I felt like this discussion was going to derail the Trump Cabinet thread, so I started a new topic on it. I hope that’s OK.
The Left seems to believe that Trump is filling his Cabinet with racists. Most of the focus seems to be on Bannon (who was covered rather thoroughly in another thread) and Alabama Senator & Attorney General nominee Jeff Sessions.
Personally, I am as yet unconvinced that Senator Sessions is deserving of the label “racist”, but in the interest of fighting ignorance, lay it on me Dopers. Give me the best evidence you have that I’m wrong and he’s a racist. Convince me.
As a starting point for the discussion, I googled ‘racist’ (not very sophisticated, I know) and this is what popped up:
If you’d like to offer an alternative definition, I’m open to hearing it and why we should use it.
Just to throw out an initial defense, since I suspect that’s the first thing I’ll be asked, Donald V. Watkins says
Yeah, I think Jeff Session is racist. He’s a brand of 1980s/1990s era racism where he’s not nearly virulent as the hardcore racists of the Deep South during Jim Crow, but he definitely has long advocated positions and policies which suggest animus for the black population.
I don’t know what’s in his heart, but I don’t particularly care. What a politician believes matters far less to me than what they say and do. At the very least he seems to act as if he is unconcerned by racism, except perhaps when it rises to the level of murder.
That, in this article, some black people seem to like him says nothing about his possible racism – I grew up in the deep South, and I’ve have detailed conversations with dozens if not hundreds of people who expressed racist beliefs, and the vast majority would always talk about the specific individual black people that they liked. I remember in great detail one contractor (who my mother later fired due to his extreme racist comments) talked about a black co-worker he liked, but finished with “9 out of 10 [racial slur for black people] aren’t worth the bullet we oughta put in their head”. Probably over half of these folks I talked to made the point that there was a “difference between black people and [racial slur]” – this seems to be one of the favorite talking points of racists-in-denial.
I don’t know if he’s a racist, but his actions and words show me that he wouldn’t fight against most racist policies and practices.
The counter that I’ve heard - just from FB discussions - is that he prosecuted a KKK member for murder and oversaw his execution as AG. He also was involved in implementing some desegregation actions.
You can argue that those are actions that he had to take to avoid blatant disregard for the law. You can argue that two cases in a 40 year career aren’t persuasive.
Opposing illegal immigration doesn’t make someone a racist. Opposing illegal immigration from Latin America while ignoring it from European countries, however, does.
Well, that’s a pretty rudimentary starting point. It certainly counts as one of the meanings of “racist”, but it’s not the only one. Consider, for example, this dictionary definition of “racism”, which treats “racist” as an associated noun or adjective:
So a racist can be somebody who believes in the objective fundamental superiority of one race with respect to another, or somebody who harbors some prejudiced or bigoted beliefs about members of a particular race, or somebody who supports discriminatory treatment against members of a particular race. These aren’t necessarily the same thing, but they all count as some variant of racism.
AFAICT, Sessions’ record contains evidence of racist behavior in some ways but not in others. He was denied an appointment as District Court judge in 1986—not exactly the heyday of “political correctness”—due to claims that he called an (adult) black lawyer “boy” and called a white civil rights lawyer “a disgrace to his race” for defending the Voting Rights Act. A sympathetic (though, I hope, jesting) remark about the politics of the Ku Klux Klan and his opposition to civil rights legislation were also seen as evidence of his pro-racism views.
Now, as to what Sessions personally believes or ever believed about essential differences between races, or whether any race is intrinsically to be admired or despised or whatever, I don’t think there’s any publicly available evidence. He is said to have or to have had cordial relations to some extent with some specific black people, and has stood up for at least some rights of some black people (e.g., prosecuting KKK murderers of a black man, voting in the Senate to confirm a black Attorney General, etc.). So personally, I wouldn’t declare “Sessions is a racist”, because some people interpret such statements narrowly to mean that Sessions holds the explicit belief that black people are inferior or contemptible, etc., due to their race. What I think is fair to say is that Sessions’ record contains evidence of some racist behavior and support for some racist positions, some of which AFAICT he has subsequently downplayed or dismissed but never actually repudiated or expressed regret for.
In particular, I think opposition to voting rights legislation in a society with a long and persistent history of racial discrimination is a racist position, and one which Sessions has consistently maintained along with opposition to other anti-discrimination measures:
[QUOTE=HurricaneDitka]
See, he has black friends. Not a racist, right?
[/QUOTE]
:dubious: Joke, right? Of course you’re aware that having good relations with certain individual members of a different race in no way prevents somebody from being bigoted or prejudiced in a racist way against that racial group overall.
Agreed. I will stand with you against all the liberals (any liberals?) who call anyone a racist only for opposing illegal immigration and not for specific policies or statements that they regard as racist. If Sessions (or Trump, or anyone) is a racist, it has nothing to do with opposing illegal immigration.
I don’t know whether Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III is a racist or not. But I certainly wouldn’t use his statement about thinking the KKK were “okay until he found out they smoked pot” as evidence. It’s clear to me that’s a joke, and one that only works as a joke because it presupposes that the KKK is not okay and that smoking pot is, at worst, a minor offense. It would be like saying “I thought Hitler was okay until I found out he was a vegetarian.”
That sounds reasonable to me too. Remarks such as calling a black attorney “boy”, however, are incontrovertibly racist behavior. At the very least, making allowances for age and upbringing, it counts as the “Embarrassing Asshole Uncle” level of racism.
There is no ironclad evidence that Sessions actually made such explicitly racist remarks, but there seem to be at least a few people at the time of the 1980s hearings who stated very definitely that he did. Overall, I still think that “has engaged in some racist behavior and supported some racist positions” is probably an accurate description.
I don’t have the slightest idea if Jeff Sessions is racist, but he’s said and done some things that are at best questionable. I suppose it’s possible he was racist 30 years ago but he’s not anymore.
I would agree the KKK statement sure sounds like a joke.