Uh-huh, the Central Park jogger case wasn’t big news, nor was the OJ Simpson case made a big deal of in the media, nor did the media spend a dramatic amount of time covering the trial of Michael Jackson.
The driving force behind the publicity for the Trayvon Martin shooting case was because of the fact that it appeared that the police weren’t doing their job and it looked somewhat like they were actively trying to cover it up.
By contrast there’s no evidence that the police have not been doing their job in the case of Bailey O’Neill.
Moreover, I haven’t seen any evidence that the bullies were motivated by race whereas race was clearly involved in the Trayvon Martin shooting.
I call bullshit. Ray Rice of the Baltimore Ravens has made the death of Bailey O’Neill into a crusade and has regularly condemned what happened and the perpetrators of it.
Show me where he’s been accused of being a racist or an Uncle Tom for doing so.
For that matter, show me where any prominent people have accused the critics of the bullies of Bailey O’Neill were accused of being racists.
Re: Ray Rice. Yes he did make this an issue and good for him. However, I do NOT see the Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton making an issue out of it. If these guys who are supposedly so anti-racism really care about stomping out racism then it would include ALL RACISM. But I’ll come back to Ray Rice momentarily.
Re: Being labeled a racist. I realize that this next comment does not involve Bailey O’Neill specifically, but let’s look at Bill O’Reilly for a moment. Several liberals approached me after O’Reilly supposedly told some Jewish immigrant to “go back to Israel.” My liberal friends had told me that they had heard about this and that O’Reilly was making a “racist statement.” I however, was actually listening to the broadcast the day that it happened, and I can tell you that O’Reilly, for whatever his other faults may be, was being taken out of context, and the Jewish man that he said it to even pointed out that fact, but that did not stop any of the liberals that I knew from believing that O’Reilly was being an anti-semitic racist. (admittedly anecdotal but true nonetheless) Let’s look at Limbaugh. He made a remark about a black quarterback being overrated because liberals did not want to see a black quarterback fail. Now I must admit that I have never been a sports fan so I don’t really know the quarterback (Donovan?) that he was referring to, and I wouldn’t know if he is overrated or not. Nonetheless, as I recall Limbaugh lost his position over this and was unable to purchase the St. Louis Rams football team because many people in St. Louis did not want “a racist” to own the Rams. You may love Rush or hate him and you may disagree with him, but I don’t believe that he is a racist nor did what he say constitute being a racist to me.
I’ll bring up Eric Holder. Please correct me if I’m wrong, but I saw the infamous recordings of the New Black Panthers yelling racist threats and saying how he hates all white people and wants to kill their babies (near a polling place). Atty. General Holder said that he didn’t see any intimidation on this and did not want to prosecute them. Had the KKK been doing this in black neighborhoods I have to wonder if Mr. Holder would feel the same way. Does this make our attorney general a racist? I’ll let you make the call; but to be fair about it I don’t hear Holder being labeled a racist yet I have heard it over and over again against Limbaugh.
Re: No evidence that the bullies were motivated by race. I don’t see any evidence that Zimmerman was motivated by race either, but that’s the impression I get from the media. He’s constantly been called a racist by the African American community and as I recall Spike Lee gave out his wrong address and since then the residents of that address have been constantly harassed by black thugs. Even if it had been the correct address, that didn’t give anybody a right to harass Zimmerman or his family. Correct me if I am wrong, but I don’t recall Ray Rice or any other celebrities giving out the addresses of the bullies who beat Bailey O’Neill to death, nor have I heard any news reports of the families being harassed by white thugs. As for the crusade against this atrocity, I have not seen any where near the media coverage for that as I have about Zimmerman. And as for the cops not doing their job in that case, we can let the facts come out as time goes on but it does now appear that Zimmerman acted in self defense. The Black community was complaining that had it been a black man shooting a white man then an arrest would have been made immediately. Okay that may be an exaggeration but NO ARRESTS have been made yet of the two black bullies who BEAT TO DEATH Bailey O’Neill either. That may change as time goes on, just as it did with Zimmerman.
Re: Attitudes on Racism. I have heard it said several times (I want to say that i even heard Joy Behar say this but I’d have to find the episode) that blacks cannot be racists since they don’t have any “power.” I call bullshit. Racism is an ideal or attitude that one has; whether or not you are a member of the “ruling class” has nothing to do with whether or not you can be a racist. I am sure Reginald Denny could take great comfort that when he was being beaten during the L.A. riots that it was just an angry black man beating him and he just happened to be white but the black thug that was beating him was NOT a racist because he was not in power (other than the power of beating the crap out of the truck driver). I’m sure Bailey O’Neill’s family feels the same way. But hey watch out for that white hispanic racist Zimmerman. Nonetheless liberals will still tout that minorities cannot be racist since they are not in power; this appears to right wingers that when blacks and other minorities commit racist acts that they are “given a pass” that whites would not be given in a reversed situation.
Uh-huh, the Central Park jogger case wasn’t big news, nor was the OJ Simpson case made a big deal of in the media, nor did the media spend a dramatic amount of time covering the trial of Michael Jackson.
Re: The above. All of it was big news, but look at the outcry. OJ Simpson was found not guilty and the black community loved it. Years later he tries to publish a book called “IF I Did Kill My Wife, Here’s How I Did IT” yet he still had his defenders. As for Michael Jackson: While the second accusation sounds like a family of grifters tried to take advantage of his reputation with children, the fact that he paid off the first “victim” didn’t look good, but did that destroy his popularity? HELL NO! In fact Chris Rock is the only one I heard griping about Jackson’s alleged molestations. On a personal note: I don’t know what Michael Jackson’s issues were and we could probably start a whole new thread about it, but I do have to raise my eyebrows knowing that at least one person was supposedly paid “hush money.” As for the Central Park Jogger: there seems to be some questions about what actually happened and supposedly an Hispanic convict who is already in prison has confessed recently to this. Nonetheless before this happened the alleged rapists of the jogger had their defenders claiming that it was racism that they got arrested since they were black. Racism may or may not have had something to do with it (I would like to see a recent documentary on the case) nonetheless I have to ask: were these boys completely innocent of any felonies at all or were they just not guilty of attacking the Central Park jogger? IF they WERE out committing felonies (just not that particular felony) then they are NOT some innocent kids railroaded by racists; they would then be thugs who became “the usual suspects” because of previous behavior on THEIR PART NOT because of racist cops.
Projection is a large part of it, but at least the people who support disenfranchising others (not necessarily a majority of conservatives), I think, need to believe it. Rigging an election is obviously contrary to American values, but if you’re unrigging the election, that’s virtuous even if to the untrained eye it looks like you’re rigging it.
Moreover, if you have a vaguely articulated idea that Those People shouldn’t be equal in whatever way, Their equality can look like your oppression.
About Piss Christ: on top of what phouka said, persecuting the majority isn’t impossible, but it requires a lot more effort, not least to overcome the inertia the majority possesses. One piece of art isn’t going to do it; even a menorah in a public park (which I don’t really support) isn’t going to make people stop equating “Christian” and “American”. A handful of anti-sexist laws isn’t going to make this suddenly not a male-dominated society. One anti-bullying PSA isn’t going to topple heteronormativity.
Al Sharpton is not “anti-racism” and I don’t think any informed person with time and space for nuance says he is. His activism is against racist oppression of black people, which is only one aspect of anti-racism (albeit one a lot of people, including, yes, a lot of white liberals, would regard as a high priority at this historical moment).
I’ve emphasized the above key fact. One finds many examples of it, even here at SDMB. (I think the “left” is much less prone to this – see recent threads on cognition differences correlated to political alignment.)
A recent thread: Would scientists admit it if the evidence turned against AGW? :smack: Deniers assume that rationalists have the same policy-drives-facts reversed mindset that they have.
“Liberals hate the rich.” I don’t see a lot of hate coming from liberals. Right-wingers often have hatred for one group or another … and assume hatred drives others as well.
“Liberals want to waste your tax dollars.” The Iraq Fiasco, driven by the right, dwarfs left-wing waste, but money spent there was never a consideration for them.
Al Sharpton is not “anti-racism” and I don’t think any informed person with time and space for nuance says he is. His activism is against racist oppression of black people, which is only one aspect of anti-racism (albeit one a lot of people, including, yes, a lot of white liberals, would regard as a high priority at this historical moment).
Years ago on the Phil Donahue show, he had on East St. Louis Mayor Carl Officer. For those who don’t know, East St. Louis is a predominantly black city under black leadership and yes it has a high crime problem for such a small city. I don’t know anybody who call Phil Donahue a conservative (and IIRC Donahue himself even identifies himself as a liberal). At one point in the discussion Donahue asked the mayor why East St Louis had so many problems. Mayor Officer responded with what I have heard so often over the years (from Black people as well as White Liberals) that “Phil, it’s just good old fashioned racism. The powers that be don’t want to see a predominantly African-American city succeed, and so the ruling class in the capitol won’t give us the money we need to make our city successful.” This received some applause although not a huge amount. Donahue pondered this a few seconds and replied:
“To say that racism is alive and well in America today, would be an understatement. Certainly no one can deny that racism is on a rampage in this country like it never has been before (MY NOTE: this was the 1980s, and I didn’t agree with that statement back then either). HOWEVER, RACISM is NOT the SOLE CAUSE of EVERY SINGLE PROBLEM WITHIN THE AFRICAN-AMERICAN COMMUNITY! WHEN are you going to start taking some RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOURSELVES!” My point is this: While I applaud Donahue for the latter portion of his response, the fact of the matter is that what Donahue said has often been a mantra of the right wing, yet when the right wing makes such remarks the left wing response usually comes down to “racism, numerous years of oppression has kept the African American community down, or YOU just don’t UNDERSTAND!” Nonetheless, conservatives don’t want to keep the African American community down, but that doesn’t stop that stereotype from coming our way, in the same manner that while liberals may not necessarily want to “take everybody’s guns away” THAT MANTRA doesn’t stop coming at the liberals. SO I guess truth ought to be somewhere in the middle right?
Well look at their disenfranchisement in the social sciences as outlined in this article. Would the media in general, or other vehicles of popular culture like the movie business, be much different? It’s not hard to see how they might get the impression they’re being marginalized?
:dubious: All that shows is that conservatives are underrepresented in the degreed scholarly profession of psychology. Well, unlike some Americans, RWs (mostly white) are not burdened by any socioeconomic baggage or problems that might, disproportionately-statistically, prevent them from pursuing such a profession. Their absence from that or from any profession or academic field is not any sign of disfranchisement or marginalization; it is, rather, grounds for self-examination.
Not necessarily. Using “racism” to mean “a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement”, fighting racial oppression of a group can itself be motivated by racism, if the motive is the belief that the oppressed group is superior to the oppressing one. That is to say, racists can oppose racism, if it’s not of the stripe they advocate.
People will note that when this began Hottius Maximus claimed that critics of the boys who who beat up Bailey O’Neill were regularly called racists.
I pointed out that Ray Rice of the Baltimore Ravens had repeatedly quite publicly criticized the boys who did that and asked to be provided of a single instance of when he or any of the other critics had been accused of being racists.
He dodged this question and instead put up some rather long-winded rants complaining about “the black community” claiming that other than Chris Rock nobody criticized Michael Jackson, claimed that the boys who were jailed for years and had their lives ruined during the Central Park jogger case weren’t victims of racism and very strongly implied that they got what they deserved.
In short, it’s rather obvious that he made claims that he couldn’t back up.
If I’m wrong it should be easy for him to provide cites of critics of Bailey O’Neill’s bullies being accused of racism and he should be able to provide evidence that the incident was racially motivated.
Also, unlike gender and race, political views are freely chosen by the individual and subject to change at any time; they are not immutable aspects of one’s identity. Maybe conservatives are discouraged from pursuing careers in the social sciences, but then again, maybe certain experiences common to social scientists (like, for example, having been a grad student living on $20,000 a year) discourage them from becoming conservatives. At any rate, it doesn’t strike me as a problem that people with similar values and beliefs tend to cluster together in certain professions, since values and beliefs are among the factors that lead people to choose a particular profession in the first place.
Perhaps I didn’t answer the question to your satisfaction, but I will ask you one now. Can you disprove any of my “rant” at all? The original post was about right wing disenfranchisement and I gave examples of it in my “rant.” Perhaps I was wrong to bring anecdotal evidence into this, but several (again NOT ALL) of the liberals that I sometimes encounter are quick to shout RACISM regarding the Zimmerman/Martin case but they don’t have much to say about Bailey O’Neill. I acknowledged that Ray Rice spoke out publicly about it, but I have to ask you sincerely (with absolutely NO snark) do you honestly believe that if Bailey O’Neill had been black and beaten up by two white thugs that the accusations of racism would NOT be all over the media? I realize this is a hypothetical, but I would like your opinion for this reason: you yourself said in a previous post that you saw no evidence that the thugs who beat the crap out of Bailey O’Neill were racially motivated. Well I say that I see no evidence that Zimmerman was racially motivated either, but the media sure as hell is making out to be.
The question of the OP is why they may consider they are being disenfranchised. In terms of understanding why people with conservative views may feel marginalized, the reality is that they are in important spheres of influence and opinion making in the popular culture. As I asked in my post above, I would suggest that the media is similarly dominated by those of a more liberal slant. Are their views well represented in prestigious media organs like the New York Times, or the Washington Post? For example, I doubt the NY Times would hire Pat Buchanan to write weekly columns, or get a talking heads role on CNN.
If their spokespeople can’t get a hearing, or that tv shows which transmit standard behaviour don’t reflect their views favourably, it’s understandable they may feel that their outlook and values are being increasingly sidelined.
This is an extremely stupid comment which show gross ignorance of the subject.
Pat Buchanan was a talking head on CNN for years on Crossfireand The Capital Gang and continued in that role long after he made extremely controversial comments comments squealing about the Israeli Defense Department controlling Congress and claiming that the tales of Jews being gassed to deaths at concentration camps were grossly overrated because people had survived the exhaust from subway cars.
He was also a talking head on MSNBC for years and his columns were printed in numerous newspapers throughout the US.
Beyond that, your comments about The Washington Post and The New York Times are even stupider.
If there are a lot of ignorant scientific racists as well as other right-wingers who squeal that they’re being ignored by the mainstream media what it means is that they’re in willful denial of the reality of the situation they pretend to have knowledge of.
In addition to Pat Buchanan with his racist pseudo-science, plenty of right-wingers have written for both *The Washington Post *and The New York Times. To give some obvious examples Rowland Evans, Robert Novak, George Will, Bill Safire, Bill Kristol and David Brooks.
For that matter, Richard Cohen was a columnist for the Washington Post for years and was famous for racist rants about how small businesses should be allowed to discriminate against young black males because, according to him, most young black males were criminals.
I recommend the next time you spout off on a subject you actually do some research.
I think the right wing fear of disenfranchisement is due to an obvious cause - they are effectively being disenfranchised. Not by losing their vote but by being outvoted.
We constantly hear talk about the “Real America” and the “Real Americans”. It’s pretty obvious that to this mindset not everyone who lives in this country is a Real American. The people who feel they are Real Americans see themselves losing control of the United States to the growing unreal majority - and they’re right, it is happening.
Isn’t is more that the term right-wing has changed in recent years to mean the crazies who are currently the Republican party base. This is by definition a minority of far-right people who have been attracted to and courted by the Republican party by the very fact that they’re feeling disenfranchised.
You can’t say right-wingers always feel disenfranchised, but you can say the current vocal right-wingers do. Meanwhile the Democrats have been sucked into the vacuum left by the move to the right and are not particularly left-leaning in any sense.
This doesn’t show up in elections in such a strong way as people generally vote Republican or Democrat based on their long-held affiliations, rather than the current direction of the party.
My claims of being called racist came from my own personal experiences with some liberals that I sometimes encounter. I will admit that I don’t have any evidence of a public figure being called that so I will admit error in the public arena. That being said, no one is going to call Ray Rice a racist because he is black. Although ironically I do recall Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s sermons being labeled racist by conservatives, and I noticed that with the exception of FOX News which picked up the story from Rolling Stone (which called Reverend Rice bombastic), most of the electronic media didn’t appear to want to deal with it. Had John McCain attended a white supremacist church for 20 years, I somehow don’t think that would have been the case with the mainstream media (but hey, I’m ranting). I’ll have to check to see if Rush has commented on this case. I have no doubt that Rush would be labeled a racist for doing so. Believe it or not, I am not a huge fan of Rush despite the fact that I am a right winger. There now, I admitted my error in the public arena. So would you now please address what I asked in my previous post? Do you honestly believe that under the same circumstances that if Bailey O’Neill’s attackers had been white but Bailey O’Neill had been black, that the media would NOT have made a much bigger issue out of it as they did with Martin Zimmerman? You wrote that the outcry over Trayvon Martin’s shooting came because it appeared that the cops were not doing their jobs. Well, O’Neill’s killers have not been arrested, although I understand that the school suspended them for a few days (before O’Neill died). Yeah, that’ll teach’em! If you care to address what I wrote in my earlier rant, I would appreciate that as well, considering the fact that the original question was about right wing disenfranchisement, and that’s what I was addressing in my original post to you and my most recent ones.