All Purpose News and Politics Thread Part IV: The Center Cannot Hold

[The Overlord]

The discourse about racism is pretty toxic right now, and it isn't helped by liberals using the allegation excessively when it's supposed to carry a great moral weight.

One problem with the discourse is that there are multiple definitions of racism and racist used inconsistently on the left, whereas the right is more likely to stick with the classic definition: someone who is opposed to others because of their race. In this sense, it's a pretty big insult, the equivalent of saying that someone is scum, their family should abandon them, their employer should fire them, their friends should be pariahs if they offer support in any way, and the world will be better off with them dead. That does appear to be the way you're using it right now, but there is often some category creep as it's often used in other ways which makes having policy discussions more difficult.

The word is also used to describe people who participate in institutions with inequitable outcomes, and within some progressive organizations by white people discussing their own shortcomings, who presumably don't believe it would be the moral obligation of siblings to keep them away from nephews and nieces. So that makes it tougher to have conversations about ending racism since people with different definitions will talk post one another. Granted, there is also the difference of opinion of what constitutes behavior that is racist and worthy of moral opprobrium. If the Washington Post publishes a claim that a writer's concern about birthrates or a lawyer's discussion of particularity — ethnic, cultural, religious of nations is definitive evidence of white nationalism, it's the left-wing media crying wolf, which makes it more difficult to be taken seriously when actual wolves show up.

As for how things would be different if Obama hadn't been as conciliatory towards Republicans, the elections probably would have gone worse without the claim to the moral high ground.

And this makes him factually wrong in his editorial because?

And I get the crying wolf comparison, but stuff he wrote as a college student isn't the equivalent of material published in the New York Times, and an organization as prestigious as the Washington Post.

And what makes that article better than these articles about how the GOP actually are racist:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...iority-complex

https://www.thedailybeast.com/theres...racism-problem

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/...it-viable.html

It seems like conservatives want to be able to throw out articles they do not like as being biased, but demand that articles are written by conservatives be treated as objective and respectful. Conservatives want to play the game with a stacked deck.

If the GOP is not racist, why did Reagan, the GOP's patron saint, make racist statements against Africans?

Also if structural racism does not exist, why does the US have the highest prison population in the world and why are most of the prisoners people of color?

Why was Steve King allowed to go unchallenged for so long, if the GOP is not racist, shouldn't someone like King never have gotten into office, because it seems they tolerated him for a long time, it's only until he got really loud about it, that action was taken against him.

The GOP has been playing footsies with racists since the 60s, to say racism is not baked into the party is to deny reality. That is a fact, regardless of your feelings.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy