The Southern Strategy is a myth.
Well, I’m a straight cisgendered age 40+ Christian white man and I do listen to several podcasts regularly. Granted, about 2/3 of them of from the NPR universe, but still. I also regularly follow progressive voices on twitter.
I don’t hear sneering at white men. I do hear constant calling out of white men who don’t see their privilege or don’t use it to support women or people of color or sexual or religious minorities. Maybe we don’t listen to or follow the same media but I appreciate the occasional reminder to check my assumptions of what the world is like for people who are not like me and accept that men like me have shaped the world into a hostile place for people who are different.
I’ve been a straight white man all my life. If people were sneering at me, I would have noticed it. I don’t see it.
What I do see it are some of my fellow straight white men who think they are better than everyone else and resent it when other people treat them as equals.
Is there a ballet term for a simultaneous pirouette and back-pat? It’s nice how you managed to fail to acknowledge your error at the same time as you complimented your own foresight, and I feel like that should be recognized in a French term.
Pew Research: Wide Gender Gap, Growing Educational Divide in Voters’ Party Identification
But that’s not specifically white millennials, so if you have a link to what you’re talking about regarding a big shift there SlackerInc a link would be nice.
I do not disagree with your prescription as a guide to general political health in any case: “stay away from dissing people for inborn traits that do not inherently prevent them from being thoughtful, caring, cosmopolitan, progressive allies.”
Good guidance. Debatable about how much it happens but of course it does and those who do should stop it.
But you are taking one online survey with a lot more seriousness than it deserves and assuming its complete accuracy jumping to an attribution without considering many other aspects that have occurred over the two year interval.
First quarter 2016 was Obama still at his peak, before a group of Millennial Whites attached to Sanders and then felt disillusioned by the party, before Trump rebranded the GOP into whatever it is now, before lots of things. First quarter 2018 is after all that.
OTOH whatever disparaging things are said when “straight cisgender white men, are talked about online and in podcasts” has been the case possibly even more before first quarter 2016.
Believing the latter is the putative cause rather than any of the formers (the loss of Obama as frontman, Sanders sour grapes, the changes wrought by Trump, etc.) is illogical.
Steronz, what about the NPR interview I talked about? Not just the interviewer, but the fact that everyone else working at that big organization did not flag this as a problem and there was no controversy in the media about it as far as I know. But it was really blatant. So its falling in the pond with nary a ripple says a great deal about a pervasive attitude. And things like that give a huge amount of fuel to the alt-right, as Steven Pinker tried to point out but got skewered for doing so:
The link is screwed up. Fixed version:
Diversity in Hollywood has been a major news story for a years now, there was a boycott of the 2016 Oscars, you might remember, it was national news. Studios are falling over themselves to greenlight shows featuring minority casts because there’s huge demand for them. Maybe I’d have a different opinion if I actually listened to the interview, but I read that as a topical discussion, not “sneering at white men.”
Do you think it’s reasonable that young white men feel threatened by an influx of minorities on TV and run to the GOP as a result?
So these ‘snowflakes’ need a ‘safe place’ because they’ve been ‘triggered’ by some podcasts?
(Surely republicans can’t find that language dismissive, right? )
If the world ever develops a superior system of government to replace democracy, I’m sure that idiot tax cuts will be cited as democracy’s worst feature and ultimate downfall. There is nothing that the average voter loves more than getting his taxes reduced, and the average voter is so maniacally in love with this idea that the consequences of it absolutely do not matter – in fact he doesn’t even want to hear about it. The whole country’s infrastructure could fall apart, the national debt could rise to the moon – he just doesn’t care. And this goes double for Republicans.
Regarding the NPR interview, her very next line in the interview walked it back:
It’s a valid question: if this meme (in the original Dawkins sense) is being perpetuated not by party leaders or by defined progressive organizations, what’s the remedy?
I would say that it comes down to being willing to be brave and counter it when you see it. Think about whether a smart young white guy might be watching or reading and be visible as a progressive that doesn’t support that message. If you are a woman or POC, even better. Instead of liking, retweeting, or just letting this shit pass on by, call it out. It takes guts like any political action against powerful/influential voices. But if enough people started doing this, it might catch on.
If you genuinely don’t see this happening, because you don’t run in these spaces or somehow don’t see it even there, then the answer is: do nothing. But be aware, watch for it, and push back if you see it. That’s all I ask. Point out that without the votes of white men, we’d have a few members of the Congressional Black Caucus in the House, and nothing else. No Obama, no Speaker Pelosi, etc. That letting white men settle in the GOP at anywhere near the percentage black women have found a home in the Democratic Party means we’re sunk. And, again, that people can’t control whether they are born white and male any more than whether they are black and female. We have to judge people by their actions. Preferably after they have gotten out of their parents’ sphere of influence a bit, although that’s murky.
At least somebody noticed that Hillary lost the election.
Regards,
Shodan
Sort of. Sounded to me like it would have been okay with her if it were a white woman.
But just listen to that audio and tell me that is journalistic professionalism on a level one would expect at that level. In a show biz interview!
So a straw man, then. Do you have even a single post in which I’ve ever “self flagellated” (whatever that means)? As for identity politics, I’m concerned about discrimination and bigotry… I guess that counts as identity politics from the anti social justice faction.
I did listen before I posted. “dripping with open derision” seems pretty hyperbolic.
Right. The overwhelming millions of white southern racist just changed parties by coincidence. It had nothing to do with opposition to Civil Rights, or the Republicans trying to appeal to those voters. Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms just happened to switch parties on a whim.
On this we agree 100 percent. I don’t know how anyone can argue otherwise.
It might sound contradictory for me to say this, but I have long said that as parties changed and they nearly reversed positions, the easiest way to analyze politics in bygone eras is to ask which party had the strong support of white men in the Deep South, and there’s your “bad” side. This gets mangled by FDR, but otherwise it holds up well.