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‘Racist’
Democrats loudly called Bush 41 “racist” for reusing Al Gore’s Willie Horton attack on Dukakis which had the net effect of telling an even wider audience that Dukakis was probably soft on crime. Calling Nixon “racist” for promoting measures to curtail epidemic rates of street crime helped him win twice. Calling Trump “racist” for saying what the vast majority of Americans actually think about the execrable ladies of the “Squad” is probably just as politically effective for Democrats as those past “racist” attacks.
For the record, I was not offended by Trump’s remarks. Like most Americans, I am now used to his stylings, bombast, excesses, and disregard for the linguistic rules of our oversensitive age (or any age, for that matter). And I admit I often rather enjoy his indifference to the faux outrage he generates. In this instance, I took him to mean that if you hate America that much, why not just leave? And in Omar’s case, rescued as she was from the hellhole that is Somalia and having received incalculable benefits from America, “how dare you, you vile ingrate?”
I think this issue resonated because there is much more going on than an issue of good manners. There is an overt campaign to silence, disempower, and destroy normal Americans; being more deferential to our attackers at moments and instances of their choosing is not a solution. I do not believe that if only the Jews had been even more polite to the SS there would have been no death camps. Those who claim the manufactured high ground of “sensitivity” don’t give a rat’s hind about the substance or the moral, political, and cultural antecedents of good manners, legal equality or tolerance and we should demand they stop pretending they do.
The recent chorus of liberal lemming MSM columnists who are just now noticing the ugly reality (and likely electoral downside) of hard leftism is amusing. They thought they could shame the likes of Romney, Bush, or McCain into abandoning conservative principles with measured misuse of “racist” or “insensitive” but did not realize that once those verbal demons were unleashed, less decorous, less well-intentioned persons could command them as well.
On a more personal note, the silly and promiscuous use of the term “racist” is an insult to those who endured that reality and who sacrificed to defeat actual racism. I remember my mother’s anxiety each time my father left to go back to work on desegregating rural counties Mississippi and Tennessee as an attorney with the USDOJ Civil Rights Division. I have had the privilege of knowing an African-American attorney who needed courage just to show up for the bar exam (that he knew would likely be rigged) in Montgomery, AL. I listened in person to Martin Luther King and to George Wallace a half-century ago. The idea that America is presently a racist hotbed is asinine and perverse.
Similarly, the abuse of the terms “Nazi” and “fascist” is intolerable.
Polite, substantive discourse, factual evidence, goodwill, tolerance, and equal protection under the law is precisely the state of affairs that the left seeks to destroy. Deference to the pretense that the Left conducts public discourse in a manner consonant with those values has to end. And the vitriolic spittle-fest that Trump has brought about on the left has provided unexpected but welcome clarity. The crudest President since perhaps Andrew Jackson has managed to get our enemies to reveal “racial sensitivity” for what it really is.
Published in General
I highly recommend this article: It’s Guerrilla Warfare By Mark Bauerlein
If everyone is a racist, then nobody is a racist.
A recent study revealed that the most racist group of people is white leftists. They have a hatred of white people. It is so weird that people will express self-hatred to virtue signal to others. I cannot recall in any other group in history or even science fiction that was like that.
Well said!
For me I feel like I’m watching many people catch up to my thoughts on this subject. It’s like the dam broke – and the shark jumped over it.
Not that there weren’t many who have seen this for a long time as well, but it seems that this is the pivotal moment it became clear to many more.
I was married to a black woman for 10 years. My mother was a bit horrified but got over it quickly, my father died before we actually married but he clearly didn’t care – and he was a walking encyclopedia of ethnic jokes. I have a daughter who identifies as African American even though she is genetically more than half Caucasian and has about 100 times more American Indian ancestry than Elizabeth Warren.
My wife had a large family of middle-class background. Her Father was an Air Force Captain and her mother was a teacher. Her two older brothers became career military men, one became an Admiral. Her mother’s parents lived in South Carolina and he was a Baptist Preacher in a small church in a rural area. I visited them several times there.
My wife and I encountered almost zero problems. It’s not even worth citing the few negative experiences.
Anyway, I pretty much laughed every time I was called a racist by people who didn’t know my background. I had read a lot of Thomas Sowell (Race and Culture is an amazing enlightening book) and lots of other thoughtful authors, so I probably had a big head-start in this area, but it’s so great to see the beginnings of this understanding.
More ( maybe many more) black folks are going to be voting Trump in 2020. I wish I could place a bet in Vegas on that!
Do you mean “less decorous, less well-intentioned persons” like Trump?
Yes, I completely agree the Democrats have misused and abused the term “racist” for decades now, and like the boy who cried wolf are now discovering that people no longer take them seriously. I agree there is a certain schadenfreude and sense of poetic justice in watching them discover this.
However, what would we do if an actual wolf wandered into the village?
Seems to be he called out AOC on calling Pelosi racist. Did I miss something, or do you just think Trump is really racist, and the Democrats are not going over the time this time?
True wolves are easy to spot. We can deal with them on a case by case basis.
No. I meant leftists without tenure, without on air makeup and without a byline. The clownshow that is now the Democratic Party. The MSM journalistic elite used to think it was their role to be the ones to call out incorrect behavior. Now they just follow the Twitter mob while pretending they are the ones shaping opinion. Fifty rows back in the parade but still waving the baton begging for retweets…
Well, that might be a problem if you think a racist is a wolf. But in this society a racist is simply a thought-criminal. If said racist (wolf) acts out in violence he is arrested or killed.
There’s been a concerted social effort over the last 6 decades to stamp out racism that was useful, but now has gotten out of control. I would submit that once the laws were changed ( check) and social stigma is applied across-the-board (check) and black people are well represented in all walks of life ( check) that the boogeyman of racism can be retired and we can all move on and revel in togetherness. But noooo. People are too invested in the ‘cause’. A whole wolf-hunting industry has developed and now they are shooting dogs, horses and even cats.
The zealotry is hurting everyone, and I’d argue it’s hurting the most vulnerable members of the African American community the most. It’s toxic.
A few years back, it was revealing that Jess Jackson and Al Sharpton would each be on the first flight to wherever there was a company accused of not promoting a black guy to foreman or other small event where “discrimination” was alleged no matter how trivial or tenuous the claim. There are so few instances of intentional racial bias left, they were fighting over scraps to Lead the Movement. Jackson and Sharpton could extort “contributions” from companies that needed official absolution but that racket has largely dried up. Still, professional race issue commissars in HR departments and college race & gender political officers cannot justify their salaries in a nation which uniformly admits that we have no use for racial animosity. There is an enormous vested interest in finding “racism”.
Disagree. It is militant blacks. Thomas Sowell commented, “I am so old I remember when most racists were white.
My dental hygienist is a black young woman who is originally from Ethiopia. She was one of the families that were rescued by Israel when the black Jews in Ethiopia were attacked. She grew up in Israel and visits every year. Her husband is a white Jewish man and she tells me that she gets “hate stares” from black woman when she is in public with her husband. They live in Irvine, CA which is very upscale.
This whole business of who gets to talk about what is getting blown up right now! I love it! I don’t even know who I was listening to on the radio as I drove around this morning, but I hope I can figure it out so I can see the whole interview. A MSMedia person had a group of Women of Color on to discuss this latest outrage of making everything about “racism,” and quickly it stopped being an “interview” and turned adversarial because the women who were being asked weren’t giving the “right” answers.
We cannot let the Left make all the discourse rules. We cannot concede that their ways are the correct ways. It totally negates the REAL struggles that were fought again REAL racism, if we do.
I think it’s important to understand that the word racist isn’t being used any more for its defined meaning, but instead as an effective general-purpose weapon. A grenade over the transom.
And it’s been so effective that it became the go-to weapon of choice. And then downright ubiquitous.
And in the process, the original has been pretty much forgotten, and actual racists end up using the word without a hint of irony.
Same with the other deplorables; sexist, misogynist, homophobe, Islamophobe, and so forth.
(The “phobes” are even technically incorrect uses of a psychological term.)
So I think it’s a big mistake to interpret these words, uh, literally, with their now-obsolete definition.
I agree. Well said.
The good news is that a majority of Americans, including a majority of Independents don’t like all this political correctness and are upset that there are so many things you can’t say anymore.
https://www.npr.org/2018/12/19/677346260/warning-to-democrats-most-americans-against-u-s-getting-more-politically-correct
My experiences were in the 1980’s and early 90’s, ( we got divorced… I know, racist, right? It finally came out…what was I thinking? Lol)
We did a fair amount of traveling around the US and Europe. We did get some stares in Sardinia. That was probably due to the proximity to Africa (and racism). Actually we often experienced what I detected as a kind of special treatment by some (usually whites).
I’m in agreement that things are probably much worse now. That’s the result of years of racial propaganda after the liberal period in those days.
Black men with white women probably get worse treatment from black women.
I’ve noticed this as well. Many black women see a shortage of qualified black mates, and resent the white women for “stealing” them.
Is this the one you’re talking about?
https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/17/politics/republican-women-trump-racist-tweets-progressive/index.html
Also . . . https://www.theblaze.com/news/cnn-asks-women-if-trumps-tweets-are-racist-it-completely-backfires
The Left hasn’t just misused “racism.” They’ve overtly, and shamelessly, attempted to change the very definition. They no longer recognize the definition that CNN’s Randi Kaye read in the video I linked to above. The academic Left now states as settled truth that only the “privileged” can be racist, as racism supposedly requires power. No matter how racist a black person’s words or actions may be, they are supposedly incapable of racism, as blacks have no power in our society. I mean, obviously, a black man will never be President of the United States, right?
The study didn’t break down splinter groups. Just 5 groups: black,Hispanic,Asian, white progressive, white conservative.
I’m a racist because of my white privilege. I can’t stop being white, I suppose, though I’m not sure how whiteness is measured. Is it a one-drop rule? Is Obama therefore white? It gets very confusing.
I wish we could return to the days when “racist” meant an act and an intent. But until then, if I’m going to be racist simply as the cost of living, then why should I be bothered to care about it?
But the key is that this is just a softer version of Charlie Manson’s hope to spur a race war. The race hustlers want us to be called racist so that they are more powerful. If we acquiesce and ignore being called racist, then they still are more powerful because we are uncaring about race.
Politicians do not profit from racism being solved. Therefore they will not solve it, and will work to make it worse.
I hate women of choler.
CNN’s Randi Kaye is a poor excuse for a journalist. I hear it over and over again from journalists that these women are all women of color. They are not. Biologically speaking, Rashida Tlaib & AOC appear to be white women of Arab Palestinian and Puerto Rican ethnic origin. I refuse to buy into the willfully distortive intersectional narrative that belonging to a supposedly “disadvantaged” minority group automatically changes the pigmentation of one’s skin. I belong to a historically discriminated against religious minority group and I am definitely not a man of color. And why are Asians not then considered people of color. I cannot deal with the cognitive dissonance of having to deny reality to indulge the Left’s virtue signalling and I wish there were a means of combating these intellectually dishonest statements from the Press. I don’t care how the Squad chooses to self-identify racially.
Softer maybe, but in the long term, much more effective, I’m afraid.
This week it is ‘racist’, next it will be ‘homophobe’ and on through the entire basket of deplorables.
I sometimes wonder if this splintering of the American society is the ‘fundamental change’ Obama was looking for.
Good read:
https://amgreatness.com/2019/07/17/stiffening-the-backbone-of-the-right/
Excerpt:
I would say the reason the harpies of the squad had to hop up and down screeching “racism” is that they needed to keep us from noticing that they weren’t willing to answer the implied question: “If America is so wrong, why aren’t you going to a country more worth your affection and support?”
They know if we think about it, the fact that they have only contempt for this country, and its history, and, yet, they want to stay, that would indicate to us that they have a kind of invader’s outlook on us. So they don’t want us thinking about it. So, to distract us, they started hollering about racism when Trump’s implied question hung in the air.
It’s all enough to make you feel sheepish for not having called out this type of manipulation a long time ago.
Excellent post, Old Bathos.
You need a London connection to lay that bet.
According to the left, America is a hopelessly racist country. According to Beto O’Rourke, “this country was founded on white supremacy and every single institution and structure that we have in our country still reflects the legacy of the slavery and segregation and Jim Crow and suppression”.
Yet for some weird reason millions of non-white people risk their lives crossing deserts, and pay huge sums of money to “coyotes” to smuggle them illegally into this country.
And their advocates like AOC and the rest of “the squad” aren’t screaming at these people to save themselves, and get out while they can, they’re actually encouraging them to come, trying to make it easier for them to arrive in this hellhole of a racist state.
They must really hate Brown People to be willing to subject them to the horrors of White Supremacist America.
What year did Sowell make that statement? The white Leftists have been catching up, and have likely taken the lead at this point.
Make them play by their own rules. Rule #1 only white people can be racist. Rule #2 people can identify as any race, gender, or species that they like. When challenged, Leftists are boxed in by their own rules.
Second example. Rule #3 is that women are oppressed and deserve equal everything. Rule #4 is that men can be women and vice versa. Rule #5 complements #2 in that the oppressor also gets to identify the race, gender, or species of the victim, because that is inherent to the oppression. Combining all that allows for any conclusion or contradiction needed to confuse any situation. Embrace the new order of disorder.