Term "legal vote" is functionally racist

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ajax18
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Term "legal vote" is functionally racist

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Critical race theorist Ibram X. Kendi declared this week that the expression “legal vote” used to describe votes cast in conformity with U.S. laws is “functionally racist.”

“The term ‘legal vote’ is as fictionally fraught and functionally racist as the terms ‘illegal alien’ and ‘race neutral’ and ‘welfare queen’ and ‘handouts’ and ‘super predator’ and ‘crackbaby’ and ‘personal responsibility’ and ‘post racial,’” Kendi wrote on Twitter.

When Kendi added in a follow-up tweet, “There are so many more terms like this. What did I leave out?” his woke followers jumped on the bandwagon, insisting that any terms questioning the Left’s pet programs are necessarily racist.

According to one eager follower, other racist expressions would include “deadbeat dads,” “death taxes,” “big government,” “socialism,” “radical left,” “gay agenda,” “ivory tower,” “elites,” “looting,” “broken windows,” “pro-abortion,” “anti-religion,” “unwashed poor,” “anti-American,” “open borders,” “anti-police,” and “anchor baby.”

Kendi himself went on to clarify exactly what he meant, insisting that voter recounts in areas where blacks make up a significant portion of the population must also be racist.

“The misinformation of widespread voter fraud — or ‘illegal voting’ — in Detroit, Philadelphia, Atlanta, and Phoenix where Black and Brown voters predominate is baked into the term ‘legal vote,’” he said. “No matter what GOP propaganda says, there’s nothing wrong with those voters and votes.”

“What makes a term racist is rarely the term’s literal meaning, and almost always the historical and political context in which the term is being used,” Kendi helpfully added, in an assertion that could be roughly translated as “a term is racist if I say it’s racist.”


Born Ibram Henry Rogers, the 38-year-old Kendi, director of Boston University’s Center for Antiracist Research, is author of the 2019 bestseller How to Be an Antiracist, which contains such pearls of wisdom as “Racial inequity is a problem of bad policy, not bad people.”

Simply not being racist isn’t enough, Kendi insists. We must actively choose to be “antiracist,” working to undo racism and its component polices in order to build an equitable society.

Last September, Kendi famously attacked Amy Coney Barrett after the mother of seven was appointed to the Supreme Court, suggesting she was a “white colonizer” because she and her husband had adopted two Haitian children.

“Some White colonizers ‘adopted’ Black children. They ‘civilized’ these ‘savage’ children in the ‘superior’ ways of White people, while using them as props in their lifelong pictures of denial, while cutting the biological parents of these children out of the picture of humanity,” Kendi wrote.

“And whether this is Barrett or not is not the point,” he continued. “It is a belief too many White people have: if they have or adopt a child of color, then they can’t be racist.”

Regarding the initial assertion that the term “legal vote” is as functionally racist as the term “personal responsibility,” Kendi clearly has a point. Any reasonable person with a mind unclouded by woke ideology can immediately see that neither of these terms is more racist than the other.

“Legal vote,” in fact, is as functionally racist as a whole host of expressions, such as “pretty flower,” “paved road,” “sharp pencil,” and “university professor.”
https://www.breitbart.com/education/202 ... ly-racist/

I hope you all enjoy paying higher taxes to pay this man's $250k/year salary to train your workforce in "critical race theory," and confess your white guilt.

How long until the word "thief," or even "loot" is considered functionally racist and we're no longer allowed to say it?
Last edited by ajax18 on Thu Nov 12, 2020 9:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Term "legal vote" is functionally racist

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Did you copy that from the Onion?
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Re: Term "legal vote" is functionally racist

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Nah, the ——oOo—— visits a host of bubbleland right-wing sites. For example, it might’ve pulled it from here:

https://stoplcpscrt.com/2020/11/12/abso ... -and-more/

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Re: Term "legal vote" is functionally racist

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Dr. Shades wrote:
Thu Nov 12, 2020 8:34 pm
Did you copy that from the Onion?
:lol: He didn't provide a link, but it certainly looks like something that could have come from The Onion.

Yet some Trump fanatics are promoting ideas that seem every bit as ridiculous as things that could have come from The Onion, like Ken Starr suggesting that counting every vote is somehow a criminal offence.
"In fact, to count every vote may be a crime," Starr replied. "It may even be a crime under federal law, it's definitely a crime under state law. He added his hope that the Supreme Court will "do its duty" and reverse Biden's "lawless" victory. But Levin said he's "concerned" that even Chief Justice John Roberts may not take Republicans' side, accusing him of making "some cockamamie distinction between a federal and a state court" during a recent ruling against GOP officials.
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Re: Term "legal vote" is functionally racist

Post by Gunnar »

Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:
Thu Nov 12, 2020 8:59 pm
Nah, the ——oOo—— visits a host of bubbleland right-wing sites. For example, it might’ve pulled it from here:

https://stoplcpscrt.com/2020/11/12/abso ... -and-more/

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Yes, that is probably a more likely source than The Onion, but it still is looks very much like it could have come from The Onion. It is a sorry state of affairs when prominent right wing officials seriously promote ideas that are virtually indistinguishable from deliberate satire.
No precept or claim is more suspect or more likely to be false than one that can only be supported by invoking the claim of Divine authority for it--no matter who or what claims such authority.
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Re: Term "legal vote" is functionally racist

Post by Doctor CamNC4Me »

Gunnar wrote:
Thu Nov 12, 2020 9:28 pm
Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:
Thu Nov 12, 2020 8:59 pm
Nah, the ——oOo—— visits a host of bubbleland right-wing sites. For example, it might’ve pulled it from here:

https://stoplcpscrt.com/2020/11/12/abso ... -and-more/

- Doc
Yes, that is probably a more likely source than The Onion, but it still is looks very much like it could have come from The Onion. It is a sorry state of affairs when prominent right wing officials seriously promote ideas that are virtually indistinguishable from deliberate satire.
That article was written by a race-obsessed blacktivist who is trying to horn in on the grievance industry, not a right-wing official.

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Re: Term "legal vote" is functionally racist

Post by Res Ipsa »

Let's clear out the underbrush. First, Kendi is a professor at a private university. So, taxpayers aren't paying his salary. Ajax is expressing resentment that a black man can earn a good salary for saying things that Ajax doesn't like. That's part and parcel of his resentment/hatred complex.

Second, the quotes are accurate. But it looks like Kendi made the comments first in the middle of a discussion, and then retweeted them. Meaning, context.

Kendi is a controversial figure, as he espouses critical race theory, which is itself controversial. I'm not specifically acquainted with critical race theory, although I have one of Kendi's books on reserve so I can understand the theory. But I am very familiar with its ancestor, Critical Legal Studies, as it was a hot topic when I attended law school.

In critical studies, the term "functional" is very important. Critical theory doesn't examine things like fairness or justice "in the air." For example, lots of rights discourse, including natural rights, is all theoretical. Natural rights theorists try to deduce how laws should work from a set of inherent rights, whether those be from God or from the nature of being human. Critical theory would argue that trying to deduce principles of justice in theory would be like forming a scientific theory without ever doing experiments or looking at data. Critical theorists always look at what happens on the ground, in the real world. Everything is examined in a context.

So, when Kendi says "functionally" he means in a very specific context. In this case, the narrow context is in describing disputed ballots in areas of Pennsylvania with high concentrations of black voters that were received after the date of the election. The broader context is the decades of complete disenfranchisement of black voters after the civil war by enacting laws that made their votes illegal.

Republicans have not challenged late arriving mail-in ballots in every county in Pennsylvania. But they have in all the heavily black counties in Pennsylvania. Describing mail in ballots that were cast on or before election day but received on or before the following Friday are not "illegal." Even if the U.S. Supreme Court were to hold that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court lacked the authority to extend the deadline for receiving ballots, the ballots would not be "illegal." Calling them illegal implies that the voter broke the law. Or, in context, a bunch of black people voted illegally. As I understand the argument, that's what me means by functionally racist.

Even though my thinking is along the lines of critical theory, I'm not sure I buy the argument. I'm not sure I would characterize "illegal votes" as the dog whistle that he argues it is. But, more generally, what I think is this. Going back to at least 1976, white people have always cast more votes for the Republican than the Democrat in presidential elections. Black folks have overwhelmingly voted for the Democrat. In response to demographic trends, Republicans have adopted a strategy of suppressing the votes of likely democratic voters. And you can't separate that from suppressing the votes of black votes. And given that context, maybe his argument is stronger than I think it is.

What he isn't arguing is that anyone who utters the words "illegal vote" in any context is a racist. But that's what the right-wing media will try to make him afraid of.
Last edited by Res Ipsa on Thu Nov 12, 2020 9:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Term "legal vote" is functionally racist

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I first heard about it from Ben Shapiro who read it on Twitter.
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Re: Term "legal vote" is functionally racist

Post by Res Ipsa »

ajax18 wrote:
Thu Nov 12, 2020 9:43 pm
I first heard about it from Ben Shapiro who read it on Twitter.
It would really help if you would please link to your sources in your posts.
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Re: Term "legal vote" is functionally racist

Post by ajax18 »

Gotta root out that racist personal responsibility concept for sure. Move forward!!
And when the Confederates saw Jackson standing fearless like a stonewall, the army of Northern Virginia took courage and drove the federal army off their land.
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