This is the thread where I will post my thoughts that would prompt the libs in the other forum to just call me a racist, idiot, etc. and eventually ban me. I obviously hope to be given a little more tolerance here.

Anyone else feel free to participate or not. It is all up to you.

Anyways, to start I should clarify something that would probably surprise most of the people here. I am actually fairly liberal in most of my personal beliefs. I believe in right to abortion, I believe gay marriage should be a right, I believe in govt regulations, I believe the rich should be taxed much more than they are. I am not even particularly racist. I have never written or said the N word in my life, and I generally get along with all people of races, creeds, orientations.

I do believe Islam is a problem. It is a religion of violence IMO, it really is not compatible with the 21st century, and the fact there is over 1 billion Muslims in the world I view as an extreme hinderance towards peace and progress in the world moving forward. I believe most Muslims are good, peaceful people, but I believe they are in spite of their religion and not because of it.

Anyways, although I personally am liberal in most of my beliefs, I recognize that most of the people alive today, who have ever lived, or who ever will live, are not, and I dont think that is an accident. I also think liberals are hugely hypocritical in their selective condemnation of those that dont have the same beliefs that they do. If you breeze through the Trump threads in the other forum it is pretty clear the narrative is that white people who voted for Trump are racists who should be condemned, but we as a group have nothing bad to say about the millions of non white persons who voted for Trump. We just shrug our shoulders and make excuses, like "Many hispanics are anti-abortion." I see this is a humongous double standard.

Guess what. If a white male is a racist moron for voting for Trump, than so is a black person, or Cuban person, or a woman. You cant have it both ways.

I think we have a tendency to think of any group as monolithic. This goes for both sides of the debate. I don't want to use left right or democrat republican since those terms are not rigorous enough.

A policy making Saudi Royal is not remotely similar to a Muslim in Kosovo. A reluctant Trump supporter is not remotely like David Duke. A moderate liberal has very little in common with Pol Pot.

The extreme members of an ideology usually has more in common with the extreme members of the opposition than he has in common with the moderates of his own ideology.

What we need is a bit more of empathy all around and open discussion and never have ideology override empathy and kindness.

Does that go for Jews and Christians? The first one is the important one since Jewish people have a similar book with no get out of jail NT.

Yup, you're definitely a Trump loving Nazi idiot, and you should be banned.

The problem with this argument is that the vast vast majority of Jewish people are not really religious, and the ones that are are very fringe. If there were 1 billion Orthodox Jews that took the Bible literally, or at least gave power to those that did, and they actually Had real power it would definitely be a problem.

But the truth is they are a tiny tiny portion of the population and are a fringe element in Israel, forget the rest of the world.

The same is true for Christianity to s lesser extent. The danger of Islam is that a lot of people actually believe it, or at least give power to those that do. I don't feel that is the case with Judaism or Christianity. For good or bad, most of the western world practices the religion of capitalism, and religion is not a major part of how they live their life.

I guess the takeaway from that segue is that I do not think that people practicing christianity or Judaism is s major problem for peace and stability in the world moving forward the way I do Islam.

Depends on what kind of Christianity they're practicing. If it's the modern, watered-down version, then no problem. If it's the kind where they think they know best for everyone else, and have no problem eliminating the "reprobates", then that's a problem. There are still some miserable places to live in the US if you're not one of "chosen few".

I'm not sure I've seen anyone trying to have it both ways. I saw you post this in the form of a question in the main politics forum ("are black Trump voters racist?"), but I didn't see anyone answer. Perhaps someone answered no and I missed it.

In any case, I think there's some confusion caused (as usual) by people using the word "racist" in different ways. I saw this article posted in at least one thread, and while I expect that you will find much of it quite over the top, it makes at least one point that I think is relevant to your framing and which explains why liberal posters are mostly just rejecting some of your premises:

However inartfully this is sometimes expressed by posters, it is imo almost exactly what they mean if they call Trump voters racist. What is meant is that they cast a vote for racism. Given that explanation, it is of course true that black, latino, asian, women, or whatever other minority-group members who voted for Trump also voted for racism. I don't believe you will get any disagreement on that point. On the other hand, it is also more likely that white Trump voters are motivated by negative racial stereotypes, although of course black voters can also hold these views. They are just generally less likely to do so. But the two different arguments (Trump voters voted for racist outcomes; Trump voters are more likely to hold negative stereotypes) can get conflated.

Mostly, I think you're getting eye-rolling reactions (justified or not) from people who think both points are pretty obvious, and who also think that the attempt to find hypocrisy represents a shallow attempt to avoid dealing with the consequences of Trump's rhetoric and policy. Maybe that's not fair, but I think you're also making bad assumptions when you accuse people of hypocrisy to begin with.

Name one racist thing Trump has said.

if you decide not to go into "the bad part of town" at night by yourself are you a racist?

In response to the first bolded sentence, I certainly have never seen anyone agree with this sentiment. I don't think they do. Of course due to the crazy SJW political correctedness culture we live in, most people are probably scared to call out anyone who isnt a white male for supporting racism, for fear of being called a racist in return.

In response to the second sentence, I actually vehemently disagree. Although it is true black people may be less racist against other black people, they are certainly racist. The problem is as a society we somehow decided that it is acceptable, and in many cases, encouraged for minorities to be racist against white people, and in many cases it is ok for them to be racist against other minorities, and in fact we dont even call it racism. We just shrug our shoulders and move on.

And this is another giant double standard. And as I have said before, IMO the liberal left practices a much more subtle, dangerous form of paternal racism than anything the right does. That is holding minorities to lower standards of behavior. I dont know if you have ever seen the coming of age football movie "Remember the Titans" but I think this movie touches on this theme very well.

Kind of a dodge. If Jewish people who practice their religion peacefully are not really religious. Its fair, if not not.

When it comes to understanding why the Democrats lost this election the giant elephant in the room that noone is willing to acknowledge is that a lot of people voted for Barrack Obama just because he was black, and these same people didn't even bother to vote for Hillary because she wasn't.

We love to build this narrative that the low turnout for the democrats relative to 2008 and 2012 was due to dissatisfaction among the Sanders crowd with Hillary. But I doubt this was the case. In reality I have a feeling if we really dig deep into what happened in all the swing states such as Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan to cause the electoral college to shift to Trump, we will see that many people who voted for Obama just because he was black decided not to vote at all this time around.

At a minimum, you might want to work on your rhetoric, because that's the most suspicious qualifier I ever saw.

I do agree that if I were to pick a race for least racist, in 2016, it would be white people.

That I definitely agree with.

Ah, captain homogeneous is here to Klansplain things for us. First of all, f*** you. His birther crusade, alone, is fundamentally racist.

But also:

13 Examples Of Donald Trump Being Racist

“I think the guy is lazy,” Trump said of a black employee, according to O’Donnell. “And it’s probably not his fault because laziness is a trait in blacks. It really is, I believe that. It’s not anything they can control.”

“Claiming a person can’t do their job because of their race is sort of like the textbook definition of a racist comment.” - House Speaker Paul Ryan

"Look at my African American over there!"

Like trying to make it difficult for poors and minorities to vote.

I'm going to respond to things a little out of order because that's the way they fit together to me.

I would posit that, given that I am one of the crazy SJW political correctness advocates that you mention, I may have a better feel for what we believe than you do. But of course any of the people who you have in mind who post here are welcome to correct me if I'm wrong.

This is an assertion for which there is really no evidence. Exit polling can give us some feel for the level of support candidates receive with different demographic groups, and the level of turnout for that group, but it doesn't tell you much if anything about what causes changes in those numbers from election to election. You're simply assuming that Obama outperforming Clinton (or Kerry) is due to his race, but considering that Obama outperformed Clinton and Kerry in every demographic group, that is not the most parsimonious explanation. The simpler explanation is that he was just a universally more popular candidate, especially in comparison to Clinton.

Now, given the number of voters and the variety of motivations they possess, it's a certainty that some black voters voted for essentially racial reasons. It's also a certainty (because they told us) that some white voters voted for Trump explicitly because they see him as a vehicle for white nationalism. It seems inconsistent to chide liberals for treating all Trump voters as being motivated by support for white nationalism while at the same time assuming (on even less evidence) that each additional black voter who voted for Obama was motivated by anti-white racism. There's also of course a difference between enthusiasm about the election of a first black president and anti-white racism.

I would not concede to begin with that liberals hold minorities to lower standards of behavior, but I would concede that liberals are less concerned about the existence of hostility towards white people than they are hostility towards black people, at least as far as "concern" indicates thinking that something is a pressing socio-political problem. I am inferring that when you say blacks are racist you are referring mostly to antipathy towards whites.

It's useful to think about why liberals are less concerned about this. Liberal concern about racism isn't just about what you can say or not say, or about feelings of antipathy, although clearly those are important. But the major concerns are about social outcomes like the racial biases in the criminal justice system, the effects of segregation and the concentration of poverty, employment discrimination, and etc. They are concerns about structural social inequalities most of all. These are problems that affect black people far more than white people, and they are not caused by anti-white racism. If we were designing a perfect society from a blank canvas, obviously black antipathy towards whites would be as concerning as white antipathy towards blacks, but our situation is not such a blank canvas.

Beyond that, while I don't think liberals should condone anti-white racism or encourage it, it isn't hard to see why liberals might find more understanding of it, given the history of racism in the US. The antipathy that some blacks feel about white people is easy to grasp in the context of and as a consequence of racism present and past. Negative stereotypes that whites have about blacks are relatively less easy to feel empathy towards for many people. Again, that is not a justification for condoning or encouraging such views, but when you add this consideration together with the fact that actual structural inequalities are harming black people and not white people, liberal concern with anti-black racism over anti-white racism isn't hard to grasp.

More succinctly, accusations of double standards mostly just ignore the actual disputes. Liberals don't begin with some premise that anti-white racism is OK but anti-black racism isn't. That would indeed be silly. They begin with the acknowledgement that racism (especially of the structural variety, which does not reduce to measuring individual antipathy) is a far more consequential social problem for blacks than it is for whites, and prioritize it according to that perception.

Well named.

You make very valid points. And if the majority of white people were (relatively) affluent and agreed they were the beneficiary of racial injustice, and the majority of black people not, they may even agree with you that the double standard is ok.

The reality is though that the majority of white people in this country are poor and struggling to get by, and wether they are the beneficiaries of historical injustice, they certainly don't view themselves this way, so it is not surprising they would be hostile to a political movement that dismisses their concerns and ridicules them.

I live in a pretty liberal area and if you watch tv or listen to the radio it is open season on white people. Especially white males. For example one of the radio stations has a segment called "redneck news" and as you could guess the premise of it is finding news stories, normally involving criminal activity, that involves poor white people and then ridiculing them for it. And no one has a problem with this. I don't need to tell you the social outrage we would all be feeling of the target of such a segment was a minority group.

Again, I am not a trump supporter. However, given the double standards of liberalism, and it's antipathy towards poor whites people and their concerns, I certainly understand why a narcissistic reality television star demagogue could win the presidency of the United states by positioning himself as a champion of poor whites against the liberal political movement in this country.

Of course the true irony of all of this is that poor white people are as much the victims of the income gap between the haves and have nots as poor minorities, and given that this will most likely get worse under a trump presidency, they would peobably be better off with Clinton as president and a more liberal political apparatus.

Also

fWIW I don't really consider you a SJW political corrected ness advocate. If you were you would have just dismissed me as horrible or racist and not even bothered.

I rhink you are selling yourself way short by referring to yourself as a SJW.

Damn, good **** in here. Thanks Ben, and well named.

I would not claim that white people are beneficiaries of racial injustice. I only claimed that black people suffer the negative consequences of it. I think perhaps you are confusing "racial injustice" as a concept with "white privilege". The latter is often castigated for implying that poor white people have it better than they really do, and while I accept that the choice of terminology might not be the most effective, I don't actually think it means to imply that conclusion. The intended definition is not so much "privilege" in the sense of a benefit but in the sense of the absence of a problem others face, along with the idea that the problems become invisible.

Additionally, I would not claim that racial injustice or racial inequality is the only social/political/economic problem that exists, or even the only kind of structural inequality. Maybe SJWs can be criticized for over-reliance on the concept of inequality as a lens through which to view politics, but they generally also recognize class inequality as an important feature of society. Politically, I certainly accept various criticisms of the Democratic party establishment on the grounds that it is too beholden to the interests of the wealthy even while pushing a social justice agenda, but both myself and many others here voted for Bernie in the primaries for just that reason.

Here again I'd just note that there are important reasons why people are less sensitive about "Redneck News" than the "Black crime" tag on Breitbart (not to overstate the size or importance of the latter, but just as an example). There is not the same concern that cultural antipathy is and will be used to support broadly discriminatory policies. I sort of doubt that the Redneck News section is explicitly framed in a way that calls out the race of the people being made fun of, but if it is I would highly disapprove. You can make a reasonable argument that it's not PC to make fun of dumb people or poor people (for being poor and dumb) or whatever but at some point it seems like too much social engineering even for me.

As a general comment, while perhaps white dudes have been taking it on the chin a bit in popular culture (n.b. I'm a white dude), most analyses of modern racism try very hard to emphasize that structural racism doesn't reduce neatly to a moral judgement of all individual white people or the contention that they are all morally deplorable.

There is yet another SJW concept used to describe how white people tend to react strongly to allegations of racial injustice, even when they are not personally implicated, called "white fragility". In my own experience, since I've spent a fair amount of time discussing these issues, it's a very real phenomena. Sure, not everything everyone says on the internet, or in life, about racism and racists is perfectly measured and reasonable. Nor is the movement monolithic. On the other hand, civil rights and social justice movements are ultimately not actually about telling white people how bad they are, they are about changing social conditions for the better. I don't think it's easy to make a compelling argument for this very briefly, but I think there's a good argument that the "white fragility" phenomena is a powerful force in preserving the status quo. Whether or not activists are perfectly measured in their advocacy isn't directly relevant to the question of whether or not social injustices exist or are worth trying to improve. It's not a zero-sum game.

One way or another, where I think we may find agreement is simply that I would agree that a lot of the polarization in the US is as much cultural as political. It is my belief that supporters of diversity, pluralism, and multi-culturalism should strive to bridge divides, whether between political parties, or between urban and rural cultures, or between races. But, it can't be a one-way street, and the importance of fixing problems in (for example) the criminal justice system shouldn't hinge on how politely and gently BLM activists tend to the feelings of white people.

From exit polling, the poorest did prefer Clinton, although I can't quickly find this broken out by race. Obviously exit polling can also be taken with a grain of salt. In any case, one can certainly believe that class inequality is as large of a problem (or larger) than racial inequality (or gender inequality) and still find good reasons to be political allies with social justice advocates focused on race or gender, considering that Republicans are unlikely to make better allies. Far be it from me to suggest that Democrats are perfect. My support is far more pragmatic.

Good thread QB. Have you considered whether Islam can progress under the US culture, laws, human rights, paved roads, public schools, etc, etc?

We're all so contradictory right? Closeted Christians against gay marriage or Mexican immigrant Trump voter. And we're all still safe living with the dangerous ideas of goldbugging doomers, and those doomers are about to be extremely disappointed that their vote for Trump, wasn't a vote for anarchy. I can totally see Islam evolving towards peace and progress in society while privately holding onto their identity by reading old testament style beliefs and stories.