Appearing on CNN’s Van Jones Show Meghan McCain made I think what counts for a fairly valid statement when she answered a question by Jones about “What Liberals get wrong?”
“I am first to say I’m not a huge Trump supporter, for obvious reasons, but I decided on election night I would be as unemotional as possible in analyzing him and his presidency,” McCain replied.
“I’ve never been accused of being racist in my entire life until recently, until Trump became president,” she added. “I understand there is a lot of tension in this country that is overheating in a way we have never seen before… and I don’t pretend to understand the experience of minorities in this country.
“But I will say that I have vivid memories of my father being called racist, I have memories of President Bush being called racist, of Mitt Romney, of Jeb Bush… I think it does a disservice to real racism,” McCain said.
“And I think that for me, I want to separate those things and I don’t want that to be thrown around the way it is, and I understand there’s a lot of hurt and a lot of pain right now, but it hurts me when you’re throwing out that I and basically the party I’m in… and it’s as simple as your racist.”
Now, I do respect Meghan McCain as I’ve respected her father for being honest and outspoken about how they feel even when it went wildly against standard Republican orthodoxy. For that they both deserve our thanks as many times they seem to have put be being an American ahead of being a Republican.
But with that out of the way, I have a counter question for McCain.
What exactly do you think this “Real Racism” you speak of is?
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Let me just say that I’m going to agree with your base premise, that accusations of Racial bias are often thrown about too quickly and too easily. I think that’s true, and I think that’s damaging to the ability to clearly identify “legitimate Racism” — if you will.
However, there’s also a reason for that to be the case. There’s a reason why that happens, which can’t be easily brushed over — and that reason is that a lot of Republicans either repeatedly act exactly like racists or else repeatedly excuse, justify or ignore “real racism” even when it’s happening directly in front of them.
Contrary to your base assertion people are not just randomly calling Republicans “Racist” for no good reason. It’s not happening because people have nothing else of substance to say. It’s happening because just about the first thing out of Donald Trump’s mouth when he began running for President was the outrageous racist lie that “Mexicans are Rapists.”
And yet, somehow, Republicans still nominated this man for President.
This is not a small “oops” moment. This was a foundational principle of his candidacy, that Mexicans are Rapists and Criminals, that Immigrants are “dangerous”, “lazy” and “terrorists” that MS-13 is out to get us, our economic futures can be restored if we battle the “foreign hordes” and that we have basically no other substantive worries except for “chain migration” and the “Visa lottery.”
All of that nonsense is Racism. Your party picked him, not despite his racist policies — but because of them. He was telling the base what they wanted to hear, what the average Republicans wasn’t willing to say out loud, that all their problems are someone elses fault. It’s because of the foreigners, the immigrants, and the not white people. Period.
There is no valid case to make that “Mexicans are Rapists” — that’s a thing that doesn’t exist. Neither are Immigrants “criminals.” In Trump’s own words he took a report from Fusion TV about the link between women migrating into Mexico — let me repeat INTO MEXICO — from Central America being steered into the local sexual service trade and prostitution as being a sign that rapists were being imported into America by the Mexican Government.
That was like, let’s be honest, very obviously bullshit.
Just to prove that point this is the report from Fusion that he was using as the basis of his claim.
The question remains: is so grossly distorting a report like this about the legitimate issue of southern Mexican prostitution to claim that rapists are pouring across our borders “Real Racism” or not?
I think that it is. You don’t have to be a Racist, to promote racist ideas or implement racist policies.
Now I do sympathize with your feelings that it was unfair to call George W. Bush a racist because of his abysmal response to Hurricane Katrina which left over a thousand people dead from heat stroke and dehydration even after they had already been “rescued” by the Coast Guard from their flooded homes. President Bush certainly put a strong effort into addressing the spread of Aids in Africa and consequently may have saved Millions of LIves, so looking at everything on balance it probably wasn’t fair for anyone — I’m looking at you Kanye — to jump to the conclusion that his frankly shitty performance on Katrina was only racially motivated as opposed to being tragically inept, obtuse and clueless after he’d already been specifically warned by FEMA that the levees could be overtopped.
WASHINGTON — In dramatic and sometimes agonizing terms, federal disaster officials warned President Bush and his homeland security chief before Hurricane Katrina struck that the storm could breach levees, put lives at risk in New Orleans’ Superdome and overwhelm rescuers, according to confidential video footage.
Bush didn’t ask a single question during the final briefing before Katrina struck on Aug. 29, but he assured soon-to-be-battered state officials: “We are fully prepared.”
The footage — along with seven days of transcripts of briefings obtained by The Associated Press — show in excruciating detail that while federal officials anticipated the tragedy that unfolded in New Orleans and elsewhere along the Gulf Coast, they were fatally slow to realize they had not mustered enough resources to deal with the unprecedented disaster.
Maybe that wasn’t racism, perhaps they were just not interested in protecting the American people when most of them happen to be Democrats, as was the case with New Orleans which then had a Democratic Mayor or Louisiana which then had a Democratic Governor.
So that wasn’t “Real Racism”, although in the end that may be a distinction that makes no real difference. A thousand people still died needlessly. Some black people were literally hunted down by fearful gun-wielding whites as the chaos ensued.
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I mean, we literally had lynch mobs roaming the streets New Orleans, but it wasn’t “racial”, right?
And perhaps it wasn’t fair for George W. Bush’s campaign to be accused of “Racism” when they falsely claimed that “John McCain had fathered an illegitimate black child.”
Eight years ago this month, John McCain took the New Hampshire primary and was favored to win in South Carolina. Had he succeeded, he would likely have thwarted the presidential aspirations of George W. Bush and become the Republican nominee. But Bush strategist Karl Rove came to the rescue with a vicious smear tactic.
Rove invented a uniquely injurious fiction for his operatives to circulate via a phony poll. Voters were asked, "Would you be more or less likely to vote for John McCain…if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child?" This was no random slur. McCain was at the time campaigning with his dark-skinned daughter, Bridget, adopted from Bangladesh.
It worked. Owing largely to the Rove-orchestrated whispering campaign, Bush prevailed in South Carolina and secured the Republican nomination. The rest is history–specifically the tragic and blighted history of our young century. It worked in another way as well. Too shaken to defend himself, McCain emerged from the bruising episode less maverick reformer and more Manchurian candidate.
So let me just be sympathetic for a minute and recognize that you — of all people — should know what it’s like to be smeared by a decidedly racist allegation, even when the people doing it and approving it themselves, may not necessarily be racist. Or at least may not have been proven to be racist — in the end, how much does that matter when their actions have a clear, obvious racial impact?
Sure, they may not be “real racist”, they’re just willing to use racism to further their own ends when it serves their purposes. Perhaps that doesn’t make them “Real Racists” in your eyes but frankly, it doesn’t really make them much different than the “Real Racists” when you look at the end result of their actions..
I think we all understand that it can be annoying and aggravating to be called a name. That it can get under your skin to be accused of something you’re not guilty of doing, but I will argue that it’s considerably worse to be effectively treated as being guilty of something under the law without — how did Trump put it, “Due process because of a mere allegation”? — than being just called a name.
It’s worse to be among a set of minority kids wrongly accused of rape and jailed for years after this Billionaire Guy puts money into calling for the death penalty to be used against you when you’re only a minor. And then after DNA confirms the confession of the real rapist — that same Billionaire Guy comes after you again when the State pays you a settlement for being wrongfully imprisoned for years.
Guess who that Billionaire Guy Was?
It's much worse to be assumed and treated as if your “lazy”, “criminal”, “a drug addict”, “gang-banger” or a “terrorist” or a “traitor” by hiring managers, banks, mortgage lenders, apartment managers, police, judges and juries than anything Mitt Romney had to suffer after his despicable rant about the 47% who weren’t paying federal taxes — which was mostly because they were in school, on disability or retired — as being “unwilling to take responsibility for their lives and feel they are entitled” and that’s why they would always vote for Barack Obama no matter what, because he was protecting their “hand outs.”
It may have hurt Mitt Romney’s feelings for people to say his comments about the 47% may have been racially motivated since most of the people he was talking about [proportionally] are in fact, racial minorities, but what was worse was the policy implications of what he was saying.
Is it more real for someone to insult a minority person — call them “the N-word, or Spic, or Wop, or Towell Head” or is it more real to them for the Republican party to implement bigoted policies against them like the racial gerrymandering of voting districts?
Thirty years ago, the Supreme Court expanded the meaning of one of the most important civil rights laws in U.S. history — the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Among other things, the court prohibited a then-common practice among some states of spreading minorities across voting districts, leaving them too few in number in any given district to elect their preferred candidates. The practice became known as "racial gerrymandering."
The court’s solution required that states create majority-minority districts — districts in which the majority of the voting-age population belonged to a single minority. With voting that occurred largely along racial lines, these districts allowed minority voters to elect their candidates of choice.
But a fascinating development occurred in the years since. These districts, rather than giving African Americans more political power, might have actually started to deprive them of it. Majority-minority districts, by concentrating the minority vote in certain districts, have the unintended consequence of diluting their influence elsewhere. Experts say some Republican legislatures have capitalized on this new reality, redistricting in their political favor under the guise of majority-minority district.
Is it “real racism” to hurt somebodies feelings or to implement racist voter id laws against them?
President Trump claims that widespread voter fraud occurred in the 2016 election. Does the 'integrity of the ballot box' depend on Voter ID laws? (Monica Akhtar/The Washington Post)
Last week, a federal appeals court struck down North Carolina’s omnibus voter suppression law — a law so jam-packed with voting restrictions targeted at poor, minority communities that its moniker was the “monster law.”
The decision was handed down alongside a spate of other federal decisions in the past two weeks blocking voter restrictions and voter ID requirements in Wisconsin, Texas, North Dakota and Kansas. Some of these laws had been rushed through and passed after the U.S. Supreme Court’s devastating 2013 blow to the Voting Rights Act, which for 50 years had protected voters from discriminatory laws like poll taxes, literacy tests and the like.
Congress has refused to do anything to restore the law’s protections, so litigation has remained the only real recourse for advocates trying to stop these voter suppression tactics more and more state legislatures have been adopting. Our organization, the Campaign Legal Center has been fighting the Texas voter ID law in court alongside several civil rights groups. And after tireless years of lawsuits, and millions of dollars shouldered by the victims of discrimination, advocates are finally achieving what they set out to do: Show that today’s cleverly masked voting laws — passed under false pretenses of stopping nonexistent in-person voter fraud — are no different from the tactics used during the Jim Crow era to maintain white political power.
Is it “real racism” to be verbally embarrassed, or to be shot down and murdered in the streets only to have that killing called “justified” simply because the racial panic of a government employee?
And then to repeatedly see these government employees found not guilty for their murder?
St. Paul, Minnesota (CNN)Jeronimo Yanez, the Minnesota police officer who fatally shot Philando Castile during a traffic stop last year, was found not guilty of second-degree manslaughter Friday.
He also was acquitted of two counts of intentional discharge of firearm that endangers safety.
Police stop black motorist twice as often, even when they haven’t violated traffic laws twice as often. Police search black motorists 3 times more often, even when they’re only half as likely to find drugs or guns on them. Police arrest black motorist twice as often for the same offense, Police assault and use force against black motorist 3 times as often, even when they aren’t suspected of violent crimes, police kill black people 2-3 times as often even when they’re unarmed.
An analysis of public records, local news reports and Guardian reporting found that 32% of black people killed by police in 2015 were unarmed, as were 25% of Hispanic and Latino people, compared with 15% of white people killed.
I would argue that this, this right here — is some real fracking systemic racism — even with the acknowledgment that, probably, most of the officers implementing these polices aren’t personally bigoted. They’re just implementing bigoted police practices (which IMO are probably based more on poverty level as much as race) without questioning or challenging them.
And this isn’t just a “Black” issue. According to the most recent estimate from the Bureau of Justice Statistics U.S. Police have killed twice as many Americans since and including 9/11 as have Al Qaeda and Isis combined.
Between June 1, 2015, and March 31, 2016, media reviews identified 1,348 potential arrest-related deaths. During this period, the number of deaths consistently ranged from 87 to 156 arrest-related deaths per month, with an average of 135 deaths per month. To confirm and collect more information about the 379 deaths identified through open sources from June to August 2015, BJS conducted a survey of law enforcement agencies and ME/C offices.
The survey findings identified 425 arrest-related deaths during this 3-month period—12% more than the number of deaths identified through the open source review. Extrapolated to a full calendar year, an estimated 1,900 arrest-related deaths occurred in 2015. Nearly two-third (64%) of the deaths that occurred from June to August 2015 were homicides, about a fifth (18%) were suicides, and another tenth (11%) were accidents.
This is the most accurate current estimate to date, with 1,900 police-generated deaths per year. This brings to mind the “supporting the troops” argument, because how does that rate of deaths compare to the troops we’ve lost during our international fight against terrorism?
With an average of 1,900 people killed annually since 2001, that would be 32,200 Americans who’ve died at the hands of police during that period. That is more than five times the combined number of soldiers (6,687) we’ve lost both in the Iraq war (4,491) and the war in Afghanistan (2,396). Even if you take the FBI’s fairly low numbers of “justifiable homicides” by police, you still end up with 7,480 people killed by police since 2001, which is still more than all the soldiers we lost.
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Let’s say just for the sake of discussion we only include the 1,216 “homicides” (64 percent of the 1,900 from the BJS estimate) by police per year, excluding the accidents and suicides (which for some reason both ex-sheriffs Arpaio and Clark seemed to pile up by the hundreds) and contrast that not only with battlefield losses, but also all the people we lost on 9/11 both in New York and Washington. Adding another 2,996 deaths, that brings fatalities from al-Qaida, the Taliban, and ISIS combined to 9,683, while those killed by police homicide remain at 20,624, which is still two times greater.
Republicans who claim they wish to “protect” Americans should be with us on this issue, they should be looking for greater government accountability and oversight when it comes to the taking of Americans lives, but they aren’t.
Time and time again the Republican party does not address this, instead Trump calls the people who non-violently and silently protest these injustices to be fired for daring to excersize their first amendment right to redress grievances with the government, he says that those who refuse to applaud him as he tries to steal credit from Barack Obama for turning around the economy in 2009 and bringing down the unemployment rate to historic lows are “traitors” when he has not created as many jobs in his first year as Obama did in [each of] his last seven years.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2017 saw 2.06 million jobs created, making the most sluggish job growth in America since Obama’s first term, when the economy was pulling out of the Great Recession.
The anemic job numbers are also an indicator that Trump is misguided in his belief that gutting regulations actually creates jobs.
This man hounded Barack Obama as being a hidden “foreigner” for 7 years even after he released his long form birth certificate when there was nothing wrong with the short form in the first place.
But Republicans Voted for him.
The fact of the matter is that it should be no surprise that after the Republican party chose to elevate this man, after they deliberately eviscerated the voting rights act, while they continue to treat the Black Lives Matter movement as a pack of terrorist while ignoring the increasing rise of White Supremacist Alt-Right Terrorism — they get harshly quetioned by other Americans.
A report published last month by the Anti-Defamation League showed that the rate of killings tied to white supremacists surged during President Trump’s first year in office. Now, a new report out of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has tabulated just how many of those killings were from those affiliated with the so-called “alt-right” — the misogynistic milieu, steeped in online propaganda, targeting the youngest generation of white supremacists.
According to the SPLC, the number of killings and injured persons attributed to this newest generation of white nationalists has skyrocketed since the group first made itself known a few years ago. Since 2014, the report found that some 43 individuals had been killed and 67 had been injured in attacks by the so-called “alt-right.”
And then Trump reportedly said something about not wanting people in America from “Shithole Countries” which were widely derided as racist on national TV. Several Republicans, including a congresswoman from Utah, have called on Trump to apologize.
But there is one group that is embracing Trump’s comments wholeheartedly: white supremacists.
Christopher Cantwell, a white supremacist organizer who is being charged with assaulting counter-protesters in Charlottesville, praised Trump’s comments on Gab, a social network that caters to online racists.
Trump was also praised on Gab by Jared Wyand, a white nationalist who was banned from Twitter for anti-Semitic posts, endorsed Trump’s comments and added that “blacks are incapable of building thriving civil societies.”
Trump’s comments were also popular on Stormfront, a message board for white supremacists. One user said Trump was absolutely right to trash “non-white” countries
With all this in mind it’s entirely appropriate to question the issue of racism within the Republican party, because — as a party — they have enabled it, justified it and endorsed it at nearly every level across the last 50 years and particularly moreso in the last two years.
When most of your parties polices are based in racist tropes, when your biggest fans are out-and-out white supremacist racists who think Trump’s every bigoted utterance “is just great” -— Your party just might be Racist.
And if you support, voted for, and continue to excuse, rationalize, justify and whine over being associated with Racist policies — policies that you DON’T OBJECT TO ON THEIR OWN — you might just get called a “Racist.”
No, it’s not entirely fair. No it’s not nice, but there is something you and the rest of the Republican party — writ large — can absolutely do about it.
STOP! EXCUSING! RACISM!
When a woman came up to John McCain and wrongfully accused Barack Obama of being an Arab — not that there’s anything wrong wtih being an Arab in and of itself — you’re own father did the right thing and denied it to her face.
The Republican Party today can’t bring itself to do that. It just can’t. It’s now doing the exact opposite of what your father did. It doesn’t matter if George W. Bush, Your Father and Mitt Romney aren’t “Real Racist” — there very clearly are REAL FREAKING RACISTS inside the Republican party and some even in the Democratic Party.
It’s not really that hard to get off the Lee Atwater/Richard Nixon Southern Strategy plan.
It has become, for liberals and leftists enraged by the way Republicans never suffer the consequences for turning electoral politics into a cesspool, a kind of smoking gun. The late, legendarily brutal campaign consultant Lee Atwater explains how Republicans can win the vote of racists without sounding racist themselves:
You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”
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In the lead-up to the infamous remarks, it is fascinating to witness the confidence with which Atwater believes himself to be establishing the racial innocence of latter-day Republican campaigning: “My generation,” he insists, “will be the first generation of Southerners that won’t be prejudiced.” He proceeds to develop the argument that by dropping talk about civil rights gains like the Voting Rights Act and sticking to the now-mainstream tropes of fiscal conservatism and national defense, consultants like him were proving “people in the South are just like any people in the history of the world.”
You don’t have to go around calling people the “N-word” to be a racist. You don’t even have to hold racial animus and hatred in your heart silently to be a racist. All you have to do is stand by idly, while racist bullshit happens right in front of your face, and yet not speak a word of protest. All you have to do is not call i what it is, pretend that it’s something different and complain that you’re being picked on when you act as an enabler and co-dependent with racists— when in reality from that minor, and perhaps unfair, criticism you are only receiving a fraction of the real pain and frustration of the people you are actively ignoring.
When the Republican Party finally stops doing that, people’s opinion of them will change.
You won’t have to worry about petty name calling if you stand up to that real racism and call it out for what it is. Racism isn’t uniquely a Republican or Democratic problem, it should be something that we stand together against.
The issue is that unfortunately — we don’t.