First, just thinking people of a particular race are better, or worse, or smarter, or dumber, or anything other than superficial characteristics which have actually been used to define the races themselves is racist.
More to the point, when someone says an entire group of people were better off when they had absolutely no freedom, volition, or control, there is no lack of hostility and hatred there. Do you even have the slightest grasp on what happened to black people during chattel slavery?
And even more to the point, you demonstrated in your Stormfront thread that you HAVE NO FUCKING IDEA WHAT IS GOING ON.
True, but it’s worse. It’s patronage. No the good kind of patronage like endowing a college or some such, but the bad kind. The kind we based the word “patronize” off of. Pat the thing on the head because it don’t know better. Oh, ain’t it nice to see it try?
That’s how you treat a dog. You don’t have hostility or hate for your dog. Or your pigs. Those things are smart. Or your horses. They’re not so smart, but you love 'em anyway. And cows, well, that’s a different thread.
Anyway, the reason I bring this all up is lacking “HOSTILITY or HATE” doesn’t mean much if you view humans like livestock.
No, I’m comfortable saying that believing black people were happier as slaves is in fact a hateful belief, since the hate is rooted in ingnorance in a belief in the inherent inferiority of black people, (supposedly) unable to better themselves and too lazy to break their dependence on government money. And I’m comfortable with defining racism as holding hateful beliefs about a whole group based on their “race”.
I realize that stupid racists would prefer that we stop calling them racist for anything short of a new holocaust. Stupid sexists are like that, too. It’s part of the attempt to handwave modern sexism and racism as problems that don’t apply any more. I don’t see any reason why non-stupid racists should humor them.
Oh, hey - speaking of stupid, can we all just take a moment to gag at the idea that slavery provided comfortable family stability?
I don’t agree that he is necessarily saying this. I get that he is saying that working and taking care of your family is better than sitting on the porch with nothing to do while your family unit disintegrates. The screwed up thing is he thinks that since slaves had jobs and ( I’m not sure where he’s getting this last part ) stable families they were better off because being on subsidies are that damaging.
The question that wasn’t asked is if he would say that an even better outcome would be that there not be a safety net thus forcing people to work and then “join him in his society” just like he wanted the spanish to have. He wasn’t asked that question so we don’t really know how he feels about whether blacks are better off in general if not controlled by whites. If he thinks that them working and having families is better than being a slaves then your point would not be true and we don’t know since the question was never asked.
So, his opinion sure appears racist it doesn’t rise to the level of being pro slavery in my opinion rather it’s an extreme disdain for those who are dependent on the government.
One weird thing is that blame is not in what he said either. That’s really confusing. He’s not saying that blacks are predisposed to laziness but rather that they are stuck in a cycle of dependency because after generations of living on the dole they now have no job skills which allow them to break that cycle. He talks like this was because they went straight from slavery to dependency and were never allowed to develop as productive members of society. He doesn’t offer any ideas on how to transition these people out of the welfare state of mind.
Why does he associate this with only blacks and not anyone on subsidies? Why does he believe that this is primarily a black issue? Therein lies the racist bits.
Just so. This isn’t some isolated drivel created in the confused mind of a tax -or fee- dodging Nevada rancher. It’s the basic Republican party line on entitlement programs, or at least those designed to aid the poor. (The subsidization of federal lands which directly benefits private ranchers like Mr. Bundy is of course *in no way *a dependency-producing socialist institution.)
So conservative supporters aren’t necessarily backing away from Mr. Bundy because they disagree with what he said, or even because they recognize that it’s inherently racist. Bundy’s mistake, made presumably out of honest ignorance or political ineptitude, was to express these ideas explicitly and without the use of code words. -No one issued poor Clive his dog whistle. Had he studied some video of Paul Ryan prior to this interview, he’d still likely be a conservative darling.