What will/did Mueller say?

[_Some Schmo]

If you read that thread, you'd know I was saying that to be in the GOP these days is to make you at least a racism enabler (witting or not). There's little doubt that's true.

There is tremendous doubt that is true. I am not Republican. But that is simply a ridiculous statement. From my perspective a more substantive thread would be how has the term racism changed over the last hundred years. How has its meaning today become what it is. Or how do we define a term that means one thing to one party and another thing to another party. The way your using it in that thread is the same thing as saying there is very little doubt my subjective perspective is true.

My subjective perspective? Are you blissfully unaware of Trump's racism? How it's captured the party?

If that's you're claim, we can stop talking, because you are delusional, and I don't have time for that crap. It's clear you're intent on believing nonsense.

The word "racism" has a meaning today. You may give a crap what it meant 100 years ago, but that's irrelevant to the conversation today. You probably think that's more interesting because you want to avoid what's staring everyone in the face, but it's no more substantive than talking about what's actually happening in this country right now.

What's your definition of "substantive?"

I define it as having real importance or value as important, serious, or related to real facts just like the dictionary. I would claim that your interception of the word fact in regards to a subjectively held meaning of a word is misplaced at best.

You call mine "subjectively held" where I would call yours "subjectively denied."

Not all that substantive.

[_canpakes]

The word "racism" has a meaning today. You may give a crap what it meant 100 years ago, but that's irrelevant to the conversation today. You probably think that's more interesting because you want to avoid what's staring everyone in the face, but it's no more substantive than talking about what's actually happening in this country right now.

To the bolded part ... There are plenty of Republicans who don’t want to be lumped into the ‘racist’ category. I get that. But a useful exercise would be to imagine if our border situation was instead a mass migration of 100,000 Canadians wanting to get into the country. Would Trump decree that to be a ‘crisis’ of the same degree, and attempt to clamp down dramatically on attempts to enter, and then use the situation as a way to ramp up crowd anger and instigate partisan chanting at his rallies?

Or, would Trump use that situation as an opportunity to exclaim how awesome that America must be, because all of those Canadians would rather be on our side of the fence? And instead use this as a message of positivity?

Considering why the two situations would differ is exactly the problem that folks are shining a light on here, and why the perception of Trump stoking fear with racist rhetoric is an actual problem, not an imagined one.

[_mikwut]

Hello Perfume,

The word "racism" has a meaning today. You may give a ____ what it meant 100 years ago, but that's irrelevant to the conversation today. You probably think that's more interesting because you want to avoid what's staring everyone in the face, but it's no more substantive than talking about what's actually happening in this country right now.

It's incumbent on you to define it how your are using it. Lecia Brooks for example of the Southern Law Poverty Center said, "A lot of times when we talk about racism, we're talking about racial prejudice" Are you making any definitional parameters that are pragmatic? Are you using the term to say who someone is or are you using the term saying what someone did? Are you using the term in such a loaded manner that someone feels like total crap or are you using it in an educational manner that allows all of us to admit to certain prejudices and bias we might have or do have? And how is that possible under you usage? Can someone recover from the charge of being racist under your definition? What would they have to do, prostrate themselves on a Youtube video? Can you corruptly use the word where your just smearing someone and do you take that into account? How do you account for the polarization the use of the word creates when reasonable differences and a spectrum of behavior exists corresponding to it? How do you demarcate between the obvious racism of Jewish concentration camps and Jim Crow from something that is just racially negative or just a deviation from a political groups "correct" use of the word? Is Morgan Freeman racist when he recommends that we just stop saying it? Am I a racist for asking, for not knowing every possible trope, politically incorrect word, usage and even emphasis on a word? Can I trust your not just virtue signaling and even take your defiant posts that use the term seriously? Do some use the word to virtue signal and how do we tell the difference? Doesn't that raise the animus just as much as actual defined racism? Do you have any bias or prejudices and if so why are you not a racist? Do you have solutions that really have traction and substance or do you just not have time for that? What do you have time for, just pointing out nearly half the populace is racist if they don't make the current president prostrate himself on a youtube video as a racist but rather get busy on policy and governing? Are you claiming Trump is passing laws that clearly demean one racial group below another because he believes in the superiority of that group over the other and what are those examples, I mean real law here or economic policies specifically designed to harm a racial group? What is his race that he is clearly and unambiguously continually and systematically keeping down economically, politically etc.. through policy? Is the climate racially charged? Or is it racist? Is there no longer a difference? And what was the tipping point? Was it Paula Deen? Halloween costumes at Ivy League Schools? The Muslim Ban? Just Trump? Is there such a thing as racially insensitive or is that just a trope racist? Can we overuse the word, can we not use it enough?

I am interested to know your specific and pragmatic definition and proper use of the term not just a your on right side of this because you called people racist first?

mikwut

[_EAllusion]

Mikwut - You don't get to make demands for technical definitions of racism that employ a combination of near radical skepticism in labeling something racist and continuum fallacy on the one hand, but then get to declare that Jim Crow was obviously racist on the other. Trump is obviously racist, yet you aren't here taking that for granted. If you want to go ahead and argue Jim Crow was racist, you should meet your own burdens of demonstration.

[_mikwut]

E-

I haven't made a definition because I have claimed discussing the more substantive questions and obtaining pragmatic answers is more worthwhile. I don't demand Jim Crow was racist for the sake of this discussion but used it for scope and scale of the question. I have proposed a question. I didn't make a certain label. That's what all the question marks are for.

I know it's comfortable to find a certainty and in this case that calling huge swaths of people racist with no obviously pragmatic solution to what that accomplishes but that doesn't mean you get to tell others what they get to do that don't accept the obvious certainty of that label.

mikwut

[_Chap]

In observing this board over a long period, I have concluded that demands for definitions can sometimes be useful in advancing the discussion, but not very often. (Of course, on a board devoted to the discussion of, say, projective geometry, the case would be different.)

The history of relations between people of different ancestry, appearance, and culture in the Americas is long, complex and bitter, and dates back at least as far as Columbus' murderous and cruel treatment of the people he encountered on his arrival in the Caribbean. It is very unlikely that any one word will accurately capture all of its aspects.

But if we ask what that history is mostly about in practical terms, I think that there is little doubt that much of it involves discourse employing the term 'race' (a term no longer thought to have useful scientific content). Your 'race' is inferior to my 'race'. Your 'race' is threatening my 'race'. Your 'race' has privileges not given to mine, and I want them too.

In the context of an informal discussion like the present one, I don't see much wrong with using the term 'racism' to mean something more or less like:

'The disposition to do or say bad stuff in relation to people of because of the perception, often made explicit in discourse, that they are of a different 'race' to one's own'.

Yup, it's fuzzy-edged (surprise! it's about people, not triangles). Yup, it involves the use of a word whose reference in scientific terms is highly dubious. Yup. we may come across situations where its use generates more heat than light. But it's probably good enough for the present purpose.

[_canpakes]

mikwut, in your opinion, do any of the statements below appear to promote or convey any racist content or message?


Tucker Carlson, 7/9/19:

“This cannot continue. It’s not sustainable. No country can import large numbers of people who hate it and survive. The Romans were the last to try that, with predictable results.”


Laura Ingraham, 6/18/19 podcast:

“No longer can they claim to be for border enforcement, or “Oh yeah, we’re for enforcing the border, oh yeah, we’re for—we’re for keeping the country safe. And oh yeah, we’re not for illegal immigration, we’re for legal immigration”— that’s what they used to say That’s what the Obama folks and the Clinton folks used to say, but no longer. No, you’re for replacing the current American population, or swamping the current American population, with a new population of people who are perhaps more hospitable to socialist ideals.”


Tucker Carlson, 5/21/19:

“The American piñata has been getting pummeled for decades and now it has finally come apart. Our national wealth is up for grabs by whomever gets here first, and they are coming. Over just the past year, 1% of the entire population of the nation of Guatemala has moved to the United States. A Wall Street Journal piece last month described the plight of that country’s villages. Some of them are literally depopulating as people stream north to America’s generous welfare state. Meanwhile a new study from the Federation for Immigration Reform, FAIR, given exclusively to this show, shows the scale on which the United States is being plundered.”


Tucker Carlson, 12/13/18:

“Our leaders demand that you shut up and accept this. We have a moral obligation to admit the world’s poor, they tell us, even if it makes our own country poorer, and dirtier, and more divided. Immigration is a form of atonement.”


Fox & Friends, 11/2/18:

“When you see a lot of young men carrying the flag of their country to your country to break your laws, it looks a lot more like an invasion than anything else.”


Laura Ingraham, 8/7/18:

“In some parts of the country, it does seem like the America that we know and love doesn’t exist anymore. Massive demographic changes have been foisted on the American people, and they are changes that none of us ever voted for, and most of us don’t like.”

[_Some Schmo]

Racism is taking that biological reaction we all have to seeing someone different and, rather than putting that reaction in its place, using it as an excuse to make a judgment about different people without getting to know who they are. It often manifests itself in idiotic generalizations about people from other cultures while ignoring the problems of your own.

[_EAllusion]

E-

I haven't made a definition because I have claimed discussing the more substantive questions and obtaining pragmatic answers is more worthwhile. I don't demand Jim Crow was racist for the sake of this discussion but used it for scope and scale of the question. I have proposed a question. I didn't make a certain label. That's what all the question marks are for.

I know it's comfortable to find a certainty and in this case that calling huge swaths of people racist with no obviously pragmatic solution to what that accomplishes but that doesn't mean you get to tell others what they get to do that don't accept the obvious certainty of that label.

mikwut

There are technical measures of racial resentment that do find Trump supporters as a group contain a lot of people who fall quite high on the distribution with measures of higher racial resentment correlating strongly with likelihood of supporting Trump. So, that's a thing. And even if that weren't the case, Trump is a fairly vicious racist who promotes racist rhetoric and employs racist people in his administration whose racist views inform their policy stances.

It is tricky to decide when indifference to the racism in people you are trying to put in power is complicit enough to say you are working to enable racism. On some level, of course you are working to enable racism because that's what putting racists in charge who can further their racist goals does. That might not be your intent, but it is at a minimum a side-effect of whatever your intent is. I don't know if you agree with this. For example, do you fault people who supported Hitler for economic reasons? I appreciate that life is full of cost-benefit decisions and not every politician can be pure. Political support in a representative democracy by its nature entails enabling things you disagree with. But Trump is abnormally bad in this regard for a modern political figure, and I am sympathetic to the stance that indifference to this is, at least to some extent, a form of complicity towards his racism.

Suppose you don't support Trump, but support the Republican party. Well, the problem is the Republican party is now a Trump-enabling machine, so it's hard to support it without indirectly supporting Trump. This creates another layer of removal from enabling, and their might come a hypothetical point where it's too abstract to matter, but even that's questionable behavior given how tight the bonds are.

[_mikwut]

Hello canpakes,

I think you would find more meat on those bones than me, but, yes I can see it if I squint hard enough. I do not see it limited only to racism and I see many other overlapping and quite possibly overriding issues that are intermeshed within each quote. Economic issues, globalism vs. nationalism and sovereignty issues, sustainability issues, safety and crime issues, political issues, cultural issues, democratic issues, stability issues, legal issues are all found in those quotes. It would be necessary to weigh and balance myriad values that exist outside racism before just throwing the label as the first reaction. The racist issues should be addressed. But just saying you see racism doesn't provide any solution. And reducing other real and practical issues to just racism is not good intellectually, politically, pragmatically or just getting crap done.

Let's say person A believes unrestrained immigration directly effects him and his family's future economically. Not because the racial ingredient, just the economic belief. Then let's also say person A holds racial superiority beliefs and for that reason also is against unrestrained immigration. Do you think just calling person A a racist solves the problem? Wouldn't it be much more effective to ignore nonsensical beliefs and focus on the real facts and data that prove or disprove person A's economic concern and then pragmatically and democratically address that concern?

mikwut