Many anti-racist movements are focused on changing policies, and not just people. For example, support for criminal justice reform, or opposition to voter ID laws that disenfranchise black people.

The tendency to focus on "racism" as this kind of secret inner feeling usually misses this point. Many Republicans oppose meaningful criminal justice reform, while supporting voter ID laws even when they egregiously impact black people disproportionately. If I call that "racist", I'm not making a claim that Republicans secretly believe that black people are inferior, I'm making a claim about the impact of policies. You should support policies which make institutions like the criminal justice system less racially discriminatory.

Can someone post the "real story here is the leaks" thisisfine.jpg? mongi is literally a comic.

btw "whoever leaked this" is a member of Trump's inner circle who leaked this because they are ****ing terrified of Trump's ability to lead this country. Meanwhile mongi here is like "yeah wow this really shows he's on the right track" because he has no gear other than full Trump slurping

How do you figure the poor and middle class pay a higher % of their income than the rich? Are you including charitable donations and tax shelters where they are playing a -EV game just to avoid taxes?

The argument that the poor benefit from letting the rich keep more of their money is based off the premise that rich people are more productive with their money as evidenced on them being rich.

Giving poor people more money doesn't make them better off at a certain point. It is up to discussion where this point is.

When a liberal uses the term racist very loosely in a political setting their goal isn't to reduce racism. They are trying to vilify that person to win a political battle.

I don't know of anyone here who has said that all trump voters are racist/elitest. Clearly some of them are just brain dead.

I'm not sure how saying that "voter ID laws are racist" would be better than just saying they "egregiously impact black people disproportionately" but I wouldn't have much of a problem with either statement.

I have also seen enough of your posts to know that you wouldn't make the leap and say "supporters of voter ID laws are racists". It just seems a whole lot of people aren't that careful or don't understand the difference.

People use the word racist as shorthand. People don't speak very carefully all the time. People fall into the tendency of over-generalizing about out-groups, even political out-groups. People are often under-informed and their rhetoric over-inflated. All of that happens. Politics is contentious, people gon' people, etc.

But the reason why concepts like "tone policing" and "concern trolling" exist is that it becomes fairly evident over time that the tendency to couch opposition to specific policies, social movements, or even "leftists" in general in terms of complaints about the use of language, or incivility and immoderation, is a deflectionary tactic. It's not that there's never a valid complaint to be made on those points, it's that focusing on only those points is a handy way to avoid ever addressing the core issues. And I think mongidig is expressing the more fundamental disagreement when he says that "focusing on more subtle racism is a waste of time." The underlying disagreement is not that people are too cantankerous in their use of the word racist, it's about whether there are any actual problems of racism that we should try to solve.

Here you run into the other problem of insisting that "racism" can only ever mean the secret inner belief in the inferiority of one race or the superiority of another. I would certainly argue that shrugging one's shoulders and dismissing the need to deal with these problems because "people aren't going to change" is a kind of racism. The premise is that racism is natural and therefore there's no point in trying to do anything about it. It's not an explicit belief in white supremacy, but it's a way of thinking that excuses inequality and injustice as a natural fact. The point is, in a society where there are structural barriers against racial equality, people don't have to embrace an explicitly white supremacist ideology in order to perpetuate an effectively racist status quo. They don't have to be "evil" people. They only have to find ways of justifying the status quo. "We can't do anything about racism because it's natural" is a clear expression of that kind of justification. Is it ideologically more complex than the white supremacy of Alexander Stephens? Yes. But this kind of belief is nevertheless very important to any explanation of why racial inequalities persist. Just because people who hold these views will insist that they aren't "racist" (in the explicit white supremacist sense) doesn't mean that there attitudes aren't directly relevant to the existence of racism.

In some cases it's hard to say what the underlying motives or beliefs are for people who support different laws, because laws can be complicated and impact different groups in different ways. On the other hand there're some laws and politicians that are so transparent in what they stand for that you can pretty reasonably conclude what a persons thought process would have to be in order to give their support.

Can you give examples?

The only one I can think of are voter ID laws.

Can you explain this across racial groups? For example, let's say you believe whites have racist attitudes towards people with dark skin (something that can easily be believed), how do you explain the astonishing success of Indian Americans?

Let's say you think society is racist towards poor minorities. How do you explain the success of dirt poor Chinese? (Yes. Many Chinese are incredibly poor).

I have the exact opposite view. I think America is amazingly not racist. In my experience no one really cares what you are. I've worked at quite a few companies and met a lot of people in my life. I've actually come across some true racists, but they were never in a work environment and they very much left me alone, after they let me know they disliked my racial group. It was harmless, and very rare.

This racial issue is something that resides with one group of people who can't stop talking about it - white liberals. Only white liberals.

And one last thing - I've never met, not once, a single Asian person who ever blamed white racism for their lack of success in anything. Never. Why do you think that is, if there's all this racism out there?

I've answered this question from you at least 3 times previously. It's not clear to me why I should expect that it's worth answering it for the fourth time when you've never shown any interest in the answers before.

There are people out there who don't trust others when they say something is racist. That have heard so many things be called racist that aren't that they now want to know why things are said to be racist.

Also calling a law racist means you believe it is racist where saying a particular law impacts one race more than another doesn't necessarily mean it is racist since every law effects different races differently and there isn't a black and white line that says if one race is x% more effected by a law than another race then it is racist.

We have a voter ID thread so I don't think we need to go on a huge tangent here.

Not much in the US in 2017. Everything has been forced through a filter where it has to pass at least a basic test of plausible deniability wrt the intent of the law to not be challenged, so at least in this country from a single law you can't say anything conclusively. It's when you look at their history that you'd have an easier time putting the pieces together.

I can see health care, as some view it as a direct wealth transfer. That's about it though.

I'm not trying to badger you. I just never got an answer to satisfy my questions. I used to believe in massive racism because everyone assured me it was there and I just believed it. I don't anymore.

"According to a poll from Public Policy Polling, Baywatch star Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson would get 42% of the vote in a two-way matchup with Trump; Trump would only garner 37%."

id vote for the rock if he chose stone cold as vp. idiocracy is real.

1) GOATrump would beat the Rock by a margin somewhere in between where he beat hillary and the margin he would have beat bernie sanders (the guy w/ the old balls who opposed hillary for the dem nomination for a couple weeks). PS: I know that is a huge range.

2) Even though Trump knows he would beat the rock nobody wants to go one on one with the great one.

3) The Rock is not a baywatch star. The man is a WWE superstar.

Dwayne Johnson is the man.

inauguration speech

"finallllly, the rock has come back....to the white house"

Commander In Strong: These 4 Pictures Of Donald Trump Not Being Attacked By Birds Prove That He Has Utter Dominion Over The Skies

Yet another long post by Well Named that racism exists both among individuals and systemically, racism should end and racism is not acceptable. I agree, racism should end both systemically and with individuals. I agree it is not acceptable. I will go a step further laws that criminalize racial discrimination should be enforced aggressively and diligently. Also systemic racism should be eradicated.

So what else do you have?

This is probably the most relevant response to a related question you've asked previously.

On your specific post now, I would challenge you to provide evidence that "dirt-poor" Chinese people are more successful than black people in the US.

Mostly, though, my answer is, and has been since the first time we discussed this, that racial inequalities in the US reduce in some large part to socio-economic inequalities. As I argued in the post above, the main function of ideologies about race and racism in the US now is not so much to promote explicitly white supremacist ideas as to justify the status quo, which helps keep poor black people poor. With some racist stereotyping on the side (e.g. "lazy blacks"). On this point, I also continue to highly recommend the book Racism without Racists. The criminal justice system could be described as being as much "anti-poor" as "anti-black" (cf. the Ferguson FBI report), although there is also evidence of explicitly anti-black prejudice. I cited more than a few data points on that in the Race and Crime thread and elsewhere. But socio-economic status is obviously enormously important.

The comparison to Asian groups is problematic because the majority of Asians in the US are recent immigrants who were relatively economically advantaged before immigrating. In other words, they aren't already poor, so the structural issues don't exist for them in the same way. This is especially true of Indian-Americans (cf. the quote from MPI in my link above). Basically, my argument is not and has never been that Americans are virulent white supremacists as a rule. Your question always seems to assume this idea of "racism", but I've explicitly argued against it from the beginning. My theme has been that present racial inequality represents the legacy of a more virulently racist past in which black Americans were systematically impoverished, propped up by a kind of ideological indifference (cf. my point about mongidig, or consider residential segregation), and perpetuated by structural problems in institutions like the police and courts. All of that is exacerbated by at least some amount of explicit discrimination, for which evidence exists and has been provided on more than a few occasions.

So, yes, we agree that the kind of racism you are referring to and focusing on is more rare than in the past. This is a point that I've agreed with enthusiastically and repeatedly. Mostly, I think the problem is that you don't seem to understand the actual argument I've made about the connection between economic stratification and racial inequality. It's this connection that's missing from your comparison between black Americans and other ethnic/racial groups.

I mean, Im sure you have heard about this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/op...uper-rich.html

this is false ofc. ppl do change. for instance, my views have changed immensely as I have gotten older and been exposed to different ppl, situations, news/events, and viewpoints.

Of course there can be disagreement that lower taxes is good. Also, it seems likely that Trump is so incompetent that tax reform will never get done.

Not really; I'm more asking about your support for him now. I'm not trying to vilify you for your choice on election day; that serves no purpose. I'm interested in the now. And I think that it is now extremely obvious that Trump is extremely incompetent and stupid. I would expect this concern to override any alignment you may have with him on policy issues.

Okay, yes, we agree. Doesn't this concern you?

What do you like about Pence? Are you religious?

Could you expand on which ones you are happy (and not happy) with, and why?

Why? I mean, I think this answer is a little more self-explanatory and you are just going to say "because he's a conservative" in which case, fine, I guess, from the standpoint of the election. But again, I'm much more interested in whether and why you support Trump now, not whether you think you made the right choice at election time.

Also, do you endorse the GOPs tactics re: Merrick Garland?

But you admitted that you "see lots of incompetence." Don't you think that makes him dangerous? He has an incredibly important job. Note, I do not mean this solely in the realm of foreign policy although that is certainly a focus.



What in the **** do you think putting a tax increase in a healthcare bill does if not tell the rich we are going to take more of their money via higher taxes to pay for the poors' health care? Like, what would it look like if it weren't a "transfer of wealth" in your eyes?

I don't actually know the relative tax rates of the "poor" and the "rich" and it's going to depend a lot on how you categorize the two but capital gains tax rates are obviously what is being referred to here.

Uh, what? Having more money would make them not poor, and then they would be better off because they are not poor. Like, what are you talking about?


Dirt poor Chinese are not successful; they are dirt poor.

I'm not going to express an opinion about whether your conclusion here is right or wrong but you realize your personal anecdote is not very strong evidence right?