History : Republicans’ Racism is Showing

Republicans’ Racism is Showing

What’s worse, they seem to be leaning into it.

If we lived in a perfect world, we’d have two major political parties that, in their different ways, would be working for the betterment of all Americans. Both parties would recognize that America hasn’t always lived up to its potential in terms of racial justice, and they would be clear-eyed about the ways in which structural and systemic racism has shaped many aspects of American society. They might differ in how they approached the solutions to these obvious problems, but at least they’d be able to see that they are problems.

Unfortunately, that’s not at all the world that we live in. Instead, we live in a world in which one party, the GOP, and its voters have gone out of their way to deny that racism exists in any form and who, in fact, seem to believe in disturbing numbers that Whites are more discriminated against than BIPOC. This same party has also manufactured and leaned into a collective hysteria about the supposed excesses and evils of “critical race theory,” despite the fact that few, if any, of them could actually define that set of concepts if pressed to do so. They’ve done so because they know that, when all is said and done, racism is a marvelous motivator for their base and, more sinisterly, for the (White) independents that Republicans rely on to win elections.

As Politico documents in a piece released today, Republicans are hoping to use race as a dividing force in the 2022 and 2024 elections, running on the message that Democrats have become too beholden to the left wing of their party when it comes to issues of social justice. Those who hope to seize the nomination in 2024 are lining up to assert, again and again and again, that America isn’t a racist country and that systemic racism isn’t a thing.

Of course, I’m not at all surprised that the Republican Party would take this route. They’ve shown time and again in the last 60 years that, when all else fails, they can always exploit the racial fault lines in this country to their own advantage. We saw it with Nixon’s Southern Strategy, we saw it with Ronald Reagan’s emphasis on states’ rights, and we saw it most explicitly with Trump and his myriad racist dog-whistles and bullhorns. The Republican Party is a party of white grievance, pure and simple.

Just because I’m not surprised doesn’t mean that I’m not infuriated, however, though my reasons for being so are various. On one level, I’m frustrated that the GOP continues to be so damn cynical. For far too many of them, the only thing that matters is attaining power and elected office. Effective governing, let alone leading this country to have some difficult conversations about race and its role in the radically different lives that White people and BIPOC lead, is beyond the pale. To put it bluntly: they’re just not interested in doing that.

However, I’m also angry because their continued use of this as a wedge issue makes it that much more difficult to envision a future in which the obvious racial divides in this country are at least somewhat healed. Rather than forcing their constituents and voters to have an honest conversation about racism and history in this country, they prefer instead to feed them the same inflammatory, reductive rhetoric that they’ve been using for decades.

It probably goes without saying that those who are left out of this swirl of rhetoric are actual BIPOC. For Republicans, their welfare — emotional, physical, political, spiritual — doesn’t matter, so long as they can effectively be used as a bludgeon with which they can beat Democrats every election. I’ve no doubt that Republicans will trot out the same nonsense that they always do when their racism is called out — they believe in the equality of all persons, look over there, it’s Tim Scott, etc. — but the fiction that the GOP is in any way interested in racial justice, or that it is interested in crafting policy that addresses the real needs of BIPOC is becoming increasingly untenable. By this point, they’ve become so enslaved to the Trumpian, white grievance part of their coalition that it’s hard to imagine a world where they’re likely to win increasing numbers of non-white voters (though, as Trump’s inroads with some Black and Latinx voters makes clear, not everyone votes for their own self-interest).

And, lastly, I’m angry because it’s all just so stupid and mean-spirited. Republican leaders know very well what they’re doing. Their comments to Politico show quite clearly that they don’t really have an investment in making America a better place for anyone, Black or White or Latinx or Asian/Pacific Islander. Their one and only goal is to further divisions for their own immediate political gain. While this might not work out for them in the long run — you can only continue to juice bitter White turnout for so long — in the short-term it has the potential to do quite a lot of damage to our already tenuous-fabric.

So, what can Democrats do to combat this message? I think they should continue in the vein of President Biden and Vice President Harris, both of whom have gone on record as saying that, while they recognize that there are deep-rooted and structural issues around race in the United States, they don’t believe that this country is fundamentally racist. That’s a fine difference, true, but it’s one that I think plays politically and that has a certain kind of philosophical grace to it as well. I’ve long believed that you can acknowledge the uglier parts of our collective history while also recognizing that many Americans genuinely want to make the future better for everyone.

Though Republicans obviously see race as an issue that they can use to their advantage in upcoming elections, such an approach has some pretty significant risks for them, as well. We’ve already seen the ways in which the suburbs turned against Trump in part because they didn’t like his dog-whistling and ugliness when it came to issues of race. Yes, it’s true (as the Politico report suggests) that many independent White voters like being told that they’re racist but, the last time I checked, outside of the outrage machines of Fox News and Twitter, that’s not really happening a lot.

That said, we Democrats need to be cautious about how we navigate this mine-field. Believe me, I’m as tired as anyone of tiptoeing around White people’s precious feelings, just as I’m tired of walking on eggshells around cis/straight people, making sure that they don’t feel too alienated by the ongoing struggles for equality for all parts of the queer community. However, the ugly reality is that such tiptoeing is a necessity, both because, in fact, many White people are very susceptible to racist appeals and because Republicans will make the most out of the barest opportunity. GOP operatives know that Americans are both very prone to amnesia (they’ll forget that they ever supported BLM in any way by the time a new election comes around) and susceptible to racist attacks (especially when it comes to their children’s education and to their own complicity in systems of racist oppression). They’ll take advantage of it in every way that they can.

The scary part is that it might just work. You can almost always count on White Americans to take the path of least resistance when it comes to issues of racial justice. If, however, they’re asked to do a difficult thing, whether it’s acknowledging (really acknowledging rather than just mouthing platitudes) the racist components of our history, passing legislation that would actually makes the lives of Black people easier, or coming to grips with the fact that they enjoy various privileges, you can almost guarantee that the majority of them will do almost anything else. And, if given the opportunity and if goaded by just the right kind of person — like Trump, or like those who are rising up in his wake — they will almost certainly give into their more sinister impulses.

I’m sure that my title, and my argument, will raise some hackles. Some will say: how dare I call all Republicans racist? How dare I throw around the term “racist” with such casual abandon? To that, I can only say: when Republican politicians finally stop playing the race card, and when Republican voters stop falling for such transparently nefarious methods, then perhaps I’ll be more inclined to listen to and heed such calls.

Until then, I’m going to join the chorus of those calling out the GOP for its complicity in racism and its continuing manipulation of its voters with racist methods. Everyone, whether Democrat, Republican, or Independent, deserves better from one of this country’s two major parties. Though I don’t have much hope, I do sincerely wish that Republicans, voters and politicians alike, will do better in the months and years ahead.

I wouldn’t count on it, though.

From now on, I'll consider myself a Democrat!

Re: Republicans’ Racism is Showing

Soul_Venom is showing his racism everyday it seems.

GET FUCKED :b

Re: Republicans’ Racism is Showing

He's The Everyday Racist.

I also frequently wonder whether any of this means anything at all. Which is just the experience of making art, I think.

Re: Republicans’ Racism is Showing

It's because he belongs to a racist religion.

Re: Republicans’ Racism is Showing

You don't say

How Can Mirrors Be Real If Our Eyes Aren't Real

Re: Republicans’ Racism is Showing

Indeed. He's very racist.

From now on, I'll consider myself a Democrat!

Re: Republicans’ Racism is Showing

The Democratic Party’s claim to be the party of the good guys, while the Republicans are the party of the bad guys, hinges on the tale of Richard Nixon’s so-called Southern Strategy. According to this narrative, advanced by progressive historians, Nixon orchestrated a party switch on civil rights by converting the racists in the Democratic Party — the infamous Dixiecrats — into Republicans. And now, according to a recent article in The New Republic, President Trump is the “true heir, the beneficiary of the policies the party has pursued for more than half a century.”

Yes, this story is in the textbooks and on the history channel and regularly repeated in the media, but is it true? First, no one has ever given a single example of an explicitly racist pitch by Nixon during his long career. One might expect that a racist appeal to the Deep South actually would have to be made, and to be understood as such. Yet, quite evidently none was.

So progressives insist that Nixon made a racist “dog whistle” appeal to Deep South voters. Evidently he spoke to them in a kind of code. Really? Is it plausible that Nixon figured out how to communicate with Deep South racists in a secret language? Do Deep South bigots, like dogs, have some kind of heightened awareness of racial messages — messages that are somehow indecipherable to the media and the rest of the country?


This seems unlikely, but let’s consider the possibility. Progressives insist that Nixon’s appeals to drugs and law and order were coded racist messaging. Yet when Nixon ran for president in 1968 the main issue was the Vietnam War. One popular Republican slogan of the period described the Democrats as the party of “acid, amnesty and abortion.” Clearly there is no suggestion here of race.

Nixon’s references to drugs and law and order in 1968 were quite obviously directed at the antiwar protesters who had just disrupted the Democratic Convention in Chicago. His target was radical activists such as Abbie Hoffman and Bill Ayers. Nixon scorned the hippies, champions of the drug culture such as Timothy Leary, and draft-dodgers who fled to Canada. The vast majority of these people were white.

Nixon had an excellent record on civil rights. He supported the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. He was an avid champion of the desegregation of public schools. The progressive columnist Tom Wicker wrote in the New York Times, “There’s no doubt about it — the Nixon administration accomplished more in 1970 to desegregate Southern school systems than had been done in the 16 previous years or probably since. There’s no doubt either that it was Richard Nixon personally who conceived and led the administration’s desegregation effort.”

Upon his taking office in 1969, Nixon also put into effect America’s first affirmative action program. Dubbed the Philadelphia Plan, it imposed racial goals and timetables on the building trade unions, first in Philadelphia and then elsewhere. Now, would a man seeking to build an electoral base of Deep South white supremacists actually promote the first program to legally discriminate in favor of blacks? This is absurd.

Nixon barely campaigned in the Deep South. His strategy, as outlined by Kevin Phillips in his classic work, “The Emerging Republican Majority,” was to target the Sunbelt, the vast swath of territory stretching from Florida to Nixon’s native California. This included what Phillips terms the Outer or Peripheral South.

Nixon recognized the South was changing. It was becoming more industrialized, with many northerners moving to the Sunbelt. Nixon’s focus, Phillips writes, was on the non-racist, upwardly-mobile, largely urban voters of the Outer or Peripheral South. Nixon won these voters, and he lost the Deep South, which went to Democratic segregationist George Wallace.

And how many racist Dixiecrats did Nixon win for the GOP? Turns out, virtually none. Among the racist Dixiecrats, Strom Thurmond of South Carolina was the sole senator to defect to the Republicans — and he did this long before Nixon’s time. Only one Dixiecrat congressman, Albert Watson of South Carolina, switched to the GOP. The rest, more than 200 Dixiecrat senators, congressmen, governors and high elected officials, all stayed in the Democratic Party.

The progressive notion of a Dixiecrat switch is a myth. Yet it is myth that continues to be promoted, using dubious case examples. Though the late Sens. Jesse Helms of North Carolina and John Tower of Texas and former Mississippi Sen. Trent Lott all switched from the Democratic Party to the GOP, none of these men was a Dixiecrat.

The South, as a whole, became Republican during the 1980s and 1990s. This had nothing to do with Nixon; it was because of Ronald Reagan and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America.” The conservative appeal to patriotism, anti-communism, free markets, pro-life and Christianity had far more to do with the South’s movement into the GOP camp than anything related to race.

Yet the myth of Nixon’s Southern Strategy endures — not because it’s true, but because it conveniently serves to exculpate the crimes of the Democratic Party. Somehow the party that promoted slavery, segregation, Jim Crow and racial terrorism gets to wipe its slate clean by pretending that, with Nixon’s connivance, the Republicans stole all their racists. It’s time we recognize this excuse for what it is: one more Democratic big lie.

Prove me wrong conman. Name 1 other dixiecRAT to switch.

conman is a goon-ass twink bastard



Fuck his Mother

Beware the sound of one hand clapping.

Re: Republicans’ Racism is Showing

Thanks for the bump! It helps fighting republican racism.

From now on, I'll consider myself a Democrat!

Re: Republicans’ Racism is Showing

And the 4th dixiecRAT was?


Beware the sound of one hand clapping.

Re: Republicans’ Racism is Showing

Thanks for the bump! It helps fighting republican racism.

From now on, I'll consider myself a Democrat!

Re: Republicans’ Racism is Showing

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Re: Republicans’ Racism is Showing

Lol! Pity re-bump for the goon-ass twink who's posts everyone else ignores.







Fuck your mother

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Re: Republicans’ Racism is Showing

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Re: Republicans’ Racism is Showing

eww youre black?

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Re: Republicans’ Racism is Showing



Hey! Pluto!

Re: Republicans’ Racism is Showing

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Post deleted

This message has been deleted.

Post deleted

This message has been deleted.

Re: Republicans’ Racism is Showing

Let's count some of this shit-heads sock accounts.

[Confirmed]
#1. Conmander_Jim
#2. Conmander_Jin
#3. Comnander_Jim
#4. Barbagay
#5. Suol_Venom
#6. Ooga_Chaka
#7. Laser_Burns
#8. says the pussy ass faggot
#9. Chinese State Media
#10 Charlie_Vulva
#11. Soul Vagina is a faggot
#12. Kautorises
#13. K3wlsk83rD00D
#13. SojoDanny
#14. Nessuno
#15. IsraeliParasiteInAmerica
#16. ECElite
#17. FilmManCin2
#18. Sickdog
#19. Crookshag
#20. AssCrackBandit
#21. Conman
#22. I_was_in_vietnam
#23. Ptounge
#24. Foul_Women
#25. pimpcat
#26. Mike's Mom
#27. Con Stapleton
#28. Stonewall
#29. shut up bitch
#30. Soui_Venom
#31. Soul_Venon
#32. chicken
#33. Nhoj A Eta Oidar Eht
#34. JR
#35. EVERYTHINGus3
#36. Steven_Dinner
#37. Jeralitah
#38. TheMoltenGuy
#39. Bobby_Peru
#40. buttbuttbutts
#41. Jake_Steed
#42. Albert_Fn_Wesker
#43. Moo_Town
#44. Mel_Brooks
#45. IshtarSink
#46. Vulva_Burns
#47. Adam60z
#48. MELTDOWN
#49. augustgirl515
#50. Itsy_Bitsy
#51. Fabio Muzzy Sir
#52. Old Fly Head
#53. DCI Gene Hunt
#54. Ashli Babbitt
#55. Walker_Texas_Ranger
#56. John Wilkes Booth
#57. Olifromsolly
#58. Arbraham Lincoln
#59. Eddie Lu
#60. OhMyMike
#61. Doqtor_Gangbagn
#62. Sperm Whale Carlos
#63. Biden landslide
#64. Beelzebub_Zenith
#65. Freedom_Pulse97
#66. RhynArts
#67. Cuck_Venom's_Mom's_Asshole
#68. Judgement_Boy
#69. Handsome_Shadow
#70. Mina
#71. dysciplina
#72. WeForgot
#73. Patriotic_Tea_Mug


All the same guy.
Basically the dude jerks off to his own posts

Beware the sound of one hand clapping.

Re: Republicans’ Racism is Showing

Does this sock-mastermind even exist?

It seems he lives only in your head.

Rent-free.

From now on, I'll consider myself a Democrat!

Re: Republicans’ Racism is Showing



My password is password

Re: Republicans’ Racism is Showing

Conman




Fuck your Mother

Beware the sound of one hand clapping.

Re: Republicans’ Racism is Showing

Thanks for the bump! It helps fighting republican racism.

My password is password

Re: Republicans’ Racism is Showing

This woman has more common sense, pure heart and the right kind of fighting spirit than anyone on the left or the right.

I told my dad when I was a kid that I thought she should be president. He thought I was nuts. Oh well.



"My life is over. I might as well dance with Johnny Slash!"
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