Jimmy Carter describing his opposition to government programs “to inject black families into a white neighborhood just to create some sort of integration”:

I have nothing against a community that is made up of people who are Polish, or who are Czechoslovakians, or who are French Canadians or who are blacks trying to maintain the ethnic purity of their neighborhoods. This is a natural inclination.

From Time Magazine, 1976. H/T Mike B.

UPDATE: More on Carter’s own record on race from NewsReal:

Carter campaigned for governor of Georgia as a self-proclaimed “redneck,” in an era when that word had pronounced racial connotations. His campaign distributed a photo of his gubernatorial opponent Carl Sanders being embraced by black basketball players to a Ku Klux Klan rally. Carter pledged to invite Alabama’s infamous segregationist governor George Wallace to Georgia if elected. He once said he was “proud” to have the equally segregationist Lester Maddox as his lieutenant governor following the 1970 election, calling Governor Axe-handle “the essence of the Democratic Party” (which he was).