OK, so half the country are white supremacist.
Your not going to be able to get enough of them to change their worldview. So what's the solution for the Democrats to get back in power?
Pointing fingers and ranting about how awful half the people in the country are is not the solution.
It might be! Making white supremacists afraid to express their disgusting beliefs, and de-normalizing their rhetoric, can only come about by shaming them and discouraging them through whatever means necessary. Anything to make sure they understand that **** isn't okay. You're right that pointing fingers won't do much, but the idea is that hopefully the finger pointing would lead to, well, some further action.
Ehhhhhhhhh.
In addition to dropping identity politics, they need to stop focusing primarily on the priorities of educated Urbanites, and talk to the universal needs of people in general.
Politicians are always going to be elite and out of touch, barring a complete overhaul of the system. Which, again, I think we desperately need. But that doesn't seem possible or probable right now, so we have to work with what we've got. And what we've got are out of touch elites who can occasionally be lobbied into doing the right thing.
I agree with Katrina but I would say internalizm sexism/racism is not a yes/no thing in my view. We need to step away from this idea that you either are or aren't a racist and that if you are that is some terrible thing that means you must be ostracized from the rest of us who are perfect and have no prejudices. Many of us, perhaps most of us, have some innate racism or sexism to a greater or lesser extent.
On one hand, this is totally correct. We need to be able to educate people who mean well but don't know **** instead of ostracizing them. On the other hand... I mean, it's 2016. If you're ignorant it's willful. There are so many resources on the internet it's overwhelming.
For the record, I would never claim to be perfect and have no prejudices. I'm white, I was raised by white people in a predominantly white society that promotes white supremacy in its very framework. Some of that ****'s still in there and is gonna take a while to shake out. Same goes for the fact that I'm a guy. There are some experiences I will just never understand.
The issue generally comes from people refusing to acknowledge this in themselves, not people who admit they have an imperfect understanding of social injustices.
To take the example of homophia, is it homophobic to go to a gay bar by mistake and feel uncomfortable and decide to quickly drink one drink and not catch anyone's eye and leave? Or turn around before ordering? Perhaps you are supportive of gay rights but would worry about being seen in a gar bar and people mistake you for being gay? Perhaps you are in favour of gay marriage, but say you that don't expect to have any gay friends because in practice your interests (like football and rugby) seem to be different to those of the gay people you have met? Would this make someone homophobic?
There's a lot to unpack here, but first, can I just say, I love the term "gar bar" and I'm going to use it whenever possible.
To start: pretty much everything you just said here is homophobic. It's not irredeemable, but man, are those some bad assumptions. If you're worried about people thinking you're gay for any reason other than your safety (for instance, I wouldn't fault a regularly flamboyant straight guy for abstaining from his colorful behavior on a trip to Russia out of fear he'd be mistaken as gay and targeted) then you're homophobic. You're considering this as a lesser status and an undesirable one. It doesn't mean you hate gay people, or that you're going out of your way to be a dick, but it does mean you have this imprinted idea in your head that being gay is something to be ashamed of and you don't want people to think that you are. And that doesn't make you a horrible person - I mean, that's what society has been telling you for
years, in everything from media to politics to socialized norms. But recognizing this, and fighting against that assumption whenever it comes up in your head, is what helps you to not just be neutral, but actively non-homophobic.
To take the example of sexism, perhaps you support the idea of a higher % of top politicians and business people being women, but you feel that it will never realistically reach 50%, and that you do feel that in practice a mother should be with her children at home - at the very least for the first few years, since a man cannot in truth respond to young children's needs as well, and you don't want to trust your children to a stranger (nana). You say that you support feminism but don't do anything in practice to do so. When your son comes home from school, you ask him jokingly who are the best looking girls in the class, but don't ask him who are the kindest, or most intelligent girls. Would such a person be sexist? If yes, would it be productive to say that to them?
I can't comment on the specifics of this because I'm a man and it's not really my place, but you seem to have this idea that microaggressions aren't worth calling out. "Does committing a microaggression against [community] mean you're prejudiced against them?" Yes. Obviously. It doesn't mean you're David Duke, but it means you've got some **** to unpack and take a closer look at. It shouldn't be overlooked just because it's not the most insidious evil.
To take the example of racism, perhaps you feel more uncomfortable as a white person in a predominantly black neighbourhood. You walk through a bit quickly and want to get out of there. You worry people are looking at you. You've heard that there may be some anti-white sentiment in this neighbourhood, and someone told you the crime rates are higher. You get out of there and back to your predominanthly white neighbourhood. You feel more comfortable as a result. You don't support the black lives matter movement not because you don't support equality for blacks but because you don't like the specific way they go about certain things and have heard that there was some violence at their rallies. You think they are the ones polarizing the issue and it should not be about blacks vs whites but just equality for everyone. Would such a person be racist?
Yes. Obviously.
If they are, would it be helpful to call them that and cut them off?
Not if you just told them that they're wrong and nothing else. You have to explain to them why they're wrong, and what they can do to correct it. If they understand it's shitty behavior and still keep doing it, then there's not much more that can be done, other than making sure they feel the consequences of that behavior.
I think the progress is made by polite dialogue over time, accepting that it is slow.
Perhaps most racists/sexists are better engaged with to change and improve things steadily rather than put in a box and ostracized. The number of them who are truly awful and perhaps better not engaging with is probably the minority.
This isn't false, but it doesn't mean overlooking gross behavior or letting societal evils slide just because the person committing them isn't literally Hitler. Everyone can improve. And if they understand that they're hurting people and still refuse to improve, then they are, well, you know. Actually evil. And they need to be stopped. That's probably a minority but they're clearly an influential minority, and the people who theoretically might improve if they were talked to nicely just helped put a lot of them in power, for whatever individual reasons they had. Hence why it's kind of hard to be nice.
I agree with most of this. Democrats are notoriously lazy when it comes to voting, and it greatly pisses me off. And yes, we have a large group of 'everything's a conspiracy' and 'the sky is falling' people, who will solely believe the fake news stories. The Democrats don't play as dirty as the Republicans with releasing terrible fake news, so they'll never win over that group either.
We need to get more Democrats off their asses into the voting booths, as well as get rid of the electoral college, and possibly sway that thin margin of Republicans that think for themselves and usually vote Republican, but will vote for the better candidate if they happen to be Democrat, like some did this election.
And, although I'm making it sound like i'm a diehard Democrat and they can do no wrong, if our party had run someone like Trump, chances are I would have voted Republican, and never identified as a Democrat again.
Definitely. I agree with this whole thing. Democrats are not an inherently good party. They're the closest to what I believe, but that's kind of like saying Mars is closer to Neptune than Earth. Technically yes, but the distance they'd have to go is absurd.
And it's totally possible for a demagogue to rise up like that. I can't imagine a conservative demagogue would get much support in the Democratic party, but if someone like Clump was with the Democrats, I'd do everything in my power to prevent them from getting into office.
