What the ----?, Jason from Howard City, MI

Partial transcript from NPR's show- Talk of the Nation

CONAN: Let's get a caller in on the conversation. We're talking with Richard Striner, history professor at Washington College, the author of several books on Abraham Lincoln, the most recent of which is "Lincoln on Race." And you're listening to TALK OF THE NATION, from NPR News.

Jason's on the line with us from Howard City in Michigan.

JASON: Hi, Neal.

CONAN: Hi. Go ahead, please.

JASON: Abraham Lincoln is my absolute least president - or least-favorite president. And I think he really did an awful thing with the Emancipation Proclamation. All of a sudden, you have a huge group of people who are uneducated, have - cannot, you know, can't read - and this is going to sound very racist, but it is true - were basically bred for size and, you know, low intelligence for years and years and years. And what it did is created all the problems we have now: the poverty in the inner cities, the, you know, the lack of education.

CONAN: Jason, it not only sounds racist, it is. I am astonished that anybody would make such a claim in 2012.

JASON: I understand that. But I - that's what I said, it would sound very racist. But what I'm saying is it should have been a gradual process, not immediate. It was just a war tactic basically, nothing else.

CONAN: Again, that's...

JASON: That's what I believe. I know it sounds horribly racist, and I'm not a racist person, but, I mean...

CONAN: I think some listeners might question you on that point.

In general, Jason, saying racist things pretty much makes you a racist.....