So the fact that he marched in 1963 means exactly one thing: that he marched in 1963.
Yes. And really, when you think about it, marching for civil rights in the ‘60s doesn’t indicate a position any more progressive than that held by a non-radical Republican literally a century earlier: black people should have basic rights to vote and live their lives without being brutally oppressed. It says nothing about supporting them as leaders with higher status than their white constituents.
Okay, but that’s true for any political platform. You’re either for or against tax cuts. You’re either for or against increased public services. And you’re either for or against policies that promote disenfranchisement and discrimination against minorities. Drawing lines in the sand is how politics works.
There’s a moral difference between candidates who exploit racism to gin up antipathy against blacks and other groups (to win votes) and candidates who run on a message of antiracism and tolerance. Yet both deal with “racial issues”. If you think it is in white people’s best interest to vote for the former and not the latter, then you need to ask yourself why. And how is this anything except racist?
There’s a whole lot of middle ground between voting for candidates who you perceive as looking out for one’s own interests versus prioritizing your own convenience over the basic needs of other people or choosing white supremacy over racial justice.
I mean to me, it’s important that the water be clean and abundant, and the garbage get picked up on time, cops patrol the city and enforce the laws/deter crime, and that the roads get repaired and rebuilt in a timely fashion (the last two are serious challenges Dallas faces). Why is it somehow unethical to vote for the candidate who promises that, over the one whose entire platform is based on affordable housing, just police policies and and a whole bunch of other stuff that doesn’t have much to do with me?
Ideally they should all be within the capability of cities and states to provide, but in reality, they can’t all do everything. And different people have different priorities on these things- that’s not wrong.
Where it gets weird is when the political races get cast in a style where the candidates are presented as standing up for their own people, and the things they value. Then people are faced with the question of whether that’s true or not, and if so, who do they vote for? Most people are going to vote for the candidate who they feel represents their wishes the best / who they feel is going to stick up for them and their interests the best, and if the race is cast as a black vs. white one, people are likely to vote for the people of their race, for good or ill.
Voting is for most people, an inherently selfish thing. People vote for the candidates who promise them stuff- panem et circences is the famous term. In the main, people don’t vote for candidates who are going to go help other people at their (the voter) expense. Maybe a few particularly ethical and ideological ones do, but that’s not the general motivator.
I’d even argue that voting on behalf of others is a uniquely privileged thing to do- that’s something you do when your needs are met to the point that you can worry about others even at your own expense. The vast majority of people aren’t in that particular state however.
Of course it’s uniquely privileged. It’s bizarre that you suggest this is a reason not to do it, and suggests you don’t understand anything about the discussion of privilege.
Affordable housing and just police policies have nothing to do with you? I can’t believe you would say something so short-sighted…are you being serious right now?
Unless you 1) have zero risk of anything bad happening to you that would change your socioeconomic situation and cause you have to live in a much cheaper home just to stay where the jobs are, 2) by some miracle, have permanent and complete immunity from law enforcement and thus, have zero risk of having your life and liberty imperiled by bad cops, and 3) only directly and indirectly interact with people equally fortunate as you and thus, have zero risk of experiencing societal butterfly effects caused by unaffordable housing and unjust police policies, then these problems have a lot to do with you.
So a candidate promises clean water and reliable trash pick up and this is what impresses you? If politicians in your area are running on platforms that merely promise functioning utilities, I would hate to live there. It probably means it’s too much to expect things like cops who don’t kill brown-skinned citizens for breathing too heavily, because no one in power has been pressured to ensure the attainment of such lofty ideals.
I would hope we could all agree that we should aspire to elect politicians who can “walk and chew gum”: supporting efficient delivery of government services benefiting everyone and insisting on just policies vis-a-vis housing and policing.
Where it gets tricky is that some politicians insist that any racial disparity in arrests and prosecutions is prima facie evidence of unjustness, and only a policy change that results in a complete erasing of all such disparities would be just. People can reasonably disagree with this logic without having an irrational racial animus.
But that doesn’t strike me as having anything to do with what Bernie was saying. He seemed to strongly imply that there was no rational basis for opposing the election of Gillum and Abrams, and indeed that these white voters will be more into supporting candidates like them “next time”. So he seemed to simultaneously argue that they were uncomfortable voting for them for no other reason than their race, yet this did not make them racist. Which makes zero sense.
If that was the only thing on his resume, you might have a point. But it isn’t and so you don’t.
SlackerInc, I think the discrepancy in your last paragraph indicates part of how the discussion and expectations around racism at the moment is often (not always) reactionary, not founded on coherent philosophy, and not systems-outcome-oriented. Add that to the fact that few people seem to have patience, intellectually or emotionally, for wading into the murky aspects of human motivations and why we do what we do, and you’ve got a perfect recipe for incoherent argument and self-contradictory positions.
I hate to try to speak for another poster, and I likely have it wrong, but it seems to me that the point bump is trying to make is, in essence, that in any given election racism as either a concept or as represented practically in policy might or might not be a priority issue for a particular voter. It is, in fact, reasonable for it to not be the most important issue for a voter.
So, if it’s reasonable that there are voters for whom racism might not be the most important issue, it’s reasonable to state that those people are not necessarily racist (or not any more racist than any other given person who voted Democrat).
In the context of the recent election, this doesn’t fit. We’re not talking about black candidates who made racism a priority issue, leading whites voters to reject them. We’re talking about black candidates who ran on regular progressive issues who were rejected by white voters because of their race.
We’re also talking about these same voters electing people whose campaigns exploited racism, in effect, sending the messages that they fully support the kind of robo calls that smeared Gillum and Abrams and the voter suppressive nonsense the Republican Party is using to in effect disenfranchise black people in those states.
Here is the question put plainly: If you have two candidates to choose from, one white and one black, and both promise to make the trains run on time and the other stuff that makes a city functional and reasonably safe, then is there any valid, non-racist reason to be uncomfortable voting for the black candidate?
That’s a way to say what I was getting at Eonwe… and no, there’s no valid reason to be uncomfortable voting for the black candidate all else being equal, assuming you actually agree with them. People can have plenty of non-racist reasons for voting against either candidate.
And another reason is that in the minds of a lot of people, black candidates have historically been seen as a sort of shorthand for a specific brand of politics centering on social justice, racial equality, and other policies with the black community being the primary beneficiaries. In other words, policies that don’t resonate with white voters as much as the policies that they perceive as benefiting themselves.
I’d think the real acid test would be for the GOP to run a black candidate vs. a white Democrat and see what happens.
“The minds of a lot people” harbor many ideas about black people, most of which don’t have basis in fact and are grounded in prejudice. One only has to look at the crazy things people thought Obama was going to do for evidence of what these minds believe. If a black politician isn’t promising policies that hurt whites, it is unreasonable to assume they will do so just because of their race. The fear is actually reminiscent of the old anxiety that freed slaves would seek revenge against their former oppressors; this boogeyman was actually used as a rationale for keeping blacks in bondage.
This is nonsense. Nobody in 2016 was forced to vote for a racist. They chose to vote for a racist.
You had a choice between Hillary Clinton, a white politician who said that every race would get its fair share, and Donald Trump, a white politician who said white people would get more than their fair share. A non-racist running against a racist. Anybody who didn’t want to support racism had the opportunity.
Anyone who thinks Trump is looking out for their interests is an idiot. The only person who Donald Trump is looking out for is Donald Trump. The people who voted for Trump were suckers who voted against their own interests.
Let me make something clear- I didn’t vote for Trump, or for Ted Cruz, or for Pete Sessions. I wasn’t actually talking about 2016 either- more about state and local elections.
But like others have said, racism isn’t necessarily a first priority for a lot of people- bigger fish to fry, and all that. For a lot of right-wingers, their bigger fish is abortion. For others, it’s job availability in their little corner of Appalachia. Or gun rights, or a myriad of other things that don’t track with the progressive agenda. It’s not so much that they hate these things outright, but they’re perceived as either entirely ancillary, or that their pursuit is actively detrimental to the pursuit of the things they hold to be valuable.
And not agreeing politically doesn’t make someone wrong or racist; if someone is really hung up on abortion, they just don’t give a shit about the rest of it- they’re going to vote for whoever they perceive as most in line with their abortion views. A lot of progressives are equally hung up on racism in a way that doesn’t track with most people in the country. Doesn’t make either of you wrong- you just have different priorities.
So who have you got?
Biden? Booker? A couple of neo-liberals.
Hillary? Right. Couldn’t beat the most obnoxious candidate ever.
O’Rourke? He couldn’t defeat the second most obnoxious candidate in the country.
I understand that the Democratic Party isn’t going to nominate a socialist but they had better do better than the four people I mentioned or they will lose … again.
Well, that ain’t my job to worry about it and nothing I can do about it. But this is expected to be a very large field so I’m sure I’ll find someone I like as it all shakes out. Hell, once upon a time the GOP was trying to figure out how Jeb(!) or Walker was going to beat Clinton.
Those guys probably would have won more easily. And I say that as someone who really likes Hillary Clinton: I wasn’t just joylessly trudging to the polls to “pull the lever” for her. But it was just not a good year to be a Democrat.
Excuse me, but this is a pretty dumb post.
I mean, look who you’ve named. Hillary’s not going to run. Beto’s unlikely to. Biden’s going nowhere. Cory Booker’s the only one of the four that I’d consider to have a decent chance of being in contention after Iowa.
OTOH, you left out Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Sherrod Brown, and Kirsten Gillibrand - all of whom have a much better shot than anyone on your list except (possibly) Booker. Plus the Dems have other prospects. Amy Klobuchar is said to be considering a run. I don’t know that Brian Schatz is, but I sure would like to see him try.
It’s like you’ve named the players on a JV team and asked, “how can your school compete if these are the best you’ve got?” while ignoring the varsity.
I’m a homer for Klobuchar, but Brown is so strong. He is the only candidate I and my Bernie- loving friends agree on, and he is popular in Ohio, where Democrats always checkmate the GOP when they win it.
Really? I like Sherred Brown, and have voted for him every chance I’ve gotten, but I hadn’t heard that he had any national aspirations.
I’d certainly vote in a general for him, and I’d be biased to support him in a primary (depending on who is is running, of course), but is he actually a viable prospect?