Racial Witch-Hunt The Left is Guilty of Racial McCarthyism

coastie

Hallelujah Adonai Yeshua!
Apr 6, 2002
5,395
48
43
Central Valley of CA
Visit site
✟8,286.00
Faith
Baptist
Marital Status
Married
Politics
US-Libertarian
More...

I wouldn't personally call the opposition to affirmative action "race-bating".

There were big problems with the system when it first came out. I see those problems as being assessed and it seems that the measure isn't so extreme.

Racists are like fleas, they choose a host and stick to them unless the host nukes them. Maybe a good perverbial "flea bath" would help erradicate all types of racism... but how do we do that?

About the "drug-scares" I could see where demographics would encourage the boasts, however, race had no place in the drug wars. Drugs are an issue that crossed any cultural lines and invaded everyone. Nailing it as a stereotype was a HUGE mistake and embarrassment.

It drives me nuts that so many conservative Republicans are oblivious to the racist origins of some of their classic arguments, but then again, I suppose that is one way of outgrowing those origins …maybe.

I'd say that I'm for the most part oblivious, but keep in mind the generational gap between conservatives of the 80s and early-90s and the younger swarm of conservatives now.

And also keep in mind that where I'm from, I was pretty near a minority. Now up here in Washington, we have a few of those backwards, elderly biggots and occassional confederate flag ont he back of a pick-up. The reason for the ignorance around here is that 99% of the folk around here are white and all they know of other races is the stereotypes that they get from HBO (one of the worst channels for inadvertently encouraging racism).

Maybe the generational differences will just be like a flea medication and slowly destroy the racists and keep them off instead of just a quick rinse.
 
Upvote 0

Brimshack

Well-Known Member
Mar 23, 2002
7,275
473
57
Arizona
✟12,010.00
Faith
Atheist
That generation gap is part of what I'm talking about. Many conservatives today are fairly unaware that some of the principles of conservativism developed as strategic defases of discrimination. Whether that's bad or good dependds on the degree to which racism is actually embedded in the latent structures of American politics. If it isn't then fine, conservatives are outgrowing a bad tendency, but if racism is central to American institutions, then we are just losing a means of addressing it.

I'm not saying that all opposition to affirmative action is based on racism. I am saying that the message that one is against affirmative action has been used strategically to attract racists to the Republican party. This is one reaason, for example, that Reagan used to use his anti-affirmative action themes most in the deep South; it was a way of saying to the racists, I will fight the same people you would. It is an example of someone using a plausible message to mask a shaemful one.

Drug scares have almost always had a racial overtone, and when they didn't have a racial overtone, a taregt group was always defined by other means. There is always a scape-goat community attached to each major wave of anti-drug hysteria. I'm not talking about standard law enforcement; I'm talking about crime control waves; moments when politicians seize the issue and use it as a means of distorting larger and more complex problems.

Movement - Target Community - Larger Issue.
Temperance - Irish Catholics - Industrialization.
Heroin/Opium - Chinese (Irony abounds!) - (Not sure, perhaps more industrialization).
Marijuana - Mexicans (then Hippies) - Vietnam + Changes in family structure.
Crack - African Americans - Deindustrialization.
 
Upvote 0