*Even though the majority of white people actually voted for McCain

The Democratic candidate for President has lost the white vote in every election since the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts.

Johnson said Civil Rights legislation would cost the Democrats for a generation.  It’s now been two generations and counting…

Specfically, the Democratic vote has lost the majority of the white male vote and half the white female vote at least in votes for President since the LBJ administration. Not sure about the votes for seats in Congress or state legislatures or for governnors and mayors though.

I’m sure that’s all just a coincidence.  White people must just be genetically predisposed to Republicanism.

“White people must just be genetically predisposed to Republicanism.”

...and of course, we’re a “center right” nation as we’re reminded all the time.  Except to the Teabaggers, who think we’re an “Insane Right” nation…

Well, I think that Republican VOTER’s objections to social safety spending is all about race.  And I think that historically, there’s no doubt that elected Republicans and Dixiecrats were racists.  Racism is why we didn’t get universal health care back when everyone else got it (Jim Crow southerners believed it would force integration of their segregated hospitals, which of course, it would have).  And racism played a huge role in new deal politics and how the policies were implemented.  (huge shock; blacks got fucked).

But today, I really get the feel that elected R’s themselves aren’t racist, or, they’re neutral on race.  I’m not saying they love minorities or anything.  But with some clear exceptions, like Alabama’s Jeff Sessions who is a stone cold, old-fashioned, Southern racist mofo’er, I belive they use race to serve their corporate owners.

In other words, is Karl Rove personaly racist?  Probably not.  But he’s eager to use the racism in many whites, to exploit it, even to fan and inflame it, to make it worse, in order to get people to vote against their own economic interests.

And they’re often quite succesfull at it.  They are definitely becoming more and more transparent.  More and more aggressive.  But with the old Nixon hand roger ailes, running the RNC propoganda outlet, is it any wonder Nixon’s Southern Strategy has made a comeback bigtime?  It’s ugly stuff.  SO depressing that all these years later, people are still eating it up and asking for more.

In other words, is Karl Rove personaly racist?  Probably not.  But he’s eager to use the racism in many whites, to exploit it, even to fan and inflame it, to make it worse, in order to get people to vote against their own economic interests.

One of the posters over at the Great Orange Satan, Meteor Blades, has a quote that goes something like this: “Don’t tell me what you believe, tell me what you do and I’ll tell you what you believe.”

“reverse racism”...Isn’t that when a racist is actually nice to someone of color?

When they say “reverse racism”, I think what they’re actually referring to is called “karma”.

AnglScarlett,

There is no difference between using racism and being racist. Racism isn’t the mere belief in racial superiority; it’s the practice of exploiting racial differences for wealth and power.

Your comment is like saying, “He’s not a burglar—he just breaks into houses to steal people’s stuff.” Sure, it’s not the act of burglary that the guy’s really into, but that’s not relevant.

“In other words, is Karl Rove personaly racist?  Probably not.  But he’s eager to use the racism in many whites, to exploit it, even to fan and inflame it, to make it worse, in order to get people to vote against their own economic interests.”

That is really a distinction without a difference.  Someone may not actually put on the white robes and burn a cross on some Black family’s front yard, but if they help (or seek political support from) people who would, aren’t they just as racist?...

one of the truly amazing things that I have to constantly remind my local “tea partiers” are that 95% of the welfare, ssi etc recipiants are white in our area.  It is truly amazing to me the things that come out these peoples mouths especially after church.  I am amazed that they can sing about loving their neighbor and doing good and the next breath talk about how all these “others” take the jobs, money etc.  I try to fight their ignorance and hate by teaching the children the truth in Sunday school.  I have had many positive experiences with children coming up to me years later saying my class helped them overcome their home experiences to be more accepting and positive towards people.  I guess my parents “hippie dippie” teach the children well to love one another took.

If anything, the people who “aren’t racist” but just use racist tactics to get ahead should burn in a hotter circle of hell than the evil deluded fsckwits who still believe racist tropes. It’s like the difference between a rabid dog and someone who actively infects dogs with rabies and sets them on the public.

If you count Jewish men and women as white, this gets tricky on all sides, than you have another white group that overwhelmingly votes Democratic. Most Italian-Americans still trend Democratic even though other ethnic white groups have gone independent or even Republican.

  Also, if Karl Rove and his ilk are shameless enough to use racism to achieve raw political power than they should qualify as a racist. Racism is really a very vile thing and you really shouldn’t use to advance any goal even if it might be seen as a good goal.

Mike it’s not a distinction without a difference to me, because it’s important to remember what’s really dividing us; class.

In other words, would republicans suddenly start voting for social spending if they could be assured that only poor whites would get it?  fuck no!

The great transfer of wealth over the past 30 years, from bottom and middle to top, has taken place because our politicians are highly paid whores, owned, lock stock and barrel, by multinational corporations and none of the main players give a flying shit what color you are.  If poor and lower-middle class, and now, even middle class, whites ever woke up and understood one basic fact; they have more in common with poor, lower-middle, and middle class blacks and other minorities than they do with mitch fucking McConnel, or, God help us, Grover Norquist, what would happen?  A revolution.

They’re being taken for a ride.  Another hoax is this homophobia shit.  HAlf the republican leadership are in the closet themselves, or have close friends and family members who are gay.  They don’t hate gays.  They’re not afraid of gays.  They’re taking their supporters for a ride and laughing at them.

I don’t know, I think it’s important to expose them on these things.

@#7
It seems like that definition of a “true racist” is almos the opposite of the common parlance. Usually when someone prefaces a statement with “I am not a racist, but…” they mean “I am not a racist because I really, truly believe these racist things.”

Obviously both sentiments are dispacable.

What I’m saying is that the class war is being won by the elite because most white americans don’t even know they’re waging it.  If you get too bogged down on race, you are playing right into the diversionary tactics Rove, Norquist, and Roger Ailes are using.

Teri @13:

Hate your next door neighbor, but don’t forget to say grace.

Barry McGuire, Eve of Destruction

“When conservatives talk about lazy people on welfare, lazy people on unemployment, lazy people sucking up government health care? The faces they’re imagining are black.”

This is really no different from how conservatives talk about the “liberal media.”  As was noted in the discussion earlier today, the people they associate with said media have, you know, Jewish-sounding names.  Not necessarily any particular kind of people with Jewish-sounding names, mind you.  Just saying.

AnglScarlett, I have to really disagree here with racism and homophobia are only tools of the elites to screw everybody else. Its entirely to conspiratorial a theory and people aren’t that good at planning things that well. I agree that culture war issues are used to get people to vote against their interests but I also think there is a lot of genuine hatred among rich conservatives. I also do not think that lower and middle income racists and homophobes should be left off the hook that easily. There have been plenty of rich, middle, and lower income white heterosexuals that have refused to fall pray to racism and homophobia; so those that do really shouldn’t be let off the hook.

*Even though the majority of white people actually voted for McCain

The Democratic candidate for President has lost the white vote in every election since the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts.

Correct.  In addition, I think Barack Obama received more white votes than Kerry did four years prior.

The teabaggers and the RNC aren’t even being subtle at this point about their approach to the upcoming midterms… scare enough white people away from Obama and the Democrats to give them wingnuts huge victories.

Unfortunately, even though are demographics are becoming less and less white every year, it will still be very difficult to win the presidency without nearly 40% of the white vote on your side for the next few election cycles.  It’s unlikely that Obama’s 2012 bid will draw as many typical low turnout voters to the polls as 2008 did - the historic election has already happened.

Racial Background of the 2008 Electorate:
Non-Hispanic White 74%
Black 13%
Hispanic 9%
Asian 2%
Other 3%

Obama won 43% of the white vote in 2008.  Had all other figures remained the same, if you had shifted 5% of the white vote from Obama over to McCain, Obama would have lost the popular vote.  All of this means that Obama probably needs to be able to hang onto about 40% of the white vote in 2012, or it could be trouble.  And that means GOP efforts to defeat Obama will focus on getting 61% of the white electorate solidly on the side of the Republican Party.

The more bothersome thing about the figures above is that white people still control nearly 3/4 of the vote, even though they only made up 65% of the country (excluding white Hispanic and Latino Americans) in 2008.

My guess is that the reason why the electorate is disproportionately white is because even when Democrats are in power, a lot of people at the bottom of the wealth pool still aren’t having their concerns sufficiently addressed.  President Obama needs to understand that trying to be Super Bipartisan Man isn’t really helping him, and it’s leaving a lot of progressive voters incredibly frustrated, particularly black and brown voters.  The Sherrod debacle is just the latest example.  Absolutely the real blame for that racist bullshit goes to Andrew Scumbart and Fox News… but the White House screwed up by jumping when wingnut assholes yelled “Boo!”

President Obama didn’t start the feud with the Reichwing propaganda machine, unless you consider being black a legitimate excuse to oppose the president, in which case you are a racist.  But by taking their bait, he isn’t helping himself.  Of course, had Sherrod not been fired in the first place, the wingnuts would be screaming about the fact that the supposedly evil black “reverse racist” still had a job.  Had Obama and Vilsack remained steady and not rushed to judgment while waiting for more information to come in, Scumbart and FNC would have been viewed as solely responsible for the whole mess.

Even though his advisors would probably never suggest this, I think the smartest thing Obama could do at this point would be to completely shut out the lying conservative propagandists.  Revoke the WH press credentials for Fox News, and refuse all interview requests - including all members of the Administration - with those crapsacks.

Yes, it would cause a huge stir and Obama would get railed for it in the conservative press, but… so what?  Those people are not on Obama’s side, they have never been on his side, and they will never be on his side.  Aside from people studying it on an academic level, I don’t know a single regular viewer of FNC that voted for Obama or plan to vote for Obama in two years.  So what would Obama get?  Even louder hatred from people who always hated him to begin with.  And I don’t see why that’s a problem.

AnglScarlett: I am not sure why you are assuming that class warfare and racism are mutually exclusive when it comes to the economic elite.  Why assume the rich aren’t both racist AND classist and will happily exploit these sentiments in others if it achieves their own continued hegemony?  This is a both/and blog, after all.

I dunno, it seems to me you are crediting the rich as being less prone to racism (though, apparently, they have a greater willingness to perpetuate it in action) than the poor and making some pretty classist assumptions yourself.

Comment #7: AnglScarlett on 07/27 at 02:52 PM

In other words, is Karl Rove personaly racist?  Probably not.  But he’s eager to use the racism in many whites, to exploit it, even to fan and inflame it, to make it worse, in order to get people to vote against their own economic interests.

How is that not racist?

The targeting of black bureaucrats like Van Jones and Shirley Sherrod is about creating a narrative for the base . . .

My impression is that’s also happening to Charles Rangel. The complaints against him range from trivial to complete BS (naming a building after its biggest fundraiser is pretty much the norm in universities).

He’s not just black, he’s a very smart old guy from the Big Bad City (1)  I’m sure that to a certain Tea-bagger-esque segment, he’s the very picture of slick urban corruption.

Except . . . he’s not corrupt. There’s no high-pocket lobbying gig waiting for him once he quits Congress. And what the out-of-town shit-kickers think of as “slick” is what diligent people call “well-prepared.”

He is urban, though. I’ll give ‘em that.

_____
(1) I’ve seen him work a room, and you and I should be so sharp and look so good at his age.

Comment #16: AnglScarlett on 07/27 at 03:49 PM

Mike it’s not a distinction without a difference to me, because it’s important to remember what’s really dividing us; class.

I’m sorry I have to come down on you like this, but that statement really smacks of white privilege—a “colorless” universalization of whites’ experience of the class system.

In other words, would republicans suddenly start voting for social spending if they could be assured that only poor whites would get it?  fuck no!

But they’d still whip up the racial hysteria about blacks and illegals causing all of the poor whites’ problems, you know.  The cynical scapegoating of racial minorities that you attribute to them would still be a policy tool, to the extent that I follow your assumptions.

Here’s the thing with the “are they really racist” debate—it puts things on their terms.  It turns racism from an act into a feeling.  If someone doesn’t “feel” racist, then they don’t understand why it is racist for them to bitch and moan about the black welfare mother down the street who’s taking their tax dollars.

We need to stop making racism about how people feel and make it about how they act.  I don’t give a shit whether or not Karl Rove has racist feelings when he does racist things.  All I care about is that he does things that he knows will hurt people.  Whether he’s doing it out of racist feelings or political calculation, I don’t know and I don’t care.  The results are the same, and that’s what matters.

I’m sorry I have to come down on you like this, but that statement really smacks of white privilege—a “colorless” universalization of whites’ experience of the class system.

Look, our class system is built on race.  It is understood in our society that black people are lower-class and white people are middle-class or upper-class.  You cannot talk about race in this country without acknowledging that our class perceptions and our race perceptions are tied in together.

Let’s say you stand two people up on a stage together.  We’ll take Spike Lee and my best friend, who’s a blonde, blue-eyed white woman.  Ask a group of 100 people which of those two grew up poor in Detroit with parents who barely finished high school and which one grew up in a nice middle-class home with parents and grandparents who were college graduates.

I guarantee you that 99 of the people present would pick my white friend as the one from the nice middle-class home when in fact she’s the one who grew up poor in Detroit.  Because to most people her social class is obvious from her race, and so is Spike Lee’s, even though he’s the one whose grandparents were college graduates.

You can’t talk about race in this country without discussing the fact that race is our biggest class marker and certain class assumptions are made about people based on their race.

We need to stop making racism about how people feel and make it about how they act.

Exactly. Who the fuck cares what’s in Breitbart’s heart (assuming he has one). His actions are those of a sociopathic white supremacist.

“This Rove must be some sort of magician no?”

It doesn’t take magic or wizardry to make a Karl Rove, or a Lee Atwater, it just takes an utter absence of all human sympathy and respect for the rights of other people, who you see not as people at all but as tools you can use to achieve your objectives.  In other words, all you need to be is a soulless, evil, sociopath…

In other words, all you need to be is a soulless, evil, sociopath…

I really think that the guy you quoted on that knows all about being a soulless evil sociopath.

It doesn’t take magic or wizardry to make a Karl Rove, or a Lee Atwater,

To make a Knuterockne, all you need is a colon and a diet heavy on the fiber.

No, it’s just that Rahm Emmanuel knows that Obama governing in a way that makes blacks/hispanics/liberals happy would push his approval amongst white voters to around 10%.

So, Kind Water Ice thinks all whites are equally as racist as he is.

Hm, one troll or two? We won’t know unless Amanda posts the logs…

Is King Water Ice just Billy from FLA with a new account?

  In other words, is Karl Rove personaly racist?  Probably not.  But he’s eager to use the racism in many whites, to exploit it, even to fan and inflame it, to make it worse, in order to get people to vote against their own economic interests.

How is that not racist?

Because the motivation is cold hard profit rather than animus.

piator:

In other words, he’s not a racist, he’s a sociopath. Not that we didn’t already know that.

I am interested in why Amanda thought the Urban Blogosphere panel was a disaster.  When I heard that NN was having such a panel, I winced - it smacked, to me at least, as isolating POC bloggers from the rest of the NN panels.  Maybe somebody can address what happened?

In other words, he’s not a racist, he’s a sociopath.

Naturally - the perfect expression of politics-as-corporatism.  The same company can manufacture insecticide or Zyklon-B - which one depends entirely on profits.

So all the business people who seized the Jewish property stolen by the Nazis weren’t anti-Semites because they were motivated by personal gain rather than hatred? Or all the plantation owners who grew rich of the forced labor of millions of enslaved Black people weren’t racist? Just because there is a profit motive or something of material reward doesn’t change the fact that racism is racism.

Kathy, it’s not that.  I think panels that specifically talk about the concerns of people of color are great, as long as they’re not the only kinds of panels that have people of color on them.  (And I saw plenty of panels about things other than race that had people of color on them.)  It was just that most of the panelists weren’t political, either in their writing or in their stances on the panel, from what I heard.  At a political conference, that’s just not going to work.  But I saw another panel with a similar theme of promoting people of color in the blogosphere, and it was super.

So, Kind Water Ice thinks all whites are equally as racist as he is.

Most racists do.  That’s why one of the best ways to fight back against hate crimes, for instance, is to hold public vigils for the victims.  If racists see white people joining up with people of color to protest racism, they lose a lot of their internal rationalization for committing hate crimes.

I think that this discussion is misguided when it implicitly accepts the notion of being racist as an incredibly bad thing, worse than which there is hardly any crime worth mentioning. Almost all of us grew up in a racist society, and our attitudes (and to some extent our actions) are colored by that. For those of us whites who grew up in a mostly segregated society, our attitudes are colored by that, too. For those who grew up in regions where class and race map strongly onto each other, and so forth.

That’s the real reason why discussions of whether someone is a racist, or even whether they act in racist ways, are sometimes beside the point. Do they do good, or do they do evil? Do they use the racism that pervades our society for their own profit and to hurt others, or do they do their best to mitigate it?

Take out the 65+ group of whites, and Obama won the white vote. That’s all the Republicans have left outside the deep, interior south and the Mormon Trail—senior whites.

Or, just look at a teabagger protest sometime. Sure, you won’t find any non-white faces, but you won’t find anybody under 50, either.

George W. Bush is not a racist, neither is Karl Rove, neither is Dick Cheney. They’re despicable, evil people in too many ways to list, but they’re not racist.

Of course you’re not SUPPOSED to be racist!

Most Italian-Americans still trend Democratic even though other ethnic white groups have gone independent or even Republican. [Quote]

First Wave immigrants are solidly republican, second wave is split, third wave are largely still democratic.  Though this probably has more to do with their distance from their immigrant ancestors and level of economic advancement.  This whole argument is about selling white suburbanites who work in offices or independent retail situations. 

Something democrats need to work on is getting workplaces organized, repealing “right to work”, and actually dealing with racism head on.  The southern plan by Nixon has worked but sold out the republican party to the bigots.  This is the culmination of that effort.

To the person who said it was 2 and a half generations: Look at the age split.  Roughly the generation who grew up as children with an accepted belief in civil rights are voting democratic.  The fact that the elderly are living much longer is skewing those numbers.  In the 1960s when that statement was made the elderly were 65 and dying at 72.  Now the life expectancy average is closing in on 80 and realistically people are living into their 90s.  So the same people who were racist in 1964 are still alive and voting dixiecrat.

Comment #48: Xeranar  on  07/27  at  10:31 PM

Lonnie, No one is arguing that the dip-shits in the NBPP aren’t racists—they most certainly are. The reason this isn’t being prosecuted is that they did not actually discourage voter turnout—they pulled their shenanigans in a precinct that is like 95% black. Not a single white voter has come forward and complained of being intimidated at the polls. Simply being a racist prick isn’t against the law, but systematic voter suppression is, and there is no evidence of systematic suppression of white voters.

It isn’t awesome, but they were just ineffective morons. There weren’t white voters to intimidate to speak of in that precinct. It was actually the Bush administration that decided not to pursue it as a criminal case, but to refer it to civil courts.

There is a pretty good article in the post about the case.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/14/AR2010071405880.html

True, standing in front of poll places with billy clubs saying ‘you’d better vote for Obama’ is no big deal.

Actually, you have it backwards—the NBBP thinks that Obama is a sellout to whitey, so they were there to try and intimidate people to not vote for him and to vote for John McCain instead.

Look up the complaint sometime.  It will cause your tiny little head to explode when you realize that two black men were trying to intimidate people into voting for the white guy.

Take out the 65+ group of whites, and Obama won the white vote.

It would be awesome if that were actually true, but unfortunately it’s not…

CNN Exit Poll Data indicate that 74% of the 2008 electorate was white.  The figures in parentheses next to each subgroup indicate what percentage each group represented out of the entire electorate, not just within the white vote:

White, All Ages (74% of total vote) - 95,790,000 votes
Obama 43% - 41,190,000
McCain 55% - 52,685,000

White, 18-29 (11% of total vote) - 14,239,000 votes
Obama 54% - 7,689,000
McCain 44% - 6,265,000

White, 30-44 (20% of total vote) - 25,889,000 votes
Obama 41% - 10,615,000
McCain 57% - 14,757,000

White, 45-64 (30% of total vote) - 38,834,000 votes
Obama 42% - 16,310,000
McCain 56% - 21,747,000

White, 65+ (13% of total vote) - 16,828,000 votes
Obama 40% - 6,731,000
McCain 58% - 9,760,000

———————————————————————————————————————————————-

White, 18-64 (61% of total vote) - 78,962,000 votes
Obama 44% - 34,614,000
McCain 54% - 42,769,000

White, 18-44 (31% of total vote) - 40,128,000 votes
Obama 46% - 18,304,000
McCain 52% - 21,022,000

The only age group that Obama won among white voters was the 18-29 group. Once you start including white voters 30 and older, the numbers quickly move in McCain’s direction.

These Republicans are really dumb. Don’t they know only white people can be racists…

Oh joy, more white racial resentment. And more crackers refusing to deal with the fact that race in America is incomprehensible outside the context of white supremacy.  Until you can deal with that, fuck off.

One other point - I don’t have demographic data that breaks ages down even further, so it’s plausible that Obama won the white vote among 18-35 white voters.  But once you expand it out to 18-44 white voters, McCain finishes on top.  Obviously expanding that to include an even bigger group of white voters 45 and older shifts the results even more in McCain’s favor.

What is kind of surprising is that Obama did better among Baby Boomer white voters than he did among Generation X white voters.

If you are so confident that white people are as “anti racist” as you then why all the hang wringing about the GOP using a race baiting strategy?

So, you approve of white supremacy.

White racial identity is one of the worst things humanity has produced.

MAJeff:

Especially since it’s so nonsensical. You can’t keep trying to redefine something so it includes one of two genetically similar groups and not another.

Regarding the New Black Panthers in Philadelphia, I take issue with referring to them as “racists”.

You can reasonably say that they are anti-white bigots, but I don’t think you can call them racists.  And the reason they cannot be called “racists” is because thus far, African-Americans have not had the institutional power to actually be racists in America.  Minority races cannot be racists.  And that isn’t saying that minorities are incapable of race-based bigotry and prejudice, but to practice racism, one must belong to the dominant race in a culture.  If African-Americans ever make up 65% of America and non-Hispanic whites shrink to only 13%, and African-Americans have seized power to the same degree that white Americans have always had, then, and only then, it would be possible for such a thing as “black racism” to exist.

I understand why people struggle with that framing, especially when there are idiotic black people yelling about “killing cracker babies”, but racism and racial bigotry are not precisely the same thing.

Anybody can be a bigot, and anyone can exhibit race-based prejudice.  And I agree that regardless of the source, hatred of others based simply on their skin color is never a good thing, and it generally reflects a character flaw in the individual behaving in such a way.

But I don’t like what seems to be caving in to rightwing framing on this topic.  Wingnuts love to point to people like NBPP members and call them racists, and then subtly dare you to challenge that contention.  It’s a trap, because the only answer they’ll accept is that “black people are just as capable as white people of being racist”.  And if you give in to that trap, it’s not too long after that they’ll shift the debate even further, and start claiming that most racism in the world today is caused by black people, not white people.

Bullshit.

If somebody asks me my opinion of the behavior of the NBPP member yelling about “crackers”, I’d say that his dialogue is offensive, unhelpful, and an indication that he has some serious race-based bigotry going on.  If you want to call people who act like that prejudiced, I’ll agree with you.  If you wanna call them bigots, I’ll agree with you.  If you want to tell me that their rhetoric divides us more than it unites us, I’ll agree with you.  And if you want to tell me that their tactics are generally counterproductive to achieving real racial equality, I’ll agree with you.  But I would not agree to calling him or them “racists”.

And while I’ll reiterate my belief that incendiary language condemning an entire race is unhelpful regardless of what race the person using the language is, and what race the language is directed towards, I believe that black people as a a group have far more justification for demonstrating hostility to white people than vice-versa.  Again, I’m not arguing in favor of such hostility, but pointing out that the motivations behind racial animus are drastically different, depending on the race of the person expressing such hostility.

By the way, not that I expect to get into it with any racist trolls here, but in case you are wondering, I’ve been the victim of a crime that was most likely race-based.  I was jumped by a large group of older black teenagers on a playground right after the Rodney King beating had been televised all over the news in March 1991.  I say the attack was “most likely” race-based because I heard one of my attackers yell, “We gonna do all y’all like you did Rodney King, honky” as an aluminum baseball bat whizzed inches away from cracking my skull when I was getting the hell out of there.  So please don’t tell me that I don’t understand what it feels like to be victimized by African-American bigots who wanted to harm whitey.  I’m not proud of it, but I reacted to that traumatic event by becoming a pretty racist asshole for a few years afterwards.  It wasn’t until college that I truly learned that while it was wrong for that group of black kids to single me out for attack because I was white, and my feelings of anger toward them were justified, I was only continuing the ugly cycle by blaming the disgusting behavior of a dozen black kids on all African-Americans everywhere… that I was acting every bit as prejudiced against black people as I felt my black attackers were against white people.

But back to the original point… no, black people cannot be racists.  They can be hatefull bigots against white people, but they cannot be racists, because practicing racism requires being part of the culturally dominant race - something only white people have been in this land since 1492.

Oh, and King Water Ice, I’m sure I’m not the first to say this, but please go fuck yourself, you inbred racist pile of dog shit.

You are not welcome here, nor is your vile racist nonsense.

By the way, fellow cracker… by 2050, less than 50% of this country will look like you or me.

That is all.

Amanda, please ban this festering shitstain on humanity.

<quote>But we’re the majority.</quote>

That’s only if you define white as the Census Bureau does, which happens to include many people that <strike>white supremacists</strike> Republicans would not classify as such.  Once you factor out Hispanics and white Americans with some Black African ancestry, the remainder is certainly not a majority.  People who claim Muslim or Jewish race are also, of course, white according to the Census Bureau, and those groups certainly are not accepted by your average <strike>racist</strike> Conservative.

Not like whether or not you are the majority has anything to do with whether or not your racist political strategies are moral or even necessarily that pragmatic.  It just really bothers me how Conservatives throw around words like majority and minority depending on how sadistic or victimy they are feeling at that particular point in time and not on crazy heathen ideas like actual numbers and demographics.

By 2050, there will be many, many, many people who are part Non-hispanic white and part Latino. Many of these people will identify themselves as white, and the definition will eventually expand to include all “sufficiently” white-appearing Latinos.

That’s the real reason why discussions of whether someone is a racist, or even whether they act in racist ways, are sometimes beside the point. Do they do good, or do they do evil? Do they use the racism that pervades our society for their own profit and to hurt others, or do they do their best to mitigate it?

Sure they’re beside the point.  To people who don’t want to talk about how this country still has a race problem.  But this country DOES have a race problem.  And every time we pretend that a lawmaker who supports racist policies isn’t really a racist, but just a giant asshole, we give cover to racists.  Being a giant asshole is almost respected in this country, because giant assholes “tell hard truths” and “stand up to the scourge of political correctness” or whatever.  But racists—oh my oh my.  When you call them out for what they are, oh how they scurry to defend themselves.  Because they know that their soft underbelly has been exposed.

These lawmakers who support racist policies for reasons of profit or political expediency or whatever—how is that not racist?  Tell me, how else would you describe a person who is willing to throw a racial group under the bus for profit but a racist?  Who but a racist would go out of their way to harm a racial group for profit?  When that lawmaker is sitting there making his decision to cynically exploit racism in order to get more white votes, do you think he’s thinking happy thoughts about blacks and hispanics?  Or do you think he’s thinking that they just don’t fucking matter, that the harm his actions do don’t fucking matter. 

If I’m a duck hunter, and I think the best strategy is to recruit a bunch of kids to feed ducks in a public park and then I shoot them dead, kids, ducks and all, I’m not a fucking avid sportsman.  I’m a murderer.

If you’re a politician and your strategy for getting elected is to fuck over black people so white racists vote for you, you’re a goddamn racist.

That’s how the racial classification system actually works in Latin America, that’s how it’s happened in the U.S. with other non-black, non-Asian groups that were once deemed non-white in the past, and those people will be accepted as white and bear the flag of “white interests” in the U.S., just as the Irish and Italians did, and perhaps with similar “there’s no zealot like a convert” fervor… and unlike Arab-Americans, they’d exist in numbers large enough to successfully resist “getting their ticket pulled”.

One last thing… unless another Democrat challenges President Obama in the primaries in 2012, the historical odds say that he’ll most likely be re-elected.  Conversely, if Obama is primaried, the historical odds say that a Republican will probably become our 45th POTUS in January 2013.

Every incumbent president in the last 60 years that ran unopposed in his own party went on to be re-elected in the general election.  On every occasion in that timespan in which sitting presidents were challenged by party rivals, the general election went to the nominee from the non-incumbent party (1968, 1976, 1980, 1988).  The only person to ever successfully challenge a sitting president from his own party and go on to win the presidency was James Buchanan, who ousted first-term President Franklin Pierce for the Democratic Party nomination.  Buchanan then went on to become one of the worst presidents in American history, largely responsible for leading the nation into a war against itself.  Fortunately, the nation replaced Buchanan after one term with the person most often considered our greatest president, Abraham Lincoln.

And no, despite Dick Morris’ creepy predictions, Hillary Clinton is not going to primary Obama in 2012, because she’s smart enough to know that nothing good could come of that, either for herself or her party.  If she did primary Obama, the only thing it would accomplish is handing the White House to the GOP.  But I won’t be too surprised if the 2012 Democratic Party ticket winds up being Obama-Clinton, putting her in a great spot to launch a 2016 campaign, if that’s what she wants.

On every occasion in that timespan in which sitting presidents were challenged by party rivals, the general election went to the nominee from the non-incumbent party (1968, 1976, 1980, 1988).

Oh, dear.  You may need to look up the results of the 1988 election again, because unfortunately you have a fatal flaw right in the middle of your theory.  I think you meant 1992, not 1988.

Amanda, please ban this festering shitstain on humanity.

I haven’t seen him violate the stick rule yet, have you?

Minority races cannot be racists.

No, they can be. 

And that isn’t saying that minorities are incapable of race-based bigotry and prejudice, but to practice racism, one must belong to the dominant race in a culture.

And that line proves my point.

If African-Americans ever make up 65% of America and non-Hispanic whites shrink to only 13%, and African-Americans have seized power to the same degree that white Americans have always had, then, and only then, it would be possible for such a thing as “black racism” to exist.

Largely under that rule only whites in office or in control of corporations would be racist.  Your average teabagger or KKK member wouldn’t be racist then since they have no real control even within the racial majority.  Institutional racism is worse than personal racism but personal racism is the physical embodiment to racism.  Institutional racism is where the racism is practically indistinguishable from the reality we live in and act in. 

To illustrate:  The people who consciously red-line neighborhoods are racists.  The people who follow prescribed procedures that red-line neighborhoods may in fact NOT be racists explicitly but are acting in the name of racism. 

Essentially the argument that black or any other racial minority cannot be racist is laughable.  Once you start believing that you excuse the bigotry of all racial minorities simply because they are minorities.  Neither can be excused for bigotry, I’m more inclined to see a minority who lashes out at whites as a prescribed institutionalized instinct but it all comes from the same basic core feelings.  None of which can be found acceptable. 

But I don’t like what seems to be caving in to rightwing framing on this topic.

Arguably I can agree that rightwingers desperately want to paint minorities as racists to alleviate the strain of whites as racists but I can’t see why we can’t agree to place both in the same group and focus specifically on whites and the institutional racism while discussing the outside implications of racial minorities firing back.

My favorite description of Karl Rove was from The Beast, in one of their “Most Loathsome People in America” lists:

“Rove is decidedly not a genius; he is simply missing the part of his soul that prevents the rest of us from kicking elderly women in the face.”

That’s only if you define white as the Census Bureau does, which happens to include many people that white supremacists Republicans would not classify as such.  Once you factor out Hispanics and white Americans with some Black African ancestry, the remainder is certainly not a majority.

2008 U.S. population statistics:

White, including white Hispanics - 75.0% (228.2MM)
White, excluding white Hispanics - 65.4% (198.9MM)
Hispanic ethnicity, all races - 15.4% (46.9MM)
Black or African-American alone - 12.4% (37.6MM)
Asian alone - 4.4% (13.4MM)
American Indian or Alaska Native alone - 0.8% (2.4MM)
Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander alone - 0.14% (0.43MM)

Granted, that’s based on U.S. Census Bureau data, which generally under represents minority groups, but even adjusting for that, America is still a very white country, to the extent that close to two out of every three Americans look like typical white people.

There are nearly 30 Million white Hispanics in America, including many famous people whose Hispanic ethnicity isn’t often recognized:  Martin Sheen, Ted Williams, Alexis Bledel, Rita Hayworth, Jerry Garcia, Raquel Welch, Cameron Diaz, Andy Garcia, and Linda Ronstadt.

I knew that Martin Sheen and his d-bag son Charlie Sheen were both Hispanic, and that Emilio Estévez was the famous family member who kept his birth name.  Martin Sheen was born Ramón Antonio Gerard Estévez, and Charlie Sheen was born Carlos Irwin Estévez.  Some of the other people on that list were a bit obvious due to their last names.

What I didn’t know until ten minutes ago was that the Splendid Splinter, Teddy Williams, one of the greatest hitters in baseball history, had Mexican ancestry from his mother’s side of the family.

Oh, dear.  You may need to look up the results of the 1988 election again, because unfortunately you have a fatal flaw right in the middle of your theory.  I think you meant 1992, not 1988.

I did mean 1992.  I was thinking George H.W. Bush, and the first election that came to mind was 1988, which he won by a fairly large margin.  In 1992, Pat Buchanan challenged him in a primary, and though Bush still won the nomination pretty convincingly, he was damaged goods heading into the fall of 1992.

1968 was slightly different, because LBJ dropped out in March 1968, right after the New Hampshire Primaries and Bobby Kennedy’s entrance into the race, when it became clear to LBJ that he was going to lose the nomination.  And eight months later, Americans put Nixon in the White House.  DOH!

And eight months later, Americans put Nixon in the White House.  DOH!

Well, how much of that had to do with Bobby Kennedy getting shot, though? I’m re-reading Fear & Loathing On The Campaign Trail, ‘72 and the impression I get is that once RFK was out of the picture and the whole mess in Chicago happened, there wasn’t really any chance the Democrats could motivate anyone and were willing to take the loss. McGovern was a bland candidate with little support. Almost like they were willing to take the loss in order to let whoever come next deal with a major clusterfuck like Vietnam. And we really haven’t recovered since then.

@MurrowFan

First of all, I have no idea how “white” any of those people reported as white to the Census Bureau look because that is pretty subjective, and IM(limited)E, the more racist a person is, the more likely they are to define white narrowly.

White, non-Hispanic as a Census demographic is not made up of the somewhat traditional racist definition of white: German, English, Irish, Russian, Italian, Polish, French, Scottish, Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish, Scotch-Irish, and Welsh Americans make up about half of white Americans (so only about 1/3 of the country).  White, according to the Census Bureau, includes those of Middle Eastern and North African descent.  Personally, I think the Republican party has made it pretty clear that they do not consider that to be white in the “good white patriotic Christian Republican/Teabagger men (and maybe women) vs. the evil Other out to destroy all that our nation holds dear” conflict.

So, basically, my point was that whites are only the majority if you look at racial demographics in a relatively non-racist way.  The more racist you are, the less likely it is for your “white race” to be the majority.

Arguably I can agree that rightwingers desperately want to paint minorities as racists to alleviate the strain of whites as racists but I can’t see why we can’t agree to place both in the same group and focus specifically on whites and the institutional racism while discussing the outside implications of racial minorities firing back.

Do you know the full backstory to the New Black Panther incident in Philadelphia?

If you only watched Fox News (which I assume you don’t), you would probably have the impression that what happened there was an exact replica of the voter intimidation tactics used by Klansmen against black voters in the 1950s and 1960s.

But that wasn’t what happened.  Two African-American men who belong to the New Black Panther Party, a group so powerful that it has had as many as 15 or 20 members at one time, stood outside the doors of a community center being used as a polling place in one of the most heavily African-American neighborhoods in Philadelphia.  They weren’t intimidating hordes of white people away from voting, because there weren’t very many white people who voted at that polling place.  And of those who may have voted there, no one has stepped forward to accuse the two NBPP members of intimidating them that day.

I think what those two guys did was pretty stupid, and possibly even illegal (insofar as one of them had a baton), but it was not what Fox News wanted you to believe happened that day.  The KKK in 2010 is virtually a non-entity in political power compared to the sort of political power it wielded 40 or 50 years ago, and yet I have no doubt that the current KKK still wields more actual influence than the NBPP or the two clowns in the video.  Fox desperately wants white America to believe that they are under siege by tyrannical black forces ready to exact a revenge on them for past wrongs.  Notice how four of the biggest anti-Obama “stories” FNC pimped in the last year - Van Jones, ACORN, NBPP, and Shirley Sherrod - all involve black people?  Do you think that’s a coincidence?

If the rightwing succeeds in framing the totality of race-based offenses of African-Americans against white people as being equivalent to the totality of race-based offenses of whites againt African-Americans, then they will have already won the battle.  Because once progressives cave in on that, it won’t take much more for the wingnuts to push the agenda back to the racial policies of the early 20th Century, when being openly racist was acceptable.

I am not debating whether or not it is wrong for a black person to intentionally harm a white person simply because of the white person’s race.  Yes, that is obviously wrong, not just because of the act, but also because of the motivation behind the act.  Yes, that is just as wrong as it would be if the roles of both people were flipped.  If I had a black friend who beat up white kids just because they were white, I would no longer be friends with him.

Racism has an institutional context to it.  And while any black person or even a group of black people can cause harm to a white person or white people based simply on racial hatred, they cannot really invoke the sort of institutional racism that they typically face throughout their entire lives.

Think about this for a moment… if a 17 year old black kid runs into a 7-11 wearing a ski mask, points a gun at the cashier, and then bolts out of the store after getting the money, with no physical harm being done to the cashier or anybody else who may be in the store, the kid is gonna still face some pretty severe charges and most likely will spend a number of years in prison.  And the media will likely depict him as a “violent thug”, even if he didn’t harm a single hair on anybody who was in the store, even if he had never been convicted of a violent crime before the robbery.  I’m not going to argue that we shouldn’t prosecute such cases, because regardless of how you look at it, the kid definitely committed a crime.

What troubles me, however, is the knowledge that many insanely wealthy middle aged and older white men just pointed a psychological gun at the U.S. Treasury, demanded we fork over the money or everything would go to hell, and walked away without having spent a single day in a jail cell, many of them even wealthier in 2010 than they were in 2008.

But because of institutional racism, it’s much easier to depict the desperate young black kid who just held up a C-store for $163.85 as the bigger threat to society than the billionaire Wall Street crook who helped to fleece our country of hundreds of billions of dollars.

THAT is why so-called “black racism” can never be equated to white racism.

Am I crazy, or did those two black men from the NBPP claim that they were there to make sure no black were turned away from the polls?  This was during the Bush years when voter suppression was wide-spread and highly successfull.  Did they actually call people names and threaten them?  I remember this story from back then and I do not remember that being reported, at least initially.

Anyway, as I mentioned, institionalized suppression of the black vote was widespread during the bush years - it’s how he got close enough to be able to be appointed President by the Supreme Court in the first place.

The fact that a bunch of whiny white losers are here, years later, crying about these couple of black guys really showcases their deep racism and fear.

Goerge Will?  bwahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I keep forgetting that in the post-Civil Rights era, discrimination against people of color is no longer a problem, and that the situation has turned so dramatically that white folks have it the hardest:

http://asanet.org/images/journals/docs/pdf/asr/Oct09ASRFeature.pdf

Just like the contemporary world is set up against men and heterosexuals.  Conservaworld is a fascinating place, filled with delusional and evil people.

So, Kathleen Harris and the purge of voter roles in Florida never took place. But, ACORN reporting spoiled voter applications is proof of a massive voter fraud attempt by black folks. Do I have that right, Lonnie?

White people are apparently the victims of the system of race in America, which is kind of amazing when you think about it. In 50 years, we’ve not only overturned the institutions, practices, and beliefs of white supremacy that developed over the previous four centuries, we’ve inverted them for such that a Black overclass is institutionalizing the oppression of white folk…with the help of Teh Joos, of course.

TeaBagger world is a fascinating place.

#80

lonnie, George Will cuts no ice with us.

THAT is why so-called “black racism” can never be equated to white racism.

What you’re trying to say (at least from what I have read in reply) is that you mean they’re not equal in magnitude.  Which is absolutely true.  I think you took your original metaphor a step too far by claiming due to magnitude the minority group couldn’t be racist.  I’m agreeing with you and I think I just wanted a more particular explanation since your wording left the situation in a place that was bound to cause confusion. 

I understand the exact situation with local & national media where they paint black crimes as more heinous, usually throw up the picture of perpetrators first if they’re black and whites later if they’re not.  The institutional attitudes that the media needs to create “stories” instead of simply reporting like a police blotter on these issues that drive the issue into racism & sexism. 

I read the story of what was going on, I wasn’t explicitly stating anything about the NBPP case, I was more so making a generalized statement about how reactionary racism from minorities is more understandable but equally offensive (even if it cannot be carried out in magnitude) simply because it continues the cycle.  I as a white male I broke the cycle for myself, I can’t stop others, but I can hope we as individuals can fight the institutional attitudes and think before we do.

“He’s not a burglar—he just breaks into houses to steal people’s stuff.”

Catfood, this comes very close to my take on the phenomenon of people saying, “I’m not a racist—I don’t own a white hood OR a swastika armband, so obviously I’m not a racist”, which is that it’s like saying, “I’m not a burglar—I’m not wearing a striped shirt OR a domino mask!”

Or, “There is no smoking gun—now excuse me while I wash this blood off my knife.”

White guilt is the constant paranoia stemming from the belief that blacks are plotting revenge en masse for generations of maltreatment, somehow, whether it’s through a reign of terror through carjacking, corruption of your youth with their dysfunctional culture, not smiling at you in the street, impregnating your fair maidens, mass welfare fraud, lowering your property values, talking during your movies, instituting communisms… it’s all part of the plan to get white people back for slavery and Jim Crow!!

How is that not white guilt?

*headdesk*

MF @22:
The percentage of “white non-hispanic” is higher in the older demographics than in the younger and older populations still voted at a higher rate.  That will through another wrinkle into those stats your finding troubling.