Running racism in America thread

I was thinking of the argument "America "is/isn't" racist." Is the argument against saying the "idea" of America isn't racist? Surely slavery was racist. Certainly not allowing black players in baseball was racist. Denying them or making it extremely difficult to register/vote was racist. I think most people would agree that at least "some" Americans are racist. But even then I'd like to know when they thought America stopped being racist. When Jackie Robinson debuted? When the Civil Rights Act passed? When Obama was elected?

 

The "idea" isn't racist, the "practice" of America is racist. And for some of the reasons you mention like "some" Americans are racist. Because some are, we can't truly get past some of the institutions that continue to perpetuate the practice of racism even though things got better. The idea of America is we are a land of opportunity. I don't mean that in the cliche way it's used, we literally have much opportunity here. The opportunity to go from criminal to success. To go from sneaking in to small business owner. To go from poverty to having a comfortable living. Not everyone can get it, but it's true. We're not the only country where this is true, but in the US, it is. But the practice of America is we continue to make voting difficult for communities of color. We incarcerate people of color at rates that far exceed their proportion of the population. Interactions with authorities—police, government officials, etc—differ based on the color of your skin. The people in power are, by and large, white men. The CEOs are, by and large, white men. People receive better medical treatment. Some of this is poverty and where you live, but there is something to be said that white impoverished people get some semblance of a benefit of the doubt more than others.

Things were supposed to be better after Obama, but it went hard the other direction. Neo Nazis gained a foothold in government. What happened this last June wasn't because America suddenly forgot to stop being racist. It was because America never ceased being racist. The anger wouldn't be there if there weren't underlying problems.

To your point, things are better than they were 50 years ago. We no longer have overt segregation. We have protections for who can buy homes. There is more integration in politics and sports and entertainment. But the struggles continue.

I mean, shit, look at what happened in the election. Communities of color were the votes that were under the strongest scrutiny by the Trump administration. Look at how bold racists are becoming. They feel like they have a legitimate voice.

 

America doesn’t exist in a vacuum and it wasn’t founded in a vacuum. For 150 years before America was independent it was a mostly English colony. It was the English, largely, with Spanish imperial Catholicism, that brought slavery to the Western Hemisphere. 14-17th century slavery wasn’t founded upon racism, it was founded on religious and territorial wars fought in the Iberian Peninsula. Catholics and Muslims taking the other side prisoner and turning them into slaves, as had been done across the Mediterranean for thousands of years.
It wasn’t until slavery came to the Western Hemisphere where Catholics had a convert, die or enslavement policy with indigenous peoples. And a little later got the Pope’s literal blessing to enslave Africans as subhuman, often because of their lack of Christianity as any human trait.
America didn’t invent slavery, though it did refine the racist argument that African slaves were not fully human and therefore slavery was permissible. And then they dropped the pretense and just went with, “Fuck you and them, it makes us rich”

what America did that was nearly unique and equally reprehensible was to oppress their former slaves. There was racial classifications in the Spanish and former Spanish colonies, but they ended slavery sooner and without Apartheid after. America imposed both legal and de facto discrimination, oppression and Apartheid.

the legacy of American racism isn’t slavery, that’s a human legacy and it was practiced by nearly every group in human history. America may have been one of the last to have and end slavery. It’s not America’s original sin, it’s humanity’s sin.
America’s sin is the 160 years of oppression following he 13th amendment.

 

We are the biggest set of contradictions. The founders of the New England colonies came over to get religious freedom, but ended up oppressing other religions too (thus leading to Connecticut and Rhode Island breaking off from Massachusetts). We happily helped the British fight the French, but didn't want to help them pay for the war (that's a simplistic argument of the revolution, but it was a driving factor). We broke away from the government declaring that individuals are sovereign and we only have government to serve us. And we can change those governments when there is a long series of abuses against our collective sovereignty. Except that whole "all men are created equal" and are entitled to "life, liberty and happiness" was for all those who were white enough.

Everyone has certain rights under the Constitution, except in the 1820s the Supreme Court said those rights are only against the federal government, not states. This led to some crazy abuses of power. Even when we wrote the 14th amendment to finally give equal protection, it really wasn't established until the 20th century, meanwhile, legalized discrimination was considered equal protection.

We fought a war to preserve democracy and to protect freedom. We freed Jews from camps and decried their use. Except we threw Japanese into camps.

Latin America.
Iran.
Vietnam.
Middle East.

We think we know what's best, except we don't want what's best here.

 

That's true. But much of that stems from the fact that these communities are almost always among the last to report complete results.

If Fulton-Philadelphia-Milwaukee-Wayne-etc. counties were reporting 99 percent as of midnight on election night, you'd likely see less squawking. Because you probably wouldn't see X candidate ahead on election day and behind two days later. It's nobody's fault, but it does fuel the "they knew how many votes they needed and made sure to reach that number" nonsense.

 

So you mean to say that the larger jurisdictions with the most votes take the most time to count? Fucking brilliant revelation. How come the peckerwoods, racists, morons and trump supporters never grasped this earlier? I guess its too intellectual for the conservative christians to understand that it takes more time to count to 300,000 than it does to 30,000.
Thank you Captain Obviously making excuses for scumbags.

 

Angry in victory. Angry in defeat. Asshole in victory. Asshole in defeat. Nothing ever changes.

 

The Comedy Industry Has a Big Alt-Right Problem

 

A war that George Washington started....
Frickin' Stamp Act ....

 

You're really going to say the attacks on the urban vote was colorblind? The rhetoric was anything but colorblind. The attacks were directed exactly at the black vote. Did you see the vast reduction or removal of voting precincts in anywhere BUT the urban centers? You can say its not "de jure" racial voting suppression but it is definitely "de facto" racial voting suppression.

 

I surprised my wife recently with my view of racism in America.

Having been raised in the 60's and 70's, I saw, felt, and heard direct racism.

In the 80's, 90's and through to 2016, that direct over racism receded from my life (although first law school interview though, interviewer literally said "you've got one strike against you, you're a minority"). As I graduated from school and forged a legal career, in the back of my mind I wasn't thinking that racism was gone from American. Far from it. Even though the vast majority of my clients are part of the mainstream, and maybe even from deep red areas, I have always known racism is not far away, the judges, the juries, the opposing counsel and opposing parties.

What has come about 2016- present has not surprised me. It was definitely not what I hoped for, but I've told my kids I believed it was always still there, just simmering below the surface waiting for a climate that would be more accepting.

So I'm not despondent or surprised about the racism that came out recently, just disappointed but hopeful we can get back to where we were pre-2016.

 

Excuse making and rationalizations for and by the white supremacists and capitalism’s failures.