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Old 09-28-2015, 10:22 AM
icenine's Avatar
icenine icenine is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by d-ray657 View Post
I'm curious about your use of the phrase "this racist country." Do you believe that the majority of the country is racist? Do you see it in degrees?

For example, I wouldn't have much trouble with the proposition that we all harbor some amount of prejudice, often even when we don't even realize it.

Others are unabashedly racist - I think that that is a shrinking percentage. Overt racism using direct racial terms is rare.

Others use code language to convey racist attitudes. I'm not sure whether that group is shrinking. Whether a politician uses such code as a result of personally held racial attitudes or simply to manipulate those attitudes in others I would still identify it as a racist act.

There are some who will reflect class bias without realizing that there is a racial element in the class bias.

But I believe that the number of people who sincerely believe in racial equality and equal opportunity is growing, even if that number does not yet reflect a majority of Caucasians, or even a majority of all citizens.

Or were you being facetious and just pulled one over on me?

Regards,

D-Ray
Your points are valid, but what do think of first when you hear someone mention South Africa? You immediately think of apartheid, or I do anyway.
There are probably people outside of the USA who think of slavery when they hear the word United States, or some other negative aspect of our nation.
Slavery was an codified in our Constitution unfortunately, so technically we can be said to have been a racist nation.

Plus our own system of apartheid did not end till the 1960s, and the first Federal law against lynching was not till 1948 I think.

Plus the fact that our prisons are also filled with people of color right now.

We may all feel enlightened, and perhaps a majority of us really believe in racial equality. But institutionally we are not as non-racists as we could be. Just think of voter suppression.
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Last edited by icenine; 09-28-2015 at 04:50 PM.
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  #82  
Old 09-28-2015, 04:30 PM
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BlueStreak BlueStreak is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by donquixote99 View Post
OK, you agree with, and elaborate, on the narrative that "Democrats buy black votes with free stuff." A few points.

First of all, do you agree that 'Republicans buy the votes (and funding) of rich folks with low taxes and corporate welfare?' It certainly as fair to spin Republican efforts on behalf of their clients as 'vote buying' as it is to do so regarding the Democrats.

So we may ask who is more deserving of such benefit: poor people who otherwise would be living in shantytowns and scrounging for food in dumps, or rich people who otherwise would lack for nothing?

So what is the program of Republicans to 'lift up the community' of poor folks, as you say? Isn't it lassiez faire for the poor folks (but not the rich folks)? Isn't it government being smaller, and doing nothing (for the poor folks) except starving the public schools, cutting subsistence, hemming them in with restrictive and humiliating rules at every turn (drug tests for welfare), and throwing them into slave labor factories (jail) if they put a toe out of line? I would suggest that's the exact program that gives us gigantic shantytown slums and people scrounging in dumps, in other places.

One other thing. You say "...African Americans suffer the most as they are the largest population in poorer communities." Not so. White people are the largest population in poorer communities. See this graphic from Inequality.org



"Free stuff' BTW, is pernicious spin. It implies 'underserved stuff.' Are people who are children, or old, or disabled 'undeserving' of substinence? Are people unwanted in the unemployment marketplace for reasons that don't count as 'disabled' to be treated as refuse? The popular resentment about 'free stuff' rather meanly disregards all such considerations.

And while it was the questioner who set the focus on blacks, Jeb chose to leave it there, he never said anything to change it. He knows that his listeners will think resentful and 'disaffected' thoughts about 'those black people' when you talk Democrats and 'free stuff.' That is pandering to racism, and it is an act of moral filth.
And, there it is. We all know it isn't only the non-working poor that the Republican Party is out to screw anyways. Otherwise, they wouldn't go straight to union busting / hindrance of organizing efforts whenever they have the opportunity. Creating a cheap, defenseless and compliant labor has been at the core of Conservative ideology for well over a century, increasingly so since the 1970s.
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