I think Republican Conservatism could be best typified as support for the current power dynamic, or in the case of reactionaries, a desire to return to the previous power dynamic. As a result their policies tend to those that favor the established and powerful over the weak and disenfranchised.
Thus since the white is the dominant race in the United States, their views cater to this demographic more than they do to the minority demographic. This same dynamic holds for their support of mainstream Christianity vs minority religions, favoring the wealthy over the poor, straight over gay, etc.
Your parents had the opportunity to send you to a better school because the black kids were being shut out of nice, white neighborhoods. Your parents had the opportunity to work their asses off because they weren’t being excluded from jobs. Your parents probably never had a resume or a loan application tossed in the shredder just because it had a stereotypically black name on it. Your parents had the advantage of being treated fairly by the criminal justice system, rather than exploited or victimized by it. Your parents probably never got shot by a police officer for no reason whatsoever.
This is what people mean when they talk about “white privilege.” There are a tremendous number of factors that influence how much opportunity you had to move up in the world. This does not devalue the amount of effort and responsibility went with it. It just points out that many minorities could put forth just as much - or more - effort and still fail because the deck was stacked against them from the beginning. You, and most other white people, have the attitude that “If I did it, anyone can,” because you overlook the disadvantages inherent in being a minority.
YES!!! The children of poor white face fewer obstacles than similarly situated black children. No question about it. The children of poor whites face more obstacles than wealthy blacks but all other things being equal, whites have it easier than blacks. You almost have to be wilfully ignorant of the situation to not recognize that.
IMHO, support for Republicans is less about race directly but about wealth and power. Just like a previous poster stated, he wants less government through less taxation. Taxes support programs that people with lower incomes need. “Non-whites” tend to be poorer so they need tax funded programs. Wealthier people, who tend to be white, do not want or need these programs, so proportionately they want their taxes reduced.
It helps that most Democrats haven’t taken any significant action on this issue to bolster affirmative action policies from Obama on down even if they might dutifully repeat the mantra about the necessity of the policy when asked. When Democrats have tried, Asian opposition shot it down.
Amusingly enough I was assigned that article to read for my class yesterday. There was another piece linked to in the comments that I think provides yet another piece of the puzzle as to the shift in Asian American voting which notes that Asians have shifted left as the proportion who were Christian well from roughly 60 percent in the early 90s to 40 percent. Asians who are Christian are roughly evenly divided but it is the non-Christian element which is strongly Democratic.
Bingo. In fact lower class whites have fallen behind in many important measures. Death rates are *rising *for whites (fastest amongst less educated/rural populations) while it drops for every other cohort. Rising death rates are *very *unusual in the modern era (think Russia in the 90s) and it’s not hard to imagine how destabilizing they can be.
The Milanovic Elephant Chart further illustrates the extent to which the Western lower classes have been treading water since 1988. The past 30 years have seen the greatest reduction in poverty in history, but very little of it has benefited working class westerners.
If you are born in the USA, or any modern Western nation, you are so very privileged compared to a lot of the rest of the world, that the color of your skin is practically irrelevant.
This may not have shown up on the news you read, but Donald Trump his ownself - and the apartments he and his racist Dad owned - marked applications from black people C for colored. In New York, not Mississippi. I grew up in Queens, just like the Donald. There was a black neighborhood, there was a white neighborhood. Equally kept up, same types of houses, though probably their houses weren’t worth as much.
In 1975 my father sold our house to a cop from Haiti, because that was the best offer and he was a nice guy. And my dad got all kinds of crap from the neighbors.
No, unfortunately racism is not confined to the deep South, and if you think that you have led a sheltered - and privileged - life.
Now if I was doing a study, I’d follow up by sending resumes with all black-sounding names, but half with traditional African names and half with names from parents who must have really hated their children and see if there’s a variance. I bet Baracks and Kamalas get more callbacks than half-assed attempts at naming(like putting a D or an L before a common name, or spelling it differently just because), or outright horrid names that get black kids mercilessly mocked by other black kids.
BTW, if you ever want to see naming as a weapon against unwanted or neglected kids, go to any DHS adoption si, and te and see what names these kids got saddled with. Parents don’t realize or don’t care that a bad name can set a person back and I think the effect of race is overrated. I bet Dikembe gets a lot more callbacks than D’Morris or Laquiseha and probably more callbacks than Waldo.
You may have a point there. I knew a couple than named their kids Bambi and Thumper, thus making the girl (Bambi, who was actually a stag) suited only for life as a stripper and the boy set up nicely as a boxer. Bambi is not gonna get a call back for the CEO position.
Republicans frequently come off as racist to anyone that isn’t white. You really get the sense that once they get tired of fucking over blacks, we’re next.
Affirmative action doesn’t bug us as much as the fact that Asians seem to bear virtually the entire load, whites seem almost immune from the effects of affirmative action (and yet it seems to bother them immensely). Between that and all the “preferences” that seem to line up nicely for whites, it seems like we have affirmative action on one side and game rigging on the other.
Maybe the whites figured out that it wasn’t costing them anything.
And that is exactly where a LOT of Asians were in the 1980s (Asians were more consistently Republican than white males). But we left because of the racism. We were replaced by more racist whites and people who were closer and closer to Trump on the ideological spectrum. So now you have a party of mostly white with a large enough contingent of people like Trump that he is now your nominee.
I see. So, discrimination is okay based on what parents do. And you’d have to show that the black names chose were over the top.
I wonder if the same would hold for Indian or Chinese names.
Not his point. The point is that a stupid name is a stupid name no matter what color you are. A white person whose resume says “Bart Simpson” on it will never be taken seriously, regardless of what his credentials are. People nowadays think it is important that their children have unique names, even when that means they are childish, mispelled or nonsense, and they aren’t thinking about how that name will be perceived when they are professionals trying to get employers to take them seriously.