(12-19-2017 12:09 PM)Fitbud Wrote: Quote:First, Lee Atwater's comments were made before most people on this board were born
That is irrelevant. My point is that the GOP pander to the racists in this country. Therefore, a significant percentage of Republicans are racist.
Complete BS.
1) Your evidence doesn't support your claim. The evidence isn't remotely current and doesn't accurately describe Atwater's comments.
2) The GOP TODAY doesn't pander to racists any more than the Democrats do. The only difference is 'which' race(s) they represent or are against.
3) The term 'significant percentage' is also merely demonstrating your own form of discrimination in painting 'significant percentages' of a party with the stench of a demonstrably small percentage of them. Hint... elections these days are won by very small percentages. Trump won in no small part because Democrats behaved in a racist manner and presumed that Hispanics were racists and women were sexists... with Trump doing better with those groups than they estimated in some states where that made up the margin of victory.
I'll submit that the right is as interested in those racist white votes as the left is in those racist black and Hispanic votes, but NEITHER side is interested enough in them to piss off the middle.
Quote:Second, I lived in Metro DC when he made that comment, and the comments have been repeatedly taken out of context since then. Of course, now that he's been dead for what must be coming up on 30 years, neither he nor many people present can (without dissent) refute the distortions of what he meant so it's been fair game.... hence why you bring it up
Okay then. Let's just read his comments in context. You tell me what he meant to say when he said this...........
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First, let's talk about context. Context by definition is far more than just what was said before and after... it was the time in which the questions were asked and the environment at the time. At the time, people were acknowledging the racism that took place before, and how the parties had turned from it. The left wasn't significantly more removed from the same racism. JFK was really the first to meaningfully move from it, and still large parts of the Democratic Party strongly embraced racism. Remember that Strom Thurmond was a Democrat until 1964 and opposed the CRA of 1957, 64 and 65... and Thurmond, like many others at the time defected from JFK's party.... so the racism comment 'worked' at the time.... but by 1968, you can't do that anymore. Even Thurmond appointed ONE OF the first African Americans to his staff in 1971 and in 1983, supported MLK day. To mimic Hillary on the issue, he (and the party) had 'evolved' on the issue.... because racism didn't work. It was NOT some conversation that we would have today where one party was calling the other 'racist' and the other was defending itself from the charge. 'What this is' is someone speaking to a student of political science trying to describe the evolution of a process in hindsight... and not a 'plan' for 1980 when he lead Reagan's team. You're trying to turn it into an 'action plan' when it was clearly a 'review'. As an action plan, racism stopped working in the late 1960's, even to Republicans. The economy and cutting spending still worked with them, and he acknowledged that this might subconsciously appeal to some racists (even though a strong economy helps the poor more than a weak one does)... You must similarly admit that a party that focuses on things like 'improving the lives of one race of people' would ALSO appeal to racists, just in the other direction. You seem to admit this.
I'll edit it to be clear....
"Atwater: YBy 1968 you can't say "******"—that hurts you. Backfires.'
Why would it backfire with racists? It obviously wouldn't. Why would it backfire with people who merely didn't CARE about racial issues? Hint again, it wouldn't.
Quote: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 "******, ******"."
This seems pretty clear. They've focused on TOTALLY ECONOMIC THINGS... which by definition are not racist at all, NOR are they inappropriate for a limited (republican) government to focus on. It's acknowledging an OPINION that a BYPRODUCT of focusing on TOTALLY ECONOMIC THINGS could be that blacks get hurt worse than whites, and then he is acknowledging that there may be some for whom this is important.... but it is in no way the focus of the party. The focus of the party is on totally economic things.... and if they're focusing on totally economic things (which is unarguably something the government should focus on) then they have gotten away from Wallace's focus on race and racism.
THAT"S NOT RACISM any more than a party that focuses on say Global Warming is doing it with the INTENTION of putting people out of work. Since the unemployment rate is higher in minorities than whites (especially at the time), whites get hurt worse than blacks when that happens.
He's talking about the party evolving from one that focused on racism to one that focused on totally economic things. If some people remained in the party because a BYPRODUCT of focusing on the economy is that blacks get hurt more than whites, then so be it. It completely ignores that by focusing on the economy and GROWING the economy, this lessening unemployment (something that undeniably happened under Reagan) that blacks are HELPED more than whites... Also note that the wealth disparity SHRANK under Reagan, which again, unarguably HELPED blacks more than whites....
So your interpretation (which isn't yours, but belongs to democrats trying to re-write history for people who weren't there in order to call the GOP racists like you're doing) is complete garbage.
I honestly don't care if you disagree.... I'm old enough to have been there when it was said and read the dozens of articles and commentaries about it AT THE TIME and WITH THE PERSON. My next door neighbor was in the Secret Service was assigned to Mondale and my favorite aunt was an intern with the EPA which was brand new at the time and went on to be a paralegal with a 'left wing' law firm in DC. I was young and highly political at the time. I'm not going to look up the dozens of articles I read or TV episodes I watched to understand the point in proper context, especially in that I'm sure if I provided a quote where he said exactly what I'm saying, you'd say... 'then why did he say 'this'?'
Quote:You are going to compare what happened in the 1860's to what happened in the 1980's?
He was talking about what happened PRE Reagan, so really the 1970's... and yes, given the exponential speed at which things happen these days as opposed to the 1860's, I'd say that 1860-1970 is as pertinent as 1970-2018. Feel free to disagree. Neither are particularly pertinent.... but YOU brought it up. The difference is, we all agree that it was Republicans who freed the slaves in 1860, and Democrats who lead the CRA in the early 1960's. Everything SINCE then is a debate of opinions. What happened in 1980 wasn't in any way racism, and the statistics dealing with things like 'income' and 'wealth gap' by race prove that the claims are bogus.
Quote:You are correct. A percentage of democrats are racist but the party isn't blowing dog whistles to them to make sure they continue to vote democrat.
Couldn't possibly disagree more. A sitting president who 'calls out' the system that elected him as inherently racist (which is what we are doing when we talk about systemic racism) is blowing a dog whistle. What the left is doing is talking about things like 'Border Security' as being racist because while Mexicans aren't a different race from Anglos, the left has argued and convinced everyone that they are. The left sees everything the right stands for as being racist... as if a growing economy that gives someone a job rather than welfare is 'racism', or that ANY cutting of spending is somehow driven by 'racism'. This is the meme your side has been selling for a long time, and its impact is lessening every day.
The election of Trump and his relative performance with minorities should have proved that.
Quote:Quote:And this 'guilt by association' game you're trying to play is absolutely doing what racism does.... applying a set of qualities to someone based on generalizations about them and not on specifics.
I'm not playing guilty by association. Most of the republican party are good, God fearing people. The problem is they are either ignorant or complacent when it comes to the tactics of their party. Republicans, especially on this forum, frequently group all Muslims together because of the tactics of a few terrorists but God forbid that anyone paint the Republican party with such a broad brush. Oh the hypocrisy.
That's your perception. You're completely wrong any hypocritical yourself.
Here you say that 'significant percentage' of the GOP are racists... but you can't prove that. Polls show that the percentage of people who are members of such groups are in the low single digits, and the percentage of people who support, even remotely their tactics are about the same. The percentages of Muslims who are members of such groups is VASTLY higher... and the percentage of people who support, even remotely their tactics is hundreds of times greater.
You're comparing a puddle to a river and calling them equal because they're both wet. You're comparing someone who 'looks down' upon other people or perhaps wouldn't vote for them to someone who 'blows them up' and calling them equal because they're both 'negative' towards a race.
We're not talking about Muslims who choose to associate only or primarily with other Muslims, even distancing themselves from other religions or forming a close-knit community... which I suspect you would think was okay (as would I).... but if a bunch of Christian whites wanted to do that, you'd call them racists.
To that end, its a simple matter of perspective. Whether they are choosing to associate with others like them or whether they are choosing NOT to associate with people 'not like them', the end result is identical. Once you cross over into violence against them, that's something else entirely... and THAT is the difference we're talking about that you ignore.
Quote:My problem is that many who did vote for Trump ARE racists and instead of calling them out, Trump panders to them but I expect that from Trump. He is the POTUS of that 30-40% of the party.
What upsets me is that good Americans such as you and many on this forum refuse to call out the racists within your party whose flames are being stoked by this Buffoon.
It's team before country and that isn't good for anyone.
Things are different now. When it was Bush in power, I didn't mind it as much because the differences were about policy. With Trump though, he's creating an us verses them country and he's dividing us among race, and religion like no POTUS ever has.
I felt very much like Obama made it 'us vs them'. It started with Michelle's comment about being proud for the first time, and was echoed repeatedly, including Obama's references to systemic racism with regard to Trayvon Martin. His own justice department, lead by a minority, investigated and found no wrong-doing by the system (even if you thought there was wrong-doing by an individual) and yet he used that as an example of systemic racism.
You just didn't notice because you agreed with him, and you disagree with Trump.
Here you are saying he doesn't call out racists, ignoring once again that he said :
“Racism is evil, and those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the K.K.K., neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans.”
How is THAT 'not' calling them out? How can you say with a straight face that he didn't call them out?
Maybe the PROBLEM is that the media (and the left) don't play THAT quote over and over, and instead play the quote about 'the people that Mexico SENDS to us' are not their best.... ignoring that he's talking about a subset of those entering this country... but instead about those who were in jail in Mexico and 'sent' here (correct or not, mirroring what Cuba supposedly did)... and they DO that because they can claim it's an example of racism and extract power from it, as opposed to being about not sending criminals (regardless of race)
They did the same by claiming that an immigration hold against the same nations that Obama had singled out was racially motivated. NEVER did we hear from the mainstream media that these were the same nations on Obama's list... NEVER did we hear from the mainstream media that there were plenty of other predominantly Muslim nations NOT on that list (thus it clearly cannot POSSIBLY be about 'religion/race')
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New Mexico School Shooter on Pro-Trump White-Supremacy Sites
