said, were getting too soft and having too few children and were thus dying out. While he agreed with some of the ideas of eugenics, he strongly opposed the core eugenics movement principle that some people should have fewer children. As historian Thomas Dyer explains, Roosevelt, "Strenuously dissented from the ideas which contravened the race suicide..... And categorically rejected any measure which would not produce enough children to maintain racial integrity and national preeminence."[198] Roosevelt attacked the fundamental axioms of eugenics, warning against "twisted eugenics".[199]
In 1914 he said: "I wish very much that the wrong people could be prevented entirely from breeding; and when the evil nature of these people is sufficiently flagrant, this should be done. Criminals should be sterilized and feeble-minded persons forbidden to leave offspring behind them."[200][201]
When Madison Grant published his book The Passing of the Great Race, Roosevelt wrote this to Scribner's Magazine to promote it:
The book is a capital book; in purpose, in vision, in grasp of the facts our people most need to realize. It shows an extraordinary range of reading and a wide scholarship. It shows a habit of singular serious thought on the subject of most commanding importance. It shows a fine fearlessness in assailing the popular and mischievous sentimentalities and attractive and corroding falsehoods which few men dare assail. It is the work of an American scholar and gentleman; and all Americans should be sincerely grateful to you for writing it.[202][203]
Roosevelt was greatly impressed by the performance of ethnic American soldiers in the world war. Biographer Kathleen Dalton says:
He insisted to [Madison] Grant that race and ethnicity did not matter because men of foreign parentage across the nation fought well, including Jews....Roosevelt took the final step toward believing in racial equality. At the end of his life TR repudiated the Madison Grants and other racists and promised W.E.B. DuBois to work with more energy for racial justice.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Roosevelt#Minorities_and_Civil_Rights)
Apparently at the end of his life he changed his beliefs and stopped being racist. But yeah for most of his life, while not out of step with the ugly standards of the time, very racist.