We’re still “greatest” by some measures. How many countries can you name that are “great” enough to elect someone like the Trump? We elect some rather despicable scum in Thailand, but I don’t think even the Thais would have fallen for his crap.
Damn tootin’ it’s stupid to say all the Trump voters are racist!
Some of them are homophobes; some of them are women-haters. Some of them are loving Christians who just want to get all the non-Christians out of this country.
And most of them are just stupid deluded swine who, if they had a smidgen of self-respect would have stayed home on Election Day, apologizing for being too stupid to vote.
Why use the word “racism” to describe that? What, you think one is bad, and the other is bad, so they must be the same? Would you also label all sexism as racism? How about all ageism? Maybe opposition to gay marriage?
What’s the benefit of using the word “racism” as a weird catch-all?
Maybe “Fearful Prick” could be used to describe someone who hates Muslims, or hates someone who has a name that sounds different than his, or hates someone who looks different than he does, or whatever, but is uncomfortable being called a racist.
I don’t know what was the biggest slap of the face to me last Weds morning. Finding out that nearly half the electorate voted for the most hateful windbag of malfeasant incompetence I’ve ever seen in my lifetime or finding out so many Dems think the real problem is that “we” aren’t sweet talking whites enough.
And while black folks like me are now contemplating the implications of a President who advocates “stop and frisk” despite its unconstitutionality, while also reeling from an America with cops who will now feel even more empowered to kill us in the name of law and order, we can’t even express outrage at the people who made this happen without hearing people from our own party cry “calling them names is why we lost the election! Wah!”
I mulled this over and possibly it comes down to whether or not one believes someone can be born a Muslim, and subsequently that even if an infant “born” Muslim was adopted by a Christian/Jewish/atheist/etc. family, their “Muslim blood” will invariably manifest in some stereotypical Muslim behaviour? Is there similar “Jewish blood” ? “Catholic blood” ? For that matter, “Irish blood” ? “German blood” ?
To me it seems fairly obvious that religion (and nationality, in the sense of modern nation-states) is a learned trait, but I see that the presumption that a newborn is of the same religion as its parents is widespread. If so, I daresay “racism” fits well enough.
If the label matters in the first place, and oftentimes it doesn’t.
But if someone explains that he even wants to bar blindingly-white Caucasians from immigrating to the United States if they’re Muslim – what then?
Why try to make that fit as racism when we can just say a guy who so pre-judges people is – well, prejudiced, I suppose? Or “bigoted”, as was suggested upthread? Why struggle to maybe classify it as racism?
It’s not really much of a struggle, as long as “race” remains ill-defined. I daresay affixing a negative label is done for the same reason affixing negative labels has always been done - shorthand for saying “this is bad.”
But we don’t, like, refer to murderers as child molesters – or vice versa, for that matter – just to indicate that they’re bad, right? If a guy is dishonest, we don’t automatically call him an adulterer; and if he commits treason, we don’t suddenly default to saying he’s a serial rapist. It just seems weird, is all.
“Race” and “racism” are ill-defined but negative. “Murderer”, “child molester”, “adulterer”, “traitor” and “rapist” are actually pretty specific (“dishonest”, I’ll grant, is pretty broad), so I don’t quite follow your point.
I understand your earlier point, but your analogy is flawed. The things you name have absolutely no overlapping commonalities, whereas racism has a great deal in common with the attributes of bigotry and prejudice of which it’s a subset. There’s not a lot of practical difference between judging someone to be undesirable or perhaps dangerous because of their race, versus making those judgments against someone because of their ethnicity, place of origin, or religion. When applied to Muslims, racism is fairly close to the mark because it’s usually triggered by visible ethnic and cultural differences, even if the bigotry is not precisely race-based.
I think if one simply refers to Trump and many of his strongest core of supporters as racist bigots it pretty much covers all the angles except misogyny. Or homophobia. It’s hard to find a single word or phrase that covers absolutely everything that describes Trump or his typical supporter, although “total asshole” comes close.
I think it takes a suspicious defensiveness to split hairs over the racist nature of the phrase “total and complete ban on Muslims” based upon the dictionary definition of “racist”. It is a racist policy. Sorry if the term makes uncomfortable those who support the policy, or support the man who says it.
But you just did it, didn’t you? You’re noting, right there, that racism is a subset of “bigotry”. You add that it has a lot in common with other forms of “bigotry”. You go on to note at the end that, even if we do for some reason use “racism” to cover this, it still wouldn’t describe other “bigots” who despise, for example, homosexuals.
So why not just use “bigots” and “bigotry” to be accurate with accuracy?
Because people shriek even louder when you do that than when you say “racist” or “sexist”. And that’s assuming the mods will even let you, anywhere but the BBQ Pit.
Also, racism and Islamophobia are practically the same thing these days, anyway. Just look at the years of accusations that Obama was a secret Muslim. “Muslim” is being *treated as *a race.