turning a big dial taht says “Racism” on it and constantly looking back at the audience for approval like a contestant on the price is right

A reporter wrote this about New York in 1869 (as quoted in Settlers chapter 4):

When a native Mississipian and an exconfederate officer, in addressing a convention, refers to a colored delegate who has preceded him as ‘the gentleman from Georgia’, when a native Alabamian, who has for the first time crossed the Mason and Dixon line, and who was from boyhood taught to regard the Negro simply as chattle, sits in deliberate consultation with another delegate whose ebony face glistens with African sheen, and signs the report of his colored co-delegate, when an ardent and Democratic partisan (from New York at that*) declares with a ‘rich Irish brogue’ that he asks for himself no privilege as a mechanic or a citizen that he is not willing to concede to every other man, white or black - when, I say, these things can be seen or heard at a national convention, called for any purpose, then one may indeed be warranted in asserting that time works curious changes.(46)

* The reporter remarks on this because the Democratic Party was the pro-slavery party, and New York was infamous as the seat of some of the most vicious and violent anti-Afrikan mass sentiment.