Well, as long as Trump was only saying untrue things…
What’s your spin for his comments on judge Gonzalo Curiel?
I didn’t say it’s not true either. Only that the truth of the statement is not directly related to whether it’s bigoted.
[FWIW, I would be very surprised if illegal immigrants did not have a higher crime rate than native-born people, based on socio-economic factors and demographics. I believe I’ve seen (claims of) stats showing that after normalizing for factors of this sort they actually have a lower crime rate. If so, then Trump’s claim could be spun as true or false, depending on how you look at it.]
Not racist.
Unless you take it out of context, of course.
Look, there’s a fringe minority on both sides that are behaving badly. I’m sorry that happened to your friend, and certainly don’t support people spray-painting swastikas (or really anything) or condone harassing women. And I’m sorry this man got attacked, apparently for expressing his political preference.
I’ll defer to Paul Ryan on this one.
OK, I officially condemn all violence from Trump supporters towards protesters.
That said, as noted in another, pre-election thread, ISTM that throughout the campaign there was more violence directed at Trump supporters than at Clinton supporters (and unlike the former, the latter was primarily - if not exclusively - directed at people protesting Trump events, rather than simply supporters of the other candidate).
So the comparison of post-election reactions in 2016 vs 2012 and 2008 is consistent.
That was probably just CYA from Ryan.
You don’t think it’s more likely that he genuinely thought that stating that Mexican ethnicity could lead a judge to be biased was racist? I think that’s at least a reasonable explanation for Ryan’s statement.
Was that the video about the women people initially labeled as “Protecting Trump’s Hollywood Star”, but it turned out to be about a woman holding up signs saying obscene things about Clinton while she was shouting racial slurs at the crowd? The “attack” consisted of people trying to get her to calm down and quit waving obscene signs in their faces, followed by her rolling onto the ground suddenly and clutching herself while onlookers wondered what the hell was going on.
If that’s the video you tried to link to-sorry. When people tried to find out more about her and the person who “just happened” to post three videos about her, the person who posted those vids pulled them and disappeared.
Anything is possible, which is why I said “probably”. But I don’t think it’s likely.
Fact is that stating that Mexican ethnicity could lead a judge to be biased is not racist. (Do you really disagree with the general notion that a person’s ethnicity can lead them to be biased? That doesn’t seem at all consistent with your approach to these matters.) Fact also is that it’s an extremely impolitic thing to say (in addition to being otherwise unproductive). So Ryan needed to disassociate himself from that statement. And Ryan, unlike Trump, is a professional politician who realizes that.
So it makes more sense for Ryan to be engaging in CYA than in expressing a genuine belief, IMHO. YMMV.
But the added point here is that I highly doubt if Dracoi is in the habit of deferring to Paul Ryan about things of this sort (or anything, actually). When he says he’s deferring to Ryan, what he really means is that “even Republicans admit that it was racist”. And my point is that the “even” is inappropriate, since Ryan had every incentive to say that, for CYA reasons. So unless you’re actually in the habit of deferring to Paul Ryan on general matters, there’s no reason to defer to him here, and we can leave Ryan out of it.
In any event, I personally don’t defer to Ryan – certainly not when there’s enough evidence to make up my own mind - so even in the unlikely event that he really meant it, I disagree anyway.
And I dont see anything that indicates it was a Democrat. A Trump hater involved, yes, but perhaps a Independent.
I believe it’s possible that a person’s experiences, which could include differences based on ethnicity, might lead to bias. But there’s nothing special about Mexican ethnicity – by singling it out, Trump directly implied that a white judge (or other non-Mexican judge) would be less likely to be biased. I find that to be a rather “pure” example of bigotry – that a Mexican judge is more likely to be biased than a white/black/other judge.
Link deleted, but assuming it was the same one that F-P posted earlier, it is out of context.
It does not show how things started. If he expressed his political opinion by yelling out the window “Haha, now that Trump is elected, all you n*** are going back to africa”, then, well I don’t condone violence under any circumstances really, but it could be expected as a consequence of action.
In either case, I am willing to condemn any and all violence, whether it was provoked or not. I have had to reign in my anger a few times at some things I have heard Trump supporters celebrating. And I am a white straight, land owning and business owning male. Conservative policies may actually benefit me.
If I was a minority, and knew that the election was going to have very negative consequences for myself, and some Trump supporter looks to rub it in, well, I may not be as constrained.
Are you familiar with the context of Trump’s remarks? He wasn’t singling out Mexican judges.
He was asked about the lawsuit against him, and his response was that he felt the lawsuit had no merit and the judge in that case had issued bogus rulings against him. And the rationale he gave was that this particular judge happened to be Mexican and was therefore biased against a guy who had promised to build a wall to keep illegal Mexican immigrants out.
There’s nothing racist about such a statement. Any judge could be biased based on ethnicity, but the different biases come into play in different situations.
It’s as if some BLM activist was on trial and the white judge had made rulings that the defendant’s supporters considered unjust and they accused the judge of being biased. That’s not a racist statement.
If they accused the judge of being biased because he was white, then yes, it would be a racist statement.
What part of thinking something about someone based on his race is not racist to you? It is pretty much the pure definition of racism.
I don’t understand how a judge with Mexican ancestry is more likely to be biased regarding a wall on the border with Mexico than a white (or other) judge. Seriously. He might be more likely to be biased against the idea of a wall, but he might similarly be less likely to be biased in favor of the idea of a wall. A white person might be less likely to biased against the wall, but more likely to be biased in favor of it. Of course, judges are trained and expected to ignore any sort of personal bias, but with this statement Trump is also implying that a Mexican judge is less able to do this than a white judge.
To me this is the same sort of broad and common bigotry that white people are somehow blank slates when it comes to things like biases – the idea that only a white person can objectively judge some issue, for example, if it involves race or ethnicity, similar to the idea that only a man can objectively judge some issue involving gender, and only a straight person can objectively judge some issue involving sexual orientation. These are common but bigoted views, and Trump’s insistence that a Mexican judge is more likely to be biased on an issue related to Mexico fits squarely into this type of bigotry.
Do you believe that it’s appropriate to demand that a judge be removed from a case due only to ethnicity? Do you believe that, for example, that asking a black or Jewish judge to step down would be a reasonable request from a defendant in the KKK or Nazi party?
It’s not racist. When they said it was they were lying.
Which leads me back to my thinking that I might never vote Republican again. Whatever motivation you ascribe the things the party and its candidates are doing, no interpretation will create a party I want to have any association with. I think I’ll be quite happy annoying the Democrats by voting for their most centrist candidates.
In that case, virtually all liberals are racists, IME. Go get em!
OK, but if you’re more biased against the idea of a wall, then you might also be biased against the guy who is a vocal advocate of that wall.
There’s no such thing as being trained to ignore personal bias. And it’s not expected that judges will be able to do this. Judges are recused for bias all the time.
No, he’s not. Assume that people of different enthicities do not differ in this regard. He’s saying that in cases involving him - the Build-a-Wall Guy - a Mexican judge is more likely to be biased against him than a white judge. In another case, where different personalities and issues are involved, it’s possible that a white judge’s biases would come into play more than a Mexican judge’s.
I think I’ve stated this pretty clearly before, and don’t intend on rehashing it, unless there’s some genuine confusion about it.
I know it’s been done (unsuccessfully, IIRC) in the case of Muslim terrorists and Jewish judges. However, I think there are limits to how far you go in getting judges to recuse themselves, for practical reasons among others. But regardless of what the practical rules are, that doesn’t make it a racist assertion.
That’s perfectly fine with me. By all means, do your thing. 
Trump didn’t just talk about possible bias against him personally – he said that “it’s an inherent conflict of interest” to have a judge of Mexican ancestry in this case. A “conflict of interest” – that’s the bigoted part. Conflicts of interest don’t just go one way. That somehow it wouldn’t be a conflict of interest to have a white judge, even though a white judge is just as likely to be biased on this issue (or any issue) as any other judge, but there is a conflict because a judge has Mexican ancestry, is bigoted, IMO.
I’ll note that you make this same kind of point in this sentence: “In another case, where different personalities and issues are involved, it’s possible that a white judge’s biases would come into play more than a Mexican judge’s.”
That’s the same mistake (a bigoted mistake, IMO) that Trump made – that on this issue, or any issue, a white judge would be less likely to have bias than a Mexican judge. A Mexican judge is no more likely to be biased towards a particular issue stance regarding Mexico than a white judge is likely to be biased against it, and vice versa.
This particular issue was of special interest to Mexicans.
The above is completely uncontroversial (other than as applied to this judge). If you were predicting voting patterns and speculated that Mexican-Americans were more likely, on average, to be opposed to Trump because of his wall proposal, most people would find that unremarkable, and certainly not racist.
No, but if you were saying that Mexican Americans were be more likely to be biased either towards or against Trump based on this issue than other voters, then that would be bigoted, IMO. They might be more likely to be biased against Trump on this issue, but white voters might similarly be more likely to be biased in favor of Trump on this issue. So neither group is intrinsically more likely to have bias due to their ethnicity on this issue regarding Trump, or on any issue.
So IOW, you’re asserting that the “wall” is not likely to be a bigger issue for Mexican-American voters than for other voters? And anyone who thinks otherwise is a racist?