Zonie63
Posts: 2826
Joined: 4/25/2011
From: The Old Pueblo
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Phydeaux
Johnathan Chait is occassionally interesting and his introspection on liberals fascination with rascism was a worth a read.
It also prompted a pretty good conservative response here: http://thefederalist.com/2014/05/02/why-liberals-think-conservatives-are-racist/. First few paragraphs are slow..
I don't believe that liberals think conservatives are racist. From my observation, they seem to think that conservatives are conservatives and that racists are racists. There are some who might be both, but racism is a mode of thought that doesn't even seem to have any logical place on the political spectrum anyway. However, since racism is often tied in with nationalism, the associations with nationalism/fascism/racism as more extreme forms of conservatism are rather common. But historically, tracing the etymologies of these various philosophies, it's not so cut-and-dried.
In today's political rhetoric, where it's often hard to separate the wheat from the chaff, there's always going to be a lot of loud talk going back and forth. Does the race card get played dishonestly sometimes? I'm sure it does, but then there are other times it might be appropriate. It's up to each individual to make his/her own judgments based on the circumstances of each case. If it's a case of illegal discrimination or worse, then it's a matter for the law, but as with anything, everyone deserves a fair hearing and their day in court. If someone just makes a stupid or ignorant remark which isn't illegal but is caught on tape and gets condemned publicly in the open marketplace of ideas, then that's just the way the cookie crumbles.
But in this case, it seems the writer of this article is trying to make a generalized defense of "we're not racists" without any real coherent accusation of racism to actually address. It's the defense which is questionable, and it can sometimes lead to digging an even deeper hole. It's like someone saying "I'm not a racist; some of my best friends are ______."
I suppose one reason why liberals or anyone else might have a "fascination" with racism is because of our history and very long track record of lying and deception to mitigate centuries of invasion, colonization, slavery, and genocide. We started off this country by saying "all men are created equal," but it didn't turn out that way at all. Of course, we still had slavery, and there were countless broken treaties with sovereign nations - but we didn't care because it was our "Manifest Destiny." Even after slavery officially ended and there wasn't any more land to steal, we were all supposedly "free" and "equal." Well, actually they said "separate but equal" but that was another one of those nasty little fibs we kept telling ourselves. It was just one thing after another, so if people tend to be a bit leery about these kinds of deceptions which have had nasty historical consequences, there's a reason for it.
It wasn't all that "equal" even amongst whites, depending on which class, nationality, and gender they belonged to, so a lot of people from different races and backgrounds have a strong self-interest wanting to sift through and identify some of the bullshit that gets floated around out there. The problem is that we're never really completely honest with ourselves or others about the whole thing, so it keeps everyone guessing and wondering, contributing to an atmosphere of suspicion and mistrust. But a lot of the political rhetoric doesn't really seem to help that much either.
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RE: Liberal delusions on racism - .gif){kind=avatar}
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