Evidently at least on person in a leadership role in New Hampshire believes that slave owners are not necessarily racist. In a way he is right. In fact, simply calling people who believe they have right to own other people minimizes the crimes the slavers committed and reduces our ability to call the US into account for engaging in the organized criminal conspiracy that was slavery, such as reparations.
First, let us be direct and honest. Calling a slaver a racist is like calling Jeffrey Epstein a misogynist. It is not what we should be focused on. Slavers were hardened criminals with no respect for the sanctity of life. They were abductors, rapists, murderers, tortures, and in all likelihood child molesters. Those that defend them also imply that there are times when this criminal activity is acceptable, even today.
Racism is different. If one sees a cop shoots an unarmed black kid and says that bad things sometimes happen, one is a racist. If one voted for Reagan twice because he was going to fix the deficit by getting rid of all the welfare queens, one is a racists. If one watches Gone With The Wind, and see a victim in anyone other than the slaves, and the women who played Mammy had to deal with extended racism in real life as well as the movie, then one is a racist.
On the other hand, if one takes out a full page advocating the lynching of young people of color, one is beyond a racist to being a hardened criminal with no respect for human life. If one shoots a kid for playing music too loud, then uses racism as excuse, one is a hardened criminal with no regard for human life. If one calls the cops because a black person is doing things you do not like, then one is hardened criminal with no respect for the law. Such people are in fact a white supremacists.
The fact that Trump is president, that Gone With The Wind is still not put along other white supremacists movies like the original Birth of a Nation, and the fact that we still have people openly defending slavers, shows how little we have moved away from being a country of white supremacists. It shows how we still refuse to accept, that in past, and sometimes in the present, we are country that engages in criminal conspiracy to keep the privilege of white people in tact.