No. Mississippi is a solid Republican state and only 12% of Republicans are black. Furthermore, we don’t know where those black republicans fail within the party. If they predominantly fall towards the liberal extreme, that would make them even less likely to be elected.
To a more broad point, eliminating racism does not mean elimination of demographic discrepancies. First, as has been already discussed, black and whites are not equally economically. Second, there will always be cultural differences between different ethnicities and what they value. A society without racism will still reflect those differences. To use an analogy, racism is akin to distortion in a camera lens. Removing the distortion doesn’t change the scene you are capturing. It simply captures it more accurately.
Your first cite is a link to a government page of statistics that I’m not going to wade thru to find whatever nugget you think is telling. So, on to your next cite. Hmmmm:
Did you read anything more than the headline of that cite? Whites are killed by the cops at a rate ~2x that of blacks, but there are ~5x as many whites in the US than blacks. Surely you learned how that kind of math works in school, no?
Yes, I did. More whites are killed by cops, even though more crime is committed by blacks.
Because police don’t shoot people at random. Most of the cases that BLM and similar idiots are protesting are black criminals who wouldn’t have gotten shot if they hadn’t been criminals and/or stupid.
We disproportionately police black Americans because black Americans disproportionately commit crime, especially violent crime. 2) The poverty in black America is not because anyone was plundered. That’s just an excuse, and a weak one. Some 18 year old dimwit with two children isn’t poor because of Simon Legree.
This is simply not correct. It is instead an article of faith, similar to–and indeed directly related to–the old(er) notion that black men are more sexually motivated and therefore likely to rape. Differential underlying crime rates do account for some of the differences in policing rates. But not all of them. Drug use and domestic violence are two good examples where we have some good evidence apart from policing rates to assess, and both show that it is the policing and not the crime that is disproportionate.
This too is false, and false in a very particular historically predictable way that seeks to explain the plight of black folks by appealing to their moral failings. It’s been going well for a couple of centuries. Why stop now? To take a very mundane example, generational plunder has led to much lower levels of wealth among black families even controlling for income. The consequences are predictable. Black homeownership is lower because most black families do not get assistance with a down payment, unlike the majority of white families.
There are dozens of other examples. Your theory that black people are simply less moral is a bad theory.
Let’s see, Ben Carson said that America should never let a Muslim be President. ETA: He also compared homosexuality to bestiality which isn’t racist, but undoubtedly bigoted.
After Trump made his infamous speech about Mexican undocumented workers being rapists and criminals, Cruz was asked about it on Meet the Press: Todd asked Cruz if “rhetoric matters,” and Cruz said, “I salute Donald Trump for focusing on the need to address illegal immigration. The Washington cartel doesn’t want to address that.” Cruz has also campaigned with Ted Nugent who has made many, many racist comments, comments which Cruz has been given the opportunity to refute, but he has not.
Rubio, I have no idea what his immigration policy is. On some days he proposes comprehensive immigration reform, on other days he condemns his own bill. I guess you could say that Rubio alternates between pandering to the GOP’s racist base, and pandering to Hispanic voters.
Nothing you mentioned is a racist policy (actually you didn’t mention any policies). They are certainly anti-gay, anti-muslim, and anti-immigrant, but not racist.
I’m not saying that racism doesn’t exist, but that the majority of what is often construed as racism isn’t racism, but classism.
I’ll throw out a personal example. My older son is 4 years old, and we’re looking at what school he’s going to go to when it’s time for kindergarten. The local school that he’s zoned to is predominantly poverty-stricken black and hispanic apartment children (8% white children), with the consequent abysmal test scores and academic issues. This school’s PTA struggles to raise more than a thousand dollars for student programs.
The next school over is a predominantly (~70%) white school, with stellar test scores and a PTA that raises tens of thousands of dollars for their school.
Both schools are located within predominantly white, upper-middle class neighborhoods (the bad one is literally down the street from me) and are less than a mile apart as the crow flies.
Now if I want my son to go to the second school, am I being racist, classist or neither? I honestly don’t care about the ethnic makeup at all, and the poverty doesn’t concern me, except where it impacts the focus of the school. If the first school is busy teaching catch-up stuff to its kindergartners because the poor parents dropped the ball on teaching basics like colors, numbers, letters and shapes prior to school, what does the school have to offer my son in terms of challenge and academic enrichment? More than likely, he’ll fall into the category of “he’ll do fine without any extra help”, and that’ll be it.
Yet, from the outside(i.e. without the explanation), me wanting to send my son to the other elementary school probably looks exactly like a bunch of white people trying to stay away from black and hispanic people.
Possibly – all this can be true and there might still be bias in shootings. If cops are more likely to shoot black criminals then white criminals, or to shoot in response to stupid behavior from black people then from white people, then that’s bias, and it’s wrong, and it should be stopped.
Possibly. I would be curious to ask some followup questions. It’s possible that what they’re saying is that racism affects everyone, black and white, which is certainly true, in general, but it affects us in different ways. It’s possible that they’re just mistaken. It’s also possible that they’re Republicans like Clarence Thomas, who make their money by telling white people what they want to hear.
But whatever their motivations for saying that white people suffer discrimination as much or as more as black people, it doesn’t change that they are demonstrably wrong about it. Even if they sincerely believe it, it’s not true.
I’m aware. The point is, it’s absurd to say that white people in general face the same amount of discrimination as non-whites, while the vast majority of those in power remain white. Pointing out that white people are, for the moment at least, the solid majority of the population just reinforces that point.
The problem comes when their execution of that simple alternative is what caused the situation in the first place. We ran and we’re still running today. The only difference is the number of miles some of us drive to avoid living with “those people” as a significant part of the population.
I was raised rural (although seriously Yankee) much as you describe and I have experienced some of the same things. Selling me on city life is something I never expected. But it did happen and I very strongly feel that a rebirth of our urban centers is the hinge our future may depend on as a nation. Yes there are risks; I just feel we can change more hearts and minds if we take the risk and ignore the idiots from both races who see their power protected by the status quo.
“You can’t expect people to expose themselves to needless danger and persecution, even in the pursuit of high ideals, when there is a simple alternative.”
Look, I understand what you mean and for some communities I am sure you are right. But what if everyone in the 60s had lived by that sentence? The first blacks to move into the various Euro-ethnic communities had accepted the simple alternatives that were available? “Segregation forever” would have won. In many ways it has won and much to our shame. It’s time to correct that shame. Maybe that’s utopian but -------- don’t you think its worth it?
I’m a Canadian and spend a fair bit of time in the Pacific Northwestern states as well as the western states as far south as the Mexican border.
I know a number of people throughout these states and find very little obvious racism. Some of our friends in the southwest do on occasion make negative comments about Mexico when I tell them I like to vacation there, but I believe that’s due to their proximity to the Mexican border and experience with illegal aliens.
Now as for the Pacific Northwest, I was in northern Idaho last summer visiting other friends and what an eye opener that was!
We took in an outdoor concert that had about 4,000 to 5,000 people at it. Sitting there waiting for the music to begin and the sun to go down, it suddenly became clear that there were no coloured people in attendance. And by coloured I mean anyone that isn’t Caucasian.
So I started watching closely as people walked by and by the end of the night I had counted less then a dozen non-Caucasians.
So I asked our friends about it and they felt that if any coloured did move to northern Idaho, they would not be made welcome. They also made reference to a Mexican family that had moved there and opened a Mexican restaurant. Apparently nobody went there and it soon closed.
So is this blatant racism, or has word gotten out that coloured people shouldn’t bother with northern Idaho?
It did come as a real shock to me as I’m only a few hours from there and that is not what we experience in our province.
Northern Idaho was ground central for many white supremacists for a couple of decades. Coeur d’Alene and tiny Hayden Lake in particular still have a lingering nasty association for a lot of people, despite the dwindling of some of those groups ( after arrests + lawsuits ).
So, yeah - it is a 96% white area with a distinctly tarnished recent history, so there is very little to attract non-whites to the area ( oher than the fact that it is very pretty ).
What I hate about the whole racism/ “dat’s racist” debate is that even observing very obvious truths is now considered “racist”.
Blacks seem to be better at certain positions in certain sports. This is probably because on a statistical level, black men(and women) in America are more likely than white men(and women) to have certain alleles that make them better at certain sports. Being taller, having legs optimized for greater jumping heights, etc obviously makes a high difference in certain sports…
Sometimes, affirmative action policies intended to “level the field” do seem to give exceptional blacks better opportunities than “just as exceptional” whites or Asians. Like that high school senior who got into *every *Ivy league school, or Obama getting into Harvard Law and certain honor societies when there.
There are an awful lot of statistics that seem that black men commit more crimes, albeit with the caveat that some of this is the police focus on them and thus catch more of the crimes they commit.
I’m a white American, and I went with “pretty damned racist”…but I think it’s important to compare the US to other countries. I have both professional and personal experience in and/or knowledge of a pretty diverse assortment of the world’s countries, and so would say that significant populations (and cultural norms) in most of them are MORE racist than in the US. The OP’s definition of “racist” doesn’t fit perfectly in all non-US contexts, but it fits well enough that I feel very comfortable making this general assertion.
So, in sum, the US is bad when it comes to racism, but most countries are worse, and some are much worse. This implies something sad about human nature (but I try to not use that as an excuse, wrt my own behavior or that of others).
My google fu has failed me. Paraphrasing because I can’t get an exact quote, “the world is such that all of the races are set against one another, so we might as well stand up for our own race” - one of the mission statement documents for the KKK.
This is the biggest complaint I ever hear when white people complain about racism. A company HR department, or engineering manager, or whatever is finally staffed by a black person, an Indian, you get the idea. And, suddenly, it seems like all the new hires are black or Indian, etc. Almost as if other races are just as racist as caucasians, maybe more racist, and are taking advantage of the generosity of politically correct caucasians to get some for their “own” people.
This isn’t entirely unreasonable. Skin color/facial features have some connection to genetic similarity. It does make sense to prefer people who statistically have more genes in common with yourself.