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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsI hear people saying we shouldn't talk about racism because the GOP is using racism as a tool
The argument is that talking about racism divides us, and that is just what the Republican Party wants.
But I don't understand why the response to knowing the GOP is using racism as a tool isn't to fight racism even harder. The GOP as it is today can't exist without racism. Fighting racism = fighting the Republican Party.
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sharedvalues
(6,916 posts)We should definitely talk about racism. Because racism is a big problem in America.
But we should be careful who we blame. We need to be clear that the Republican Party has been amplifying racism in America for forty years. And that the GOP propaganda machine - Fox, Limbaugh, Sinclair, Breitbart, etc. - INTENTIONALLY AMPLIFIES racism to get votes for GOP billionaires.
This is not a black vs. white issue. This is a black-and-white-progressive vs GOP-and-white-racist issue.
The GOP wants to make the race debate about black vs. white. They want to divide black people from their Democrat progressive white allies. We cannot let them do this.
The GOP is the party of racism. We can't forget this.
gollygee
(22,336 posts)I disagree with that. Fighting racism overall helps the Democratic Party, but that doesn't mean we should ignore it based on where it comes from.
sharedvalues
(6,916 posts)Remember, the Republican Party - the PARTY - intentionally amplifies racism to get votes.
We should hold the party structure to a much much much higher standard than any single person. Racist individuals need to be addressed - though far more Republicans are racist than Dems.
But when you have racist ORGANIZATIONS, that corrupts our society. Especially when they are a political party or an arm of the party like the NRA.
The fastest way to improve race relations in the US is to stop the Republicans from using race as an identity politics hate issue to get votes.
ProudMNDemocrat
(16,784 posts)As long as there are peoples who are not White Anglo Saxon Protestants .
Democrats will be wise to remind us that true Civil Rights for all is still a dream worth fighting for.
Civic Justice
(870 posts)and even among the poorest to the everyday working people, to the wealthy, do not want to give up white privilege.
They see giving up such a privilege as being "discrimination" against white people. Because they've enjoyed the fruits and flavors of white privilege their whole life. Many peoples self identity is connected not only to white privilege, but to the elitist concepts of being "better than" which is deeply embedded within it. Equality for them is considered as "discrimination" against their want and desire of having and maintaining such a privilege.
When the Police stop white people, its generally with an assumption of them being non-violent, and non-criminal, so they are accorded with respect as person. It's how so many white criminal are able to skirt by, undetected, because they are first categorized as being non-suspect. If they look like they have money, they are even given more leeway, because they are considered the premier being of society, because they measure so much of people by monetary concepts.
In this site, if one discuss racism... the post will be buried as quick as they can bury it and as deep as they can bury it. It's the same with many matters in society... because the ideals they choose is based on avoiding the raw truths of many things, unless it is a truth that concerns "non-white" and then they embellish it to the point of disgust and contempt.
One has to go back 100's of years to see how and why this exist, but they are not of any will or want to look back that far.. many won't even look back as far as the early 1960's and the white rage and general social conduct of white people and their overt and direct violence against and upon minorities.
The GOP is interested in creating 'POLICY" that promotes the racism they live within their hearts and minds.. and they figure that if it 'damages a few poor whites", that is nothing more to them than "acceptable collateral damage" in the process to promote policy that supports white privilege and the idea of being "better than".
They detest in various form and various levels, the expressed intellect of and by any minority who is informed in and about things they are not.
Equality is only a concern as long as it does not infringe upon the inherently groomed in cultural premise of white privilege and the idea of them being better than.
Many times this is seen less in white women and white men, who engage in Inter-racial relationship, they find means to see the heart of people as person, without the want to have special privilege and ideals of being better than. Its often times seen less as a concern in white female and white male musicians who indulge in multi-ethnic and multi-cultural music. Sadly, in many professions "white privilege and ideal of better than, is a basis they are not willing to relinquish, even in situations where they know the non white person may be higher skilled and have gained more in-depth knowledge.
In many areas within America society, if white people don't get the basis of white privilege, they will claim they are discriminated against, because they did not get first right of refusal.
But it goes further... In Jobs, that become predominantly minority based, which may previously have been white dominated; it is certain, once those jobs become predominantly minority populated, the "pay will become stagnant and will not rise and certainly will remain behind the progressive scales of the same type of work done in a white dominated work environment. This is OVERT in many municipal jobs, be it , city, country, parish, or state. When these jobs were progressive with pay, when they were "white dominated".
Unfortunately, white people don't understand, that when such things are done, it also damages white people and keep their wages low in a great many other categories.
MLK...tried to explain this to white people in the 1960's. Their racist anguish was so high, they could not listen and certainly were resistant to hear.
White women used much of the things spoken by MLK, as being included in the framework of their march for equality, as they came to realize they were considered for centuries and decades as possessions, not the same as the raw concept of property, as blacks were considered, but they were considered as a "possession", with benefits that had access to his social, and monetary holdings, they were free to move about, as long as they did not forget the framework of possession they were beholding to uphold.
Most of such things, white people do no care to acknowledge and certainly not to discuss, because it reshaped the concepts of their ancestry, but it also disturbs the groomed in ideals they were raised and taught to cultivate for future generations.
When President Obama spoke of "Change", just the mere concept shook some white people to their core, because they knew it meant addressing changes they were not willing to make.
Therefore, when Trump came along and promoted the MAGA, they immediately saw that as a framework to return to the ways of the 1900 to the early 1960's pre-Civil Rights Act of 1964. As an aspiring aim at recreating white dominance, and asserting white privilege overtly and covertly without any concern of push back against such. They don't care if some of the poor whites loose benefits, they care that the promotion of "white privilege is reinvigorated and promoted, and white dominance can find its means to dominate.
They don't care that white men stole inventions and ideals from minorities and people around the globe who were non white, they care to make claim and ignore such theft, as long as it promotes the ideal of white superiority, even when they know its fiction and fantasy... they care more that the promotion of such, give them the drive to push and support and promote an ongoing of white privilege.
Today, they are highly agitated at the progress of minorities in America, and certainly at foreign non white nations, that are no longer pandering to them, and no longer is submissive unto them. They will make ways for black women far more than they will get out of the way of black men, because they feel, she is a woman, and is not equal to a white man, and she is controllable. They will pay her, because in doing so, it makes her less likely to want to bond with black men, who do not have the same opportunity and economic income that she has. There are many tools in the "Divide and Conquer" chest of trick and plans that have been cultivated and perfected over 100's of years.
In the whole of it, the whole thing of "white privilege and the idea of "better than", brings America down lower and lower as a nation and sets back society more and more every decade...
Democracy can only flourish in being Democracy, when "Equality" is among its Highest Values and Practices.
(To the OP- expect this Thread to vanish quickly)
How they have used the bible in twisted means, to promote negativity that is driven to spread poverty among the minorities and dire poor whites. They use labels of sluggard and other degrading terms and create situations where its difficult for people to use good judgment to prosper themselves... this ... ensure Poverty'd expansion.
I went past the field of the sluggard, past the vineyard of the man who lacks judgment; thorns had come up everywhere, the ground was covered with weeds, and the stone wall was in ruins. I applied my heart to what I observed and learned a lesson from what I saw: A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest -- and poverty will come on you like a bandit and scarcity like an armed man. " ))
hedda_foil
(16,373 posts)
Civic Justice
(870 posts)hedda_foil
(16,373 posts)gollygee
(22,336 posts)bettyellen
(47,209 posts)
renegade000
(2,301 posts)Point out that divisive rhetoric is a tool the wealthy and powerful use to distract ordinary people from the fact their pockets are being picked...
