That’s not a fact at all. He pulled more Black, Latino, and Asian votes than Romney did.
Hillary Clinton was about the only person on planet Earth that could lose to Trump.
I don’t think the important point is how much social constructs of race line up with any sort of biological reality. The sticking point is whether the tendency for humans to group others and create ingroup/outgroup hierarchies is something that can be willed away or is closer to an unconscious habit. On that point, this group seems wildly optimistic.
I’m quoting from the linked article now:
This reminded me of a line by, I want to say Jacob Bacharach, paraphrased: This is post-racial America, we’re all niggers now.
I wonder if this group would support Rachel Dolezal.
This is confused. Why were they favored in the first place? Why do those favored consistently have pale skin, instead of dark skin? The people who are considered “new whites” who are supposed to prove the arbitrary nature of the white label have light skin, like southern Europeans, light skinned Hispanics, or sometimes some Asian groups. If whiteness is so arbitrary, yet is such a powerful concept, then maybe it’d be easier if everyone chose to identify as white. It could be the new “human.” That sounds wrong to me, but I’m not sure if it’s stranger than the idea of white people collectively identifying out of their own privilege.
I’m of the opinion there is a biological basis to race, however as a white person this whole election has been terrible PR for us white people. We white people elected a dangerously incompetent con artist (not even a good con artist either) authoritarian Russian puppet. 90% of Trump’s voters were white, compared to 50% of Hillary’s voters.
Of course there’s a biological basis to race- just not to any grand “white” race. Russians and Spaniards, Jews and Irish, Swedes and Poles, Basques and Greeks, are all “white.” Which tells us… absolutely nothing about them.
Even if your cite was generally accepted within the science community it doesn’t match what is considered “white”
The alt-right/white power sub-group of Trump supporters would not consider those of who are Jewish, Lebanese, Arab, or Moroccan decent as “white”
I fully fit the stereo typical most Americans would call “white” but that was not true when you great grand parents were fleeing the russification efforts in modern day Finland.
And even at a genetic level, My paternal haplogroup is closer to those of Mongolia than those of England and my mitochondrial haplogroup, which while it did travel through England is most closely related to the Jek people which are now Sunni Muslims and would be considered “brown” in modern American culture.
“White” is a nonsensical unscientific categorization.
Christoph Meiners who defined “Caucasian” would not consider most “whites” as such as he believed in the superiority of Germans among Europeans, and describes non-German Europeans’ color as “dirty whites”.
The OPINION piece that you linked to is exhibiting the exact issue with clinging to this false precept. As “white” can be redefined in order to elevate one group over another based on purely arbitrary criteria that is more connected to political goals than anything that is scientific.
Your paternal haplogroup doesn’t necessarily tell you which sociological race you would be considered. It just tells you which deep ancestral ethnic group your great, great, great… great grandfather belonged to thousands of years ago. It’s likely that, other than your y-chromosome, you have retained no other genes from him as his contribution to your genome is so far in the past.
No scientific method can assign me to a sociological race, as the entire concept is a manufactured fiction and is not based on science.
That is the point. Race on exists within the minds of those who believe in it and unfortunately the policies they create.
I think the joke was about a dating site, perhaps Tinder.
Your mistake is thinking that humans are rational.
Quite to the contrary, the reason to quit accepting a label that negatively effects others is explicitly due to the belief that humans are irrational.
But note how you say “Your mistake is thinking” do you want to reframe your objection in a manor that is not just an ad hominem?
To start off with, this is not a fact. Donald Trump may have been abnormal in many ways, but when talking about race he spoke in the same politically correct bromides as any other politician:
“When I am President, I will work to ensure that all of our kids are treated equally, and protected equally. Every action I take, I will ask myself: does this make life better for young Americans in Baltimore, Chicago, Detroit, Ferguson who have as much of a right to live out their dreams as any other child in America?”
“African-American citizens have sacrificed so much for this nation. They have fought and died in every war since the Revolution, and from the pews and the picket lines they have lifted up the conscience of our country in the long march for Civil Rights.”
“I employ thousands and thousands of Hispanics. I love the people. They’re great workers. They’re fantastic people and they want legal immigration.”
“Just as immigrant labor helped build our country in the past, today’s legal immigrants are making vital contributions in every aspect of national life. Their industry and commitment to American values strengthens our economy, enriches our culture, and enables us to better understand and more effectively compete with the rest of the world. We are particularly grateful to the thousands of new legal immigrants, many of them not yet citizens, who are serving in the Armed Forces and among first responders. Their patriotism should encourage all to embrace the newcomers legally among us, assist their journey to full citizenship, and help their communities avoid isolation from the mainstream of society.”
This blog post debunks at length the claim that Trump is openly racist, or that racist groups were the core of his support.
Please start your own thread, the topic on this is not if trump is racist.
Although citing a random pages that ignore the facts.
The Justice Department sued his company, twice, for not renting to black people.
The New Jersey Casino Control Commission fined the Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino $200,000 due to racist policies. A state appeals court upheld the fine.
He treats groups he doesn’t identify with as monoliths “the Hispanics,” “the Muslims” and “the blacks.”
I could go on and no but do you want to hijack this thread or can you address the original point.
Skin color is meaningless and anyone who makes an issue of it is a fool.
I looked at their website too. There isn’t much there. The article that you linked to is dated 1993, and the last new content is from 2005. So “race traitor” appear to be a short-lived, unsuccessful journal that has now died off.
That said, some of the bad ideas in the article you linked to are still in circulation:
The white race consists of those who partake of the privileges of the white skin in this society. Its most wretched members share a status higher, in certain respects, than that of the most exalted persons excluded from it, in return for which they give their support to the system that degrades them.
This is obviously untrue, and I’ve made the point before. When I’ve worked at homeless shelters I’ve met white men and women who are crippled or blind, who are unable to speak or have no teeth, who sleep on gutters in -20 degree weather at times, who lack food and necessary medicine, and so forth. To say that such people have “higher status” than the rich or even the middle class of any race is obviously false. There is no way in which any homeless person is privileged above any rich person.
The white race is a club, which enrolls certain people at birth, without their consent, and brings them up according to its rules. For the most part the members go through life accepting the benefits of membership, without thinking about the costs. When individuals question the rules, the officers are quick to remind them of all they owe to the club, and warn them of the dangers they will face if they leave it.
Also not true. The white race is not a club, and has no “officers” or “executives” or any of the other things that the article ascribes to it. If they can name one person whose titled is “officer” of the white race … well they can’t, which may help explain why their journal didn’t last long.
But how would one leave a club, or disobey the rules of the club, when the club has never existed? How to disobey offices or reject executives when there aren’t any?
I completely agree with you and I think that any and all programs that split up people based on their race and try to treat members of one race different than others are bad things which should be disposed of. Affirmative action should the first to go, obviously. Governments should not be allowed to consider race when determining what business to award a contract to, as some now do.
The arguments against such programs are legion, but one of the many is that people are placed into races arbitrarily. To implement affirmative action, in the Nixon Administration people were shoehorned into give groups: white, black, Asian, Hispanic, and Native American. But who’s to say who is white, who is Hispanic, etc…? I generally classify myself as white and I may at some point have lost a college acceptance or job as a result, but who’s to say that I shouldn’t instead have classified myself as Hispanic or Asian or something else?
Is this what white liberals do these days? Think of new ways to cleanse themselves of some inherited guilt?
It’s like I’m back in Sunday School.
So why are you focusing only on the sociological white race? How will anyone know if they are supposed to go along with your plan if there is no way to determine if they are white or not?
It’s ridiculous because racism is a real problem and people in general recognize the concept of race. Your idea would lead to pretending racism doesn’t exist.
My apologies but now your position is even more confusing. Why would irrational people be convinced to give up something that gives them relative power?
Don’t agree much with the OP, but I have to comment here that one reason should be to think about the future. This reminds me of an old meme:
“Oh, so you’re afraid of whites being a minority? Why? Are minorities treated as second-class citizens or something?”
I think that the point here is that if people that sees themselves as white gets to be considered a minority that I do think that it would be fair for them to get some help if discrimination from others becomes an issue. Of course, that would require a good number of people to have the foresight to realize why is that making sure to give justice to minorities actually increases the justice for all the people.
I’m talking about groups in general. Not black and white in the USA. Why would any group universally shed a label that gives them an advantage according to the premise of the OP?