According to Magerman’s suit, Mercer told him in a January 2017 phone call that the “United States began to go in the wrong direction after the passage of the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s.” Mercer said, according to Magerman’s account, that “African-Americans were doing fine” before the Civil Rights Act, which “infantilized” them. Magerman says Mercer told him that “the only remaining racist people in the United States were black.” Although Mercer said he does not believe any whites are racist, if they were it “is not something the government should be concerned with.” Magerman says he responded that, prior to the Civil Rights Act, “African Americans were required to use separate and inferior schools, water fountains and other everyday services and items.” Mercer said, according to Magerman, that these issues “were not important.”
