Racism = white people

Yes it is worse to hate someone for their race than party affiliation, because one is an trait with no effect on character, while the other describes beliefs and support for specific actions which it can be okay to dislike a person for.

That said, the FBI warned about a rise in right-wing domestic terrorists and we've seen just that, including four army officers last week. The right's fueling of extreme fear and hate in order to win elections isn't just irresponsible, but evil. They lead people on in their fears that Obama is an anti-christ Muslim commie who'll be rounding them up in death camps, with armed force as the only defense. In the last election McCain did disagree with his supporters when they expressed those fears, here they are only interested in not getting caught with the more blatant fear-mongering.

Also liking a black politician isn't a rebuttal of racism. Rarely is racism expressed as "I don't like all black people", but rather through a series of assumptions and behaviors that can be nuanced. Racists I've known have had close black friends, they are just also known to assume the white guy is the manager, that homeless black people are on drugs while whites are just unfortunate, etc.

Even if, say, Romney isn't personally racist, he deliberately speaks to the prejudices and fears of racists, and so doesn't merit any benefit of the doubt. Ditto for probably 80% of the Republican Party, employing the Southern Strategy for 40 years and counting.

And IrishWhiskey is right about the nuance and complexity of racism; it's rarely as simple as this very special episode of "MacGyver":

http://www.poetv.com/video.php?vid=51745

I could almost accept that the hatred of Obama was just politics, but then we bump into something like the Trayvon Martin case, that exposes the racist undercurrent in the country. If the exact same scenario had played out except George Zimmerman were pursuing a white kid he doesn't recognize, there would be no question in anyone's mind that Zimmerman was completely at fault. But since Trayvon was black, Zimmerman is getting tons of support from people who, not very deep down, think it makes perfect sense to be suspicious of a black kid. These are (mostly) people who don't go around wishing for the good old days of lynchings, but to them it is reasonable, indeed self-evident, that a black kid in a hoodie is potential trouble.

And a black man in the White House ... ? He's got to be a food stamp president like the Republicans say, because blacks support blacks, and blacks do love their food stamps.

>>Yes it is worse to hate someone for their race than party affiliation, because one is an trait with no effect on character, while the other describes beliefs and support for specific actions which it can be okay to dislike a person for.

I don't agree. If you hate all blacks for being lazy leeches, and you hate all liberals for being lazy leeches, what difference does it make that the liberal has a choice? In both cases, you're wrong, morally and in relation to reality. And in both cases, the other person isn't responsible for your ignorant attitude. So the fact that he has the ability to change is of little consequence. It's not his problem.

>>Even if, say, Romney isn't personally racist, he deliberately speaks to the prejudices and fears of racists, and so doesn't merit any benefit of the doubt. Ditto for probably 80% of the Republican Party, employing the Southern Strategy for 40 years and counting.

Oh yes, I know what you're saying is true, but liberals are always accusing conservatives of being racist without real proof. I'm sure that sometimes, they're right, but without a real argument it's just being lazy, shutting down the dialogue, and giving your opponent a chance to portray you as an asshole.

You can certainly accuse them of being ruthless, cynical, and shameless, and you can certainly point to examples of that. Like I keep saying, for the people pulling the strings, it's all about money and power. They need to get poor people to vote against their economic interests, and they'll do whatever it takes.

>>I could almost accept that the hatred of Obama was just politics, but then we bump into something like the Trayvon Martin case, that exposes the racist undercurrent in the country.

Like I said, I think it's mostly politics in the case of politically active republicans. I really think they hated Clinon just as much, though we didn't see it as much because there was no Fox News.

Yes, there is a racist undercurrent, I've never seen such an ugly stream of racist hate speech on the internet as about that dead kid with a box of skittles.

"Oh yes, I know what you're saying is true, but liberals are always accusing conservatives of being racist without real proof. I'm sure that sometimes, they're right, but without a real argument it's just being lazy, shutting down the dialogue, and giving your opponent a chance to portray you as an asshole."

There are some liberals who jump the gun and are dopes about it, sure. But then there's Lee Atwater's confession about how the modern Southern Strategy works:

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You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968 you can't say "nigger" � that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me � because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigger, nigger."

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There's your Rosetta stone. That's how you can learn to detect the dog whistles, the same way that blacks in this country have learned to for generations. Basically, when Republcians are going on about all those no-good lazy people, they don't mean no-good lazy whites (whose votes they are still hoping to court).

For all the race-baiting the Republicans have done and continue to do, and simply tolerate, it falls to the Republicans to demonstrate they are sincere about rejecting racism. The Democrats have done that; hell, even Senator Byrd did that and he used to be a Klansman and he filibustered the Civil Rights Act. So it shouldn't be too much for the Reince Priebus to say "Dear Stormfront: Go fuck yourselves, we can't wait for you to die out so the country can finally move forward". I'm not expecting that any time soon.

>>There are some liberals who jump the gun and are dopes about it, sure. But then there's Lee Atwater's confession about how the modern Southern Strategy works:

There are LOTS of liberals who do that, all the time. I saw Keith Olbermann, who I generally like, accuse Pat Boone of racism for a political metaphor involving cancer cells, which apparent, look black under a microscope. No one is denying the Southern Strategy, but calling Pat Boone a racist (maybe true, maybe not) is no strategy at all.

Now it's 2012, and they're making it about liberals. Since it's not directly about race, you can go out there and demonize your ass off without anybody really calling you on it, and construct outrageous fictions about "BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA, THE MOST RADICAL SOCIALIST PRESIDENT IN HISTORY" If you're a racist fuck, "liberal" makes you think of niggers and nigger lovers, but if you're not a racist, it still massages the part of the lizard brain that makes you hate and fear others. This kind of scapegoating is proving more effective, and it just might last them another hundred years.

Cynical manipulation of racism is not the same thing as racism, and when it's done well, it's done in such a way as to have plausible deniability when confronted. You wind up chasing ghosts. When Glenn Beck talked about Obama and reparations, that was very racist, and he should have been dogpiled for that. Maybe he was, but it would have been more effective without all that Pat Boone Cancer Cell Noise.

I don't know if we really disagree here about what's going on. Do we?

I don't think we do. Like I was saying in another thread, Republicans pull enough loathsome shit that we can afford to be selective on what we spaz out about. Actually the bigger risk is trying to make hay on every single legitimate point so that we're aswim in examples, and any sort of theme is lost.

Push the theme, and the details will support the theme, but won't need to be remembered individually.

Probably the best theme Obama can best work is, everything the Republicans are trying to do is to benefit the 1% at the expense of the 99%. Blacks and LGBTs and women and Mexicans all know which group they fall under, they just need encouragement to vote. White men can possibly be swayed to the Democrats by appealing to their virtues: "You're working as hard as anyone, and even so, these days it's all you can do to keep a roof over your head. It used to be that hard-working man could afford some luxuries and maybe take their family on vacation; but it's the Republicans who keep changing the rules so you make less and less."

We've made too many compromises already, too many retreats. They invade our space, and we fall back. They assimilate entire worlds, and we fall back. Not again. The line must be drawn here! This far and no further!

Well, that's a lovely sentiment, but when you don't measure your response you're simply allowing yourself to be manipulated, just like the working class conservatives this is aimed at. The manipulation of prejudice, racial and a otherwise, is a deliberate distraction from the real agenda of the republican elite, which is always more money and power for rich people, and less money and power for everyone else. When you respond in a knee-jerk way, you're simply allowing yourself to be distracted. You're playing their game on their turf. It may surprise you to learn this, but the GOP has some small experience at deflecting charges of racism.

How isn't it true? I've already quoted the former head of the RNC explaining exactly how the modern Southern Strategy works; add that to admissions that the Republicans are trying to keep minorities from voting, and a pattern emerges.

The Democrats have had to demonstrate their good faith as a party, and individuals like Byrd (whom I've already cited) have had to work even harder at it. The Republicans think it's sufficient to say, "Hey guess what? We're not racist anymore, now vote for us." Or really they lean more towards, "I don't know why you thought we were racist in the first place, now vote for us."

that's weird, it was supposed to read

"We're not lucky to be (racial group), we're privileged because (a bunch of negative stereotypes about said racial group)" - a white guy.


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