Of course, the real issue isn’t whether you or I or the speaker think the statements are racist but whether the general black population do. So we can go round and round about whether a reference to the “lazy inner city poor” or “urban culture” is racist, but if black people are inclined to interpret it as such then the Republicans have a problem.
I’ll dig something up for you.
Great. And given the way you’ve approached this thus far, I hope you take the responsible step in making a distinction between racial comments with racist ones.
If you break this down, what you get are:
Potentially better schools through a program that is, arguably, more about breaking unions than improving education. School choice for people who have little background in educational principles from which to make their choices.
A somewhat greater availability of shit jobs that pay squat.
Do you really expect someone to say “who needs money for food, when I can get a Charter School opened that my child will have a 10% chance of getting accepted to, and where he may or may not get a better education, that may or may not pay dividends 10 years from now.”
This, OTOH, is a definite “in” for the black vote. If Reps adopted more fiscally liberal policies that appealed to black voters, their conservative social policies would attract votes.
I understand the pros and cons of Charter Schools. The fact is that many (most?) urban Blacks support them.
It’s amazing that some are so intent not understanding this: if the skills you have just qualify you for a low paying job, then you want those jobs to be available. In fact, you want more jobs than people, because that will force wages UP. Having a glut of workers forces wages down. Please tell me what about that is so hard to grasp.
Oh, so you just need to give people free stuff? I think that Blacks, like others, don’t really give a shit about “fiscal policies”. What they want is jobs. Good jobs. And you know what, people that get good jobs probably had shitty jobs before them. I know I did. Sure, everyone sees the sense in a safety net. But with Dems, I get the impression that that is there policy. Fewer jobs means that more people (of all color) will need more free stuff. The Dems like giving them free stuff, so they get to give away the money and then get the votes. And that puts more Dems in power who have the exact same plan. Imagine what would happen if all these people had jobs, and they no longer needed/wanted the free stuff Just what, oh what, would Dems campaign on? Lower taxes that are gentler on those paychecks people are now earning? 
So, two threads, one in the Pit that YOU started, and your only two posts are 1) starting the Pit thread and 2) your notification of its existence here. Now that that Pit thread didn’t turn out how you envisioned, do you have anything of substance to add to the debate here. You know, the one that you feel so passionate about that it caused you to start a Pit thread?
Eonwe?
Eonwe?
Bueller?!!!
What has really bothered me about the Republican Party of today is that they promote this idea that this is America and if you work hard and play by the rules there is opportunity and you can succeed. People that don’t subscribe to that are lazy slackers that should not be rewarded for their indolence. OK, I can kind of understand the merit of that thinking.
Yet, there are two people that came from humble beginnings, did not have a powerful family behind them, rose above everyone else due to hard work, smarts and determination. Of course, those two are Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Yet, the power Republicans, instead of embracing the fact that they are proof of the American dream, have tried to do everything they can to destroy them as individuals.
I look at who is doing the hard labor, the shit jobs, and it’s almost always Latinos and Blacks. These are the workers that are trying to buy into the American dream. I see them working their asses off. Yet the Republicans seem to be trying to keep them down instead of embracing them, facilitating them and making them allies in their cause. Republicans standing in the way of the Dream Act is a perfect example.
It is exasperating.
I agree with your assessment that many low-skilled Blacks and Hispanics (I’d say particularly Hispanics) have a great work ethic and do indeed work extremely hard. But our immigration enforcement has been broken for way too long. Whatever we do, and I think there’s plenty of room for compassion, we need to make sure that it doesn’t encourage further illegal immigration. I think the conversation would go a lot more smoothly and make everyone happier if we had a secure border.
Bear with me as I set up an analogous analysis:
There’s a chapter of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly in which the heroes (relatively speaking) join up with the Union Army. The Captain (not General) explains that the bridge they’re defending is really a useless fly-speck on a map, but both sides are killing each other over it because they don’t want the other side to have control of it. Once our heroes (relatively speaking) blow up the bridge, both the Union and the Confederate armies clear out; there’s no reason to hang around if there’s nothing more to fight about. The bridge, after all, was merely a token and now it can be ignored; it’s not even worth restoring or making it better.
Regardless of their stated or actual intentions before and during the Civil War, the Republican Party’s actions after the war was over could easily be perceived as treating the emancipated slaves and their descendants just like that bridge: Once the war was over, once they were no longer a symbol or token of the conflict, the Republican Party had less incentive to be concerned with their plight, and much less incentive to actually help them. This is crystallized in the Republican Party’s willingness to strike a Devil’s Bargain: If the Southern States of the Electoral College would give Rutherford B. Hayes the Presidency (in spite of the popular vote count saying otherwise) the Republican Administration would drop Reconstruction efforts and let the Southern States proceed as they wished without interference from federal troops. While white southerners had been voting anti-Republican (i.e. Democrat) since the end of the Civil War, this has been seen by African Americans as the removal of protections from discriminatory practices and organizations (e.g. lynchings and the KKK) and basically dropping (or exchanging) the banner of human equality in order to grab the scepter of power. It seemed that the Republican Party had sold out, betraying the slaves they had freed in order to hold the White House for another term.
Had I been a sharecropper at that time, I would have asked a Republican, “Did you free me because you thought I should be free, or did you free me just to cripple my master?”
This has made the Republican Party (as an entity) look like a man who will do anything to win – win a fight, win a war, win an election; anything for power; ethics be damned – and subsequent actions by the GOP have failed to improve their image. To many, Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice, and Herman Cain looked like tokens provided by the Republican party simply to try and gain Black votes.* Even if you ignore the widespread racism in the party (or earnestly believe that it never existed and won’t arise) the Republican party has repeatedly demonstrated that its biggest interest is in making sure the rich stay rich and the non-rich…well, that’s not worth their concern. And since the majority of Black US Citizens (regardless of ancestry or national origin) are still not rich, the Republican party will only ever enlist the few rare tokens who share that value.
As for the OP, the first mistake in the proposal is in gesturing at the Spanish-speaking people of the United States and saying, “We should invite that block. Our values are similar to theirs.” and in fact the same mistake is made in regard to Asians and, after the various wars and Operations in the eastern Mediterranean regions have faded to mere memories, the same mistake will be made in regard to ‘those middle eastern guys.’ The egregious error is in viewing ‘them’ as a solid homogenous voter block for which the attributes and values can be scribbled on a business card for easy reference when giving speeches at their national conventions. The error is in honestly believing Mr. Flores from Santa Barbara speaks exactly the same as Mr. Martinez from Honduras and their speech is exactly the same as what Ms. Escalante from Venezuela and Mr. Santana from Tijuana and Mr. Montana from Cuba have learned. Not only are those dialects, accents, and lexicons different, but you’ll find that they have different cuisines, religious perspectives, political views, social concerns, etcetera.
Most revealing is the rift between Tea Party Republicans and the traditional Midwestern farmer base of the Republican party. In a report on the internal dispute over the immigration reform issue, the Tea Party is described as not welcoming foreigners into the country because it dilutes the funds available to US natives – well, post-European take-over natives. In contrast, the breadbasket Republicans want to welcome immigrants because they comprise the supply of migrant laborers who are willing to do the harvesting for less than minimum wage. So the disagreement is that the Tea Party faction doesn’t want immigrants from below the border (in particular) at all while the old farm-owning base wants to continue being able to exploit ‘those people’ for as long as possible. Which of these two stances makes Mr. Torres feel like a valued individual?
–G!
You’re right on target with this. I keep hearing progressives say, “If you Democrats don’t start listening to us, we’re going to vote for obscure third-party weirdos who have no chance of winning! That’ll learn ya!” My response has always been: instead of demanding that the Democrats “listen,” you should TAKE OVER the fucking party! Get involved, get your people nominated and elected, and just take it over. But no, it’s more fun to vote for fantasy candidates who never have to deal with the realities of actual governance. And you get to brandish your withheld Democratic vote like it was Excalibur.
I disagree with Republicans on practically everything, but I’ll give them this: they understand party unity. I’ve been a Democrat all of my adult life, and their disloyalty streak drives me nuts. Just once I’d like to hear a fellow Democrat say, “I’m voting for X in the primary, but of course in the general election I’ll vote for whomever the Democratic candidate is.” The closest they come to that is when they grudgingly announce that they’ll be “holding their noses” in the voting booth.
Of course, there is nothing stopping the Democratic centrists from listening to and catering to the interests of their progressive base so they don’t defect … but that, I suppose, is unthinkable.
There’s an underlying assumption here that you haven’t stated outright, that voting Rep will create jobs. This has not been demonstrated. At best the Reps have a Theory that Supply Side Economics will drive higher employment, despite years of low tax rates for the wealthy, the lower rungs of the economic ladder aren’t doing noticeably better than 35 years ago. The upper rungs are doing GREAT, though.
This reminds me of the old saying. Give a hungry man a fish, he eats for a day. Teach a hungry man to fish, he eats for a lifetime.
The Democrats policy of expanding safety nets embody the first line.
The Republicans embody a third line “See a hungry man and tell him that he should probably learn how to fish, that way he wouldn’t be so hungry.”
If the Reps don’t give black voters something tangible to hold on to that says “If I vote Rep, my life will improve.” they will never get the black vote.
I’d like to see some information on this. I’m willing to believe that Blacks will support Charter Schools in large numbers, but I’ve never seen data to back that up. I just spent a half-hour trying to find some data that would say one way or another, and the best I could find was this 2007 publication, where Black support for charter schools is at 47% - not much more than the national average 44%. (Support for school vouchers, on the other hand, is significantly higher among Blacks than the population at large.)
On immigration, I think you’re wrong: a recent Pew Research poll shows Black support for allowing illegal immigrants to stay in this country legally at 82%, which is higher than white support for the same (67%), and about the same as Hispanic support (80%). More to the point Gallup shows Blacks considering the Democratic party more aligned with their opinions on immigration than the GOP by a 70/14 margin, higher than both Whites and Hispanics.
Nice post. I agree with most of it. But I’d say that Charter Schools is a tangible thing. Another is safer neighborhoods through via “Stop and Frisk”. Sure the Al Sharpton’s of the world whine to the high heavens about it, but the people who live in the neighborhoods (largely people of color) like it. Why, because it means they and their children are safer.
It’s going to be very interesting to see what happens in NYC. During the Dinkins administration, the city was disgusting. Crime was high. The murder rate was high. The city looked like a cesspool. Then comes Rudy Giuliani and he improves the city in all those regards to a degree that people didn’t even think was possible. Bloomberg largely continued to improve things. Now, amazingly to me, NYC residents elected a true liberal—who worked in the Dinkins administration! He’s already getting major blowback from communities of color because he was wrong about how’d they’d feel about his stance on the Charters. We’ll see if any changes he institutes brings back the Dinkins NYC. And if so, how liberal NYC will feel about that in the next election.
Really? This is a textbook example of “Why Black Voters Don’t Vote Republican”
Poll 69% of black voters disapprove of NYC Stop and Frisk. You don’t win on that issue until you convince them that it IS better to be subject to Stop and Frisk.
Charter schools are tangible, but not exactly a slam dunk in terms of bettering the lives of black voters. Maybe your kid gets in, maybe he doesn’t, if he gets in, maybe he does better, maybe he doesn’t. If he doesn’t get in, he’s stuck in the regular school that is now arguably worse off than it was before.
I appreciate you taking the time to look. I was able to find some numbers and some interesting articles. Bu the more important point can be focused on just by using the numbers you found. It is not important that Black support of Charters be in the 90% range. Even if it’s in the 45% range, that indicates that Blacks voting for Dems at 95% is odd. Now it is true that it is only one issue, but I was just making the case that there are Rep economic policies that directly help Blacks. Charter School support continues to grow as people see more and more success. The people mainly against it are the teachers’ unions and organizations like the NAACP, who oppose it for reasons other than the education kids get there. (3rd link below)
Here are some numbers from the south.
Here’s a WSJ article that shows that support from Blacks and Hispanics is growing:
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/08/16415035-racial-divide-seen-in-mississippi-debate-over-charter-schools-reform?lite"]Here is an article that explains why some in the Black community are opposed to Charters. Interesting stuff. A lot of the pushback has nothing to do with a kid getting a better education.
My response was merely meant to give examples of Rep positions that, as Cheesesteak put it, “would likely benefit many black families directly”. I think the logic surrounding the supply and demand of low-wage jobs is unassailable. Here is an interesting article about the subject, and about Black activist Ted Hayes. A fascinating figure that should be receiving more attention for all the work he has done for the LA’s homeless and Blacks specifically. But it’s a tough America for a Black man who came to favor a republican outlook.
http://tedhayes.us/Illegal_Immigration_Black_Survey-LA_Times.htm
The article (from 2007) does have a few numbers:
Here’s a page with links to many studies, including the one in the article. But again, my point was to offer examples of Rep positions that would likely benefit many black families directly. Support for those positions really is a different issue.
I agree. Many living in those communities already see the sense of it. And as I said, we’ll see how things go under DeBlasio. It’s my guess that he may create more Republicans in NYC than anyone ever has. We’ll see.
Those opposing Charter Schools are losing the argument. And that’s because people see that they work. Sure, DeBlasio and the teachers’ unions and the NAACP will continue to fight it, but it is NOT because the kids in those shoals are getting poorer educations. There’s a commercial airing in NY now sharing that students at the Success Academy Charter middle school in Harlem have THE highest math score in the entire state, and scored twice the city average in reading. Based on numbers like that Charters, and support for them, will I think just continue to grow.
What about the kids that don’t get in and are in the public schools that are losing resources because of the existence of charter schools?
Do you mean this school?
This is, ultimately, the problem with Charter Schools. There are many claims of better performance, but it isn’t clear that they are actually teaching any better. There is a reasonable case to be made that charter schools that show good performance are simply siphoning off the better performing kids.
The Dems are offering to help put food on my table, provide health care for my kids, extend unemployment for my friends, and increase the minimum wage for folks I know who are working those jobs.
The Reps want me to trade much of that away for a Charter School that my kids may not get into and that may just be a boondoggle that doesn’t actually do anything better than the current system? I’ll trade that for the opportunity to move to Farm Country and break my back for 10 hours a day picking strawberries?
You are missing my point. Why is it always “listen to us or we’ll leave?” Why not “listen to us or we’ll replace you with a better candidate?”
I detest everything the Tea Party stands for, but they knew better than to run off and start some fringe party with a silly name. They TOOK OVER the GOP. This approach is apparently unthinkable for progressives; they’d rather take their ball and go home … or go camp out in a public park and wave signs until it gets too cold.
They could embrace liberals.
After all, the next generation is going to be gay-friendly and in support of equal pay in the workplace and a crapton of other liberal ideas.
Either that, or design a device that makes young people impotent, and give every Republican whatever device is currently powering Dick Cheney, so they live forever.
Those are their only two options.