Whenever Republicans dredge up a certain specious  quote  from former President Lyndon Johnson about  n*ggers,  I am reminded of my grandmother.My grandmother didn t like black people much at all. Living next door to her and conversing regularly, I heard more slurs than one would typically hear at a Tea Party convention devoted to discourse on race relations. In fact, when a Republican says that  blacks are the real racists  or tells us what he or she thinks about  negroes,  it reminds me of my childhood   and not in a good way.Apart from that, she was a sweet, kind woman who genuinely cared about others   enough so that her personal prejudices rarely (if ever) impacted her interactions with others. My mother, though her demeanor has changed over time, was also not too fond of African-Americans when I was younger. When I was 15 or 16, I was dating an African-American girl. She was intelligent, caring, and probably one of the better people I have had the pleasure to know. However, her skin was darker, so my mother disapproved heavily.After meeting the girl, we ll call her Samantha, once, my mom knew what she had to do to protect her son from the risk of race-mixing (which, at the time, she was against,  for the good of the child ). I was not permitted to leave the vicinity of my house because I might visit her. I was not allowed to go out with friends because she might meet me wherever I wanted to go at any given time. I was a prisoner.Despite my grandmother s pretty open racism, she had a huge problem with my mother s actions. While she personally had a low opinion of people because of their skin color, she also recognized one great truth: It doesn t matter how she or anyone else feels, because everyone deserves to be treated equally. After learning of my mother s decision to effectively imprison me around my home because disagreed with the skin color rather than the character of the person I was dating, my grandmother pulled me aside and said something that was equally heartwarming and offensive to me: I want you to know that no matter what your mother says, there is nothing wrong with you dating that n*gger girl. She s nice and sweet. You tell me any time you want to see her and I ll make it happen because it ain t right that your mom won t let you be with who you want. And so it went for months. Any time my parents left the house, my grandmother would take me to pick Samantha, and she would go over an  escape plan  if they returned home prematurely. Despite her prejudices, she was always kind to Samantha. In fact, those interactions changed her opinions somewhat. She stopped being a  n*gger.  She became a person in my grandmother s eyes. She became human. Actually getting to know someone can have that impact. At first, she was  one of the good ones,  but eventually race stopped being a factor altogether as my grandmother learned that people are just people, regardless of skin color.People could offer a number of defenses for how she felt the majority of her life:  she was a product of her time  or  she didn t know any better.  I won t do that. At any point in our nation s history, there has been someone strong enough to fight for what is right, to take a stand against such horrific classifications of people. My grandmother was not one of them, but despite this she was also outspoken about equal rights (though a slur was usually included in the discussion). She genuinely believed that her own prejudices (which she admitted even early on  might be wrong ) should have no bearing on how society as a whole treats people   just like Lyndon Johnson.At first glance, Johnson would fit right in at a Trump rally. In April 2014, MSNBC s Adam Serwer noted that the former President was  practically a connoisseur  of the n-word. There is absolutely no question that Johnson was a massive racist, but he was also a huge proponent of the Civil Rights Act, which he lovingly called the  n*gger bill.  Serwer writes:Then in 1957, Johnson would help get the  nigger bill  passed, known to most as the Civil Rights Act of 1957. With the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the segregationists would go to their graves knowing the cause they d given their lives to had been betrayed, Frank Underwood style, by a man they believed to be one of their own. When Caro asked segregationist Georgia Democrat Herman Talmadge how he felt when Johnson, signing the Civil Rights Act, said we shall overcome,  Talmadge said  sick. The Civil Rights Act made it possible for Johnson to smash Jim Crow. The Voting Rights Act made the U.S. government accountable to its black citizens and a true democracy for the first time. Johnson lifted racist immigration restrictions designed to preserve a white majority   and by extension white supremacy. He forced FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, then more concerned with  communists  and civil rights activists, to turn his attention to crushing the Ku Klux Klan. Though the Fair Housing Act never fulfilled its promise to end residential segregation, it was another part of a massive effort to live up to the ideals America s founders only halfheartedly believed in   a record surpassed only by Abraham Lincoln.Ihle is under fire for jumping on the opportunity to use the word  n*gger  in a context he assumed was safe.The remark was in response to a thread about food stamps   the sort of  free stuff  the right often claims Democrats use to get black votes. The implication, of course, is that black people only want  free stuff.  While Ihle used the quote in furtherance of racist bullsh*t, something we can expect from pretty much any Republican at any time, he defends his uncensored use of the n-word, claiming the tweet is being is taken out of context (you know, just like he used the quote without providing context). That kind of racism needs to be rooted out of society and shining a light on it is an effective way to do so,  Ihle told WCHS. He says that he was simply stating a  historical truth  and that he will not be taking the tweet down. He did not address the fact that there is little evidence that Johnson even said the words he quoted.While Ihle doesn t see a problem with his  n*gger  tweet, pretty much everyone else does:    Johnson was a racist, but he was a racist (just like my grandmother) who believed society s attitudes, including his own, needed to change. Johnson recognized that he irrationally hated the very same people whose rights he fought for.  It is not just Negroes but all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry,  he said of the plight of African-Americans. Undoubtedly, he included himself in that assessment.The first step toward change is self-awareness. Johnson knew enough to know he was a racist   something of which Ihle seems incapable.Watch him defend his remarks below:Featured image via screen grab