I refuse to let you fool EVERYONE, Meth, lol ... The article that everyone is fawning over says it is likely that everyone who voted for Trump is overtly or subconsciously racist ... You can't run from that portion of the article much like I apparently cannot run from any and everything that Trump has ever said or done in the past ... And you sit here a wonder why, after being called a racist time and time again by posters, i have lost a little faith in your objectivity? Being a racist is one of the worst things to be labeled and yet calling someone a racist on this board is accepted and condoned, even when devoid factual basis ...
I have seen your censorship for quite some time on this forum and have grown to accept it ... As a mod and stalwart liberal, you have every right to suspend dissent as you see fit ... If I really don' like it, I would have stopped coming here years ago ... This has been and always will be a shoe forum and I treat it as such ...
As for my history, I haven't actively posted on this forum in probably 5 years ... So long ago I couldn't even tell you my last screen name lol ... I remember being banned for posting a link to firstrow when that was first a thing and way back when for some ******** (the talk of the hood is censored?! Lol) stuff lol ... Life gets in the way fellas, I have two degrees, a successul career and young family ... Not everyone is an unsub with a criminal past ...
You've lost faith in my objectivity? Explain to me why it was wrong to suspend Ninjahood and NikeTalker23's access in this situation.
Or is it that I'm not allowed to have an opinion of my own? I won't pretend that I have no values. NikeTalk exists because of shared values. If you don't share them, that's fine. Not everything exists for you. That doesn't mean NikeTalk excludes conservatives. Again, no one has ever been banned for "being conservative."
If it's possible to be a member of one political party and still govern the country as a whole, it's possible for our team to have their own personal or ideological beliefs and yet still work together for the good of our shared community and do the best we can for all our fellow members. We certainly have the capability to banish all those with whom we disagree. As you can see in this very thread, we resist those calls and act only on infractions as defined by our posted rules of conduct.
I may believe that racist resentment and fear represents the rotten heart of the Trump campaign, but we don't ban anyone who's expressed support for Trump for that reason alone.
I'm not "running from" that portion of the article. I
agree with it. The racism of the Trump campaign and the Trump administration is glaringly obvious, and it's been well cataloged in the article and elsewhere. If you voted for that,
own it.
If you voted for Trump "in spite of that," own
that.
If you're principled, be principled. Say Trump is wrong about Mexicans. Say Trump is wrong about Muslims. Say Trump is wrong about transgender citizens. Say Trump is wrong about anthem protests, about "good" neo-nazis, about "good" White Nationalists, about the Alt-Right, about Steve Bannon, about Roy Moore, about his
constant dishonesty, about demonizing Black Lives Matter, about sexual assault. Any "liberal" who won't do the same is no ally of mine.
None of that has anything to do with being a "fiscal conservative," with gun control, with abortion rights, or with military interventionism.
These are matters of equality and fundamental personhood. Do you reject those who believe that straight, White, Christian, cisgender men are "more American" than the rest of us? All deflections aside, if you care about that issue, one candidate was decidedly worse than the others. If you care a little about that issue, but care
more about something else, that's telling, too.
When does it cross the line? Is there anything he could do that would cost him your support?
You're clearly upset about the article, but you've yet to rebut any of it. All you've managed thus far has been a string of whataboutisms. Yes, Hillary Clinton leveraged racism in her primary campaign against Barack Obama, and that turned off a great many voters, but there are other principles involved that would still lead someone to support her candidacy for president as compared to the full-throated racism of Donald Trump.
What "principles", if any, does Donald Trump actually stand for? "Winning?" What does that even
mean to you? Inheriting wealth and maintaining it, when any idiot could've amassed a larger fortune by placing their inheritance in a simple index fund?
The Nationalist Delusion expertly separates the wheat from the chaff when it comes to Trump's appeal, and debunks a lot of the myths from the left and right about Trump's supporters. (e.g. that they're all poor, uneducated White people.) It also takes Marxists to task for their failure to accept that Du Bois is, and has always been, right about Americans and their failure to achieve "class consciousness."
Today, even White Nationalists dispute that they're racist. In their minds, they're just proud to be White and believe that White people deserve their own "ethnic homeland," which apparently should be located on lands attained through genocide rather than somewhere in Europe. So, it's not surprising that Trump supporters could simultaneously embrace racism subconsciously, yet reject it in name. That's contemporary America.
For me, one of the most underrated analyses of this phenomenon can be found in Thomas Ross' essay, "Innocence and Affirmative Action."
“The dominant public ideology has become nonracist. Use of racial epithets, expressions of genetic superiority, and avowal of formal segregation are not part of the mainstream of public discourse. These ways of speaking, which were part of the public discourse several decades ago, are deemed by most today as irrational utterances emanating from the few remaining pockets of racism. Notwithstanding that the public ideology has become nonracist, the culture continues to teach racism. Racial stereotypes pervade our media and language, both reflecting and influencing the complex set of individual and collective choices that make our schools, our neighborhoods, our workplaces, and our lives racially segregated.”
“Racism today paradoxically is both ‘irrational and normal.’ Racism is at once inconsistent with the dominant public ideology and is embraced by each of us, albeit at the unconscious level. This paradox of irrationality and normalcy is part of the reason for racism’s unconscious nature. When our culture teaches us to be racist and our ideology teaches us that racism is evil, we respond by excluding the forbidden lesson from consciousness.”
“The question whether the black person is an actual victim implies that he or she does not deserve what the black person gets. This question draws power from the stereotypical racist belief that the black person is lazy. The lazy black seeks and takes the unearned advantages of affirmative action. In this fashion, the white rhetorician is constantly but unconsciously drawing on the stereotypical racist beliefs. Nor is the white audience consciously embracing those beliefs when they experience the rhetoric of innocence in affirmative action discourse. Both the rhetoricians and their audience are likely to reject the stereotypes at the conscious level. Moreover, they would be offended at the very suggestion that they might hold such beliefs.”
That is the conflict at the very heart of the article.
Not ALL Trump voters think the same way, of course, but, then, not ALL Trump supporters are
still Trump supporters. The article attempts to identify the primary appeal, the pivotal issue, responsible for his electoral victory - not perform a personal diagnosis of every single individual voter simultaneously. It's difficult to argue that "economic anxiety" was truly the deciding factor when you control for income and you strip away all of the issues Trump ran on in the campaign, and then ran
from as President.
His staunchest supporters don't seem to care what he says or what he does. It's what he
is that matters to them. He is a proud, unapologetic straight, White, Christian, cisgender male who fights back against the encroaching threats to dominance and hegemony that have so panicked his supporters. If you truly believe that progressives are planning some sort of violent reckoning for White people, then, yes, you've admitted that's a big factor for you, too.
Incidentally, if you're trying to show how fair-minded and anti-racist you are, acting like people of color should be
grateful that you're following the law and including them among your hires isn't a good look.
If you're a government contractor, the OFCCP
requires this. (A fact many conservatives appear to resent.) Let's not make a virtue of necessity.
Would it not sound suspect for someone to say, in defense of the charge that progressives want to round up all the White people, "That's not fair. I treat my White employees well. I haven't killed or even beaten a single one. You can ask them. I'm the least genocidal person you can imagine. I've done so much for these White people by not killing them. They owe every breath they and their progeny take to my mercy. It's outrageous that you'd suggest I don't value them as equals."
The whole "I treat the Black people who work under me well" argument is pretty tone deaf, honestly, and it runs parallel to a passage from the article:
Nor did many white Southerners accept that Jim Crow segregation was a fundamentally unjust arrangement. Sokol recalls Harris Wofford’s 1952 description of his time in Dallas County, Alabama, which a woman who ran the county’s chamber of commerce described as “a [slur redacted] heaven.”
“The [Black people] know their place and seem to keep in their place. They’re the friendly sort around here,” she explained. “If they are hungry, they will come and tell you, and there is not a person who wouldn’t feed and clothe a [Black person].”
The formulation is surely familiar: She attested to her intimate and friendly interpersonal relationships with black people as a defense of a violent, kleptocratic system that denied them the same fundamental rights that she enjoyed. In fact, it was the subordinate position of black people that made peaceful relations possible.
If the White people in 1952 who used racial slurs to describe their Black neighbors in Dallas County, Alabama were racist, why would they "feed and clothe" them?
There is a distinction to be made between accepting individuals as peers (I have Black friends!) and being complicit in a system that renders people of color subordinate as a class. Equality doesn't mean "you can be the Tonto to my Lone Ranger." Equality doesn't mean "you get to share in America's bounty, but remember always that you're just a passenger on this ship. You're a guest. Be grateful we let you on board. Know your place. You will respect your captain, you will respect this vessel, and you will salute whatever flag we fly."
I reject that. And so I reject Donald Trump.
