Possibly that's true now. It was quite different in the South 50 and 60 years ago. (I grew up mostly in the South during that time period: my USAF dad was stationed at different places there.) And as a South Asian, you likely would not have counted as "white" — maybe legally you would have been, but as a practical matter an awful lot of people would have treated you and your family as "colored."
> And as a South Asian, you likely would not have counted as "white" — maybe legally you would have been, but as a practical matter an awful lot of people would have treated you and your family as "colored."
If you think I’m the least bit phased by that: I had to defend my interracial marriage at a Bangladeshi wedding last year, in Canada. (And by that I mean I deflected about there not being any Bangladeshi girls in Chicago because we don’t make a scene about stuff like that.)
I have never met a white Republican remotely as racist as Indians, Bangladeshis, Arabs, Vietnamese, and Chinese people I’ve encountered.
It’s not a spectrum. Woke people are like Bangladeshis—they categorize individuals based on race/ethnicity. In 2024, unlike maybe when you grew up, the only people calling me “colored” are woke white people.
White republicans are, for the most part, non-racist. Once you establish points of commonality with them, they do not care or comment on what you look like.
>White republicans are, for the most part, non-racist. Once you establish points of commonality with them, they do not care or comment on what you look like.
What happens before you "establish those points of commonality"? Do they just unleash a constant stream of racial epithets at you?
Look, the reason you think Bangladeshis are racist and White Republicans are not is because other Bangladeshis are comfortable speaking freely about ethnicity/race in front of you, whereas White (and other) people are not.
I'm a Black man in an overwhelmingly White Republican part of the South and I have overheard disparaging comments very casually made (e.g. about the number of Indians who frequent our local Costco) when people thought it was "safe". I've also had a White Republican friend confide in me how absolutely racist the area we live in is, including some choice comments made by people we know in common.
And, surprise: I'd never directly experienced it, as they somehow elected not to share their racist attitudes with me, or speak of race at all in my presence. Indeed, they just "accepted" me.
>Woke people [...] categorize individuals based on race/ethnicity.
No. They just honestly acknowledge the undeniable reality that other people (and systems) do.
So, the reason you find their speaking the truth racist is because you're in absolute denial that anyone else is.
> What happens before you "establish those points of commonality"? Do they just unleash a constant stream of racial epithets at you?
They do not. But establishing commonality is a predicate to relating to people. Anywhere you are in the world, you must make efforts to relate to people on their own terms. If you walk into a village in Bangladesh, you need to figure out how to relate to them. Nobody owes you acceptance. The onus is on you to show you belong.
> Look, the reason you think Bangladeshis are racist and White Republicans are not is because other Bangladeshis are comfortable speaking freely about ethnicity/race in front of you, whereas White (and other) people are not.
Which is a good thing! Liberal whites are way too comfortable talking about race.
> I'm a Black man in an overwhelmingly White Republican part of the South and I have overheard disparaging comments very casually made (e.g. about the number of Indians who frequent our local Costco) when people thought it was "safe". I've also had a White Republican friend confide in me how absolutely racist the area we live in is, including some choice comments made by people we know in common.
But do they treat you differently as an individual based on race? I think that’s the fundamental difference between how liberals and conservatives view race. To me, the only thing that matters is that you treat me as an individual without regard for race. And in my experience that’s true of white conservatives. I don’t care if people have abstract notions about people from Muslim countries if they’re able to treat me as an individual. And quite ironically, white conservatives are much better at that than white liberals.
I absolutely condemn anyone that would treat an individual differently based on race. And that’s why I think white liberals are wrong and must be defeated. But I do not think that people perceiving conflict between groups is equivalent to racism.
You seem to have a worldview that says simply speaking of race is racist, even if people are speaking up to address racial injustice. You then preclude that possibility by saying that there's no longer such a thing as racial injustice.
OTOH, if someone holds deeply racist beliefs, it's somehow not racist unless they direct racist words or behaviors explicitly and overtly at you personally.
In your world, racist ideas stay contained as long as they're never uttered in a personal interaction. They never influence networks, opportunities or systems. And, there's no legacy from centuries of codified racism with which to contend.
No. As long as we never mention race aloud in a personal interaction, then everything is OK.
> I absolutely condemn anyone that would treat an individual differently based on race. And that’s why I think white liberals are wrong and must be defeated.
The implication of your "absolute condemn[ation]" is that (supposedly) it's categorically impermissible to try to remedy generational impacts of past race-based adverse treatment. That sounds more than a little like "I'm alright, Jack" (which loosely translates from Brit-speak as, "I got mine, pull up the ladder").
> I don’t care if people have abstract notions about people from Muslim countries if they’re able to treat me as an individual. And quite ironically, white conservatives are much better at that than white liberals.
I'm really curious what has caused you to feel that way.
> the only people calling me “colored” are woke white people.
We can be confident that when "woke white people" use the term "colored" today, their intent is very different than it generally was in the South of the 50s and 60s — and in not a few places today as well.
I don't care what's inside people's heads. In terms of outward effect, both forms of racism erect a social barrier that shouldn't be there. I haven't encountered any 1960s-type racists; maybe they would be worse than the condescending/paternalistic woke variety. But what we have now is certainly worse than what I experienced growing up in a red House district in a red state in the 1990s.
BTW, the "woke white Republicans" bit was a joke ... as indicated by the typed smiley-face, a widespread (albeit perhaps-dated) typographic convention.
It's clearly not true: Acts of hate and discrimination are at highs; White nationalism and Christian nationalism are at multi-generational highs, with advocates in the White House and Congress. Leading news organizations promote replacement theory; laws openly discriminate against immigrants, liberals, and LGBTQ+ people.
Much of that is not done by and otherwise not uncommon in the Republican party.
Quite the opposite. The only thing at “multi-generational highs” is non-white support for the supposedly “racist” GOP candidate: https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/27/politics/minority-voters-bide.... (Obviously all these folks aren’t listening to enough NPR.)
Discrimination is at such historic lows that democrats have literally had to redefine terms like “racism” and “white supremacy.” In the 1990s that meant wearing a klan hood. Now it means opposing violent rioting. In terms of substantive policy, Donald Trump is literally to the left of where Bill Clinton was just a couple of decades ago. Possibly to the left of where Obama was when he was campaigning in 2008.
Because there is no meaningful opposition to legal equality, democrats have had to switch to policing thoughts and speech about race and gender and trying to socialize children into thinking about race and gender in certain ways. Look at how they react to Trump: they fixate on his lack of manners, not any particular policy. There’s no sweeping civil rights bill they support that he opposes. They don’t want to increase immigration, or give amnesty to illegal immigrants, or defund the police, or grant reparations, etc. (At least they won’t admit that publicly.) They simply don’t like how Trump talks about immigrants, crime, etc.
There's a nihilism that says it all doesn't matter: truth (we are 'post-truth'), justice, freedom, and human rights (we worship power), etc. The nihilism is a pretty dumb idea, transparently so. A large bunch of people advocating for it won't make it better - plenty of history already shows that.
The truth is much easier - easier to think about, much easier to support, easier to work with. I hope you'll consider joining us on the bright side - it's a much more fulfilling life and people desparately need you.
The truth is that discrimination is at historic lows, which is why non-white voters are increasingly seeing through efforts to paint the country as racist. For half a decade of white liberals screeching about racism—through all of the megaphones of media they control—the allegedly racist Trump has increased his support among non-whites year after year. The proof of the pudding is in the eating.
The “post-truth” idea is that of a “racist” country is what’s being peddled by white people on NPR. It’s bigger, more significant, and more fundamental than Trump’s “big lie” about the election.
I don’t know about the bright side, but I’m on the right side. I grew up in, from my perception, a society where racial classifications didn’t matter. Instead of trying to extend that to everyone, white liberals are now trying to reimpose racial categories on my kids. They’re fighting for the legal right to discriminate against Asians. All out of some warped sense that it’s 1963 again. Like soldiers coming out of their trenches not knowing the war has ended.
I’m not optimistic. They command so much power in our institutions that I think when all is said and done, they will have poisoned a generation of kids into seeing race and racism where it doesn’t exist.
The assertion I was responding to stated that republicans opposed legal equality. Obviously it’s true in the years immediately after segregation ended the democrats who supported it continued to support it.
Possibly that's true now. It was quite different in the South 50 and 60 years ago. (I grew up mostly in the South during that time period: my USAF dad was stationed at different places there.) And as a South Asian, you likely would not have counted as "white" — maybe legally you would have been, but as a practical matter an awful lot of people would have treated you and your family as "colored."