Racial discrimination was brought up as another ‘identity’ where people may choose to vote for someone who looks like them. Basically, the thread is about identity politics and how that relates in voting for President. Class politics is not the same (I mean no one would necessarily argue that working class people voting for a working class candidate because of his class is all that controversial, as I pointed out).
(In addition, I’d argue that is the biggest division in the progressive movement - between those who believe class divisions are the primary problem and those who believe that identity politics are the primary problem.)
Not only that, but you have to explain to everyone how to rank their minority and disadvantaged status. Okay, so I’m a Latina woman(I’m not, just using that as an example). If I see a race between a white woman and a white man, I vote white woman, because I’m a woman and she’ll do more for women. If I see a race between a Latino man and a white man, I vote for the Latino man, because he’ll do more for Latinos. But then I see a race between a Latina woman and a black woman. Obviously I vote for the Latina woman, because she’ll do more for Latinas AND women! Oh wait, that would be racist. Well, what if black people vote for the black candidate over the Latina candidate. Is that a good thing, or is that racist? Is objectivity only supposed to apply when two minorities are running against each other? What if it’s a white gay candidate vs. a black woman, or a white woman vs. a black man, or an Asian man vs. a black man? Asians have it better than African-Americans, so are Asians supposed to remain objective or is it okay to vote for the Asian guy because he’s Asian?
Due to changing demographics, the end result of encouraging people to vote for people who like them, to tell them it’s okay to think that way, is that black candidates won’t have a prayer. Black men will be nearly shut out entirely. Barack Obama will be the first and last black male President, because women will be preferential to women and Latinos will be preferential to Latinos, and the Asian population is also set to grow bigger than the black population. So black folks get the shaft yet again.
In an increasingly diverse country, the idea that one gets a pass to be biased because they are underprivileged is basically a pass for everyone to be biased. Back when it was black vs. white and at best, male vs. female, things were pretty simple. Today, we have females, blacks, Latinos, Asians, gays, transgendereds, disabled, little people, etc. out and demanding equality(and they should!) But how is a person who is simultaneously part of a privileged class and an underprivielged class supposed to conduct himself or herself?
If you are a white male voter who is voting for a candidate simply because they are a white male (note, I never said that’s the only reason one would vote for a white male)… then yeah, you are perpetuating your privilege and power.
Right. Because we’ve never lived in a world in which everyone was biased. Or in which many of them were so effective at it that the rest were effectively removed from power and privilege. And we don’t currently live in a world in which your beloved Republicans, mostly white, male, straight Christians, are bashing minorities daily at every level of government.
There is a known historical fix for this if you are a bashed minority. Vote for more people who look like you. Over time the bashing will end, often with the aid of people who don’t look like you because they will see the political advantage and maybe even the moral advantage. You might even wind up with a whole political party which is inherently against hate-bashing and so makes it a likely proposition to vote for anyone under that banner.
Or we could just do it your way and perpetuate the hate. The hate against blacks, against Hispanics, against women, against Muslims, against gays, against atheists, against pagans, against immigrants, against liberals, against progressives, against anybody and everybody who isn’t as totally small-minded and blinkered in thinking as they are. No thanks. You got your way and it produced Trump, the logical culmination of hate at a national level.
Your so-called lack of bias is the biggest bias of all. We’ve done it your way so we know. We need to stop. We know how to stop. It will stop.
But if it’s possible for me to vote for a white male and NOT be voting just to perpetuate privilege and power, then what’s your point in the first place?
Is it possible for a white male candidate to support ending white male privilege? If so, it’s possible for not only a white male, but also a black female to vote for the white male for that reason. The whole thing falls apart when you stop making racist and sexist assumptions about the candidates and what they support.
Isn’t it quite obvious? That black people voting for someone because they are a black person or a woman voting for someone because they are a woman is very, very different than a white male voting for someone because they are a white male.
? Are you simply not following this discussion at all?
Do you actually think you explained something I don’t already know in post 108?
So back to my comment - if a white male can vote for a white male without it being a vote to perpetuate white male privilege, what’s your point?
(Yes, I see the point about voting for a white male only because they are a white male. The problem is that you assume that voting for a black female is always going to produce a change in power. It’s not. A black female could be a totally incompetent or corrupt politician who does nothing to help blacks and women).
As mentioned before in this thread, all other things being equal, someone who looks like a disadvantaged group being elevated to a position of power is quite powerful symbolically (and, yes, symbols matter).
(I mean it seems that even the most right wing person acknowledges the symbolism of President Obama being the first African-American President was important)
Okay, so it’s bad to vote to want to extend privilege. Great. Big revelation.
Symbols are worthless when reality is more important.
This reminds me of the problem with the Voting Rights Act. The VRA has been used to require packing black voters into districts so they can muster a majority to elect blacks, assuming that blacks represent blacks best. But that has backfired terribly by sucking all the life out of sympathetic white candidates in neighboring districts. Instead of a majority in Congress that could have the power to help blacks (i.e. a Democratic majority) we have more black reps who are members of a minority party that can’t get anything done for them. That’s reality, not symbolism.
The GOP knows all this, you know. They are busy recruiting black and female candidates who support the GOP agenda, putting people like you in a bind. It’s quite possible that in a given race, a vote for a white male and against a black female is better for black females.
Yeeeah… that’s totally not what the VRA really did. The VRA prevented a group of black voters who live in an area from being divided up into 4 or 5 different districts so that their vote would be a distinct minority in their new districts, allowing people who were hostile to black rights being elected while ‘representing’ black districts. Or did you think states in the Deep South in the 1960s were looking out for their black citizens?
I’m not entirely sure your ‘reality’ actually exists.
The response to the fact that this is a double standard has either been 1) denial that this is a double standard, or 2) defense of this being a double standard.
Aside from the “all other things being equal” part, which conveniently you and the GOP ignore. So then you wonder why black folk won’t vote en masse for Ben Carson or women for Carly Fiorina. The sad part is you think you’ve put people on the left in a bind, but it never appears to work. That must be frustrating ;).
By packing all the black voters from those four or five districts into one, the rest are left more white. So now you have one black rep and four very white, very Republican districts where, in one or two, white liberals who were sympathetic to blacks might have been able to win with the help of those black votes.
I’m not saying it’s like that in all cases. Obviously the original situation was black voters being divided into different districts in order to make their votes useless and elect right-wingers regardless. Obviously the requirement to pack them had good intentions and good results, sometimes. But EVEN IN CASES where a district might have enough liberal whites to combine with blacks and elect a sympathetic white, those districts have been drained of black voters, handing them to the rightwing Republicans. In fact, packing black voters into one big district was one of the other ways Southern states had disenfranchised them, by giving them only one seat and leaving the rest to whites (it was much easier before one-person, one-vote required the district populations to be equal - they’d just create one giant black district in a major city and divvy the rest of the seats to whites).
I believe that is a major reason for the GOP taking the House in the 1990s after 40 years of being in the minority.
Do you think states in the Deep South are looking out for their black citizens NOW?