Ziner wrote:FWIW the most racists sons of bitches I have ever been around has been Union construction workers up in Detroit. They could have made the KKK blush with what came out of their mouth. 80% of them with dem stickers on their trucks or hard hats.
This has pretty much been my experience too, Ziner...and what else can we go on except what we see with our own eyes. It's impossible to know what's in a man's heart, but one can make assumptions based on what comes out of his mouth. Among my friends and acquaintances, most of the people I hear perpetuating negative stereotypes of blacks and/or engaging in hate speech toward blacks...are people whom I know tend to vote Democratic and/or relate to the political left.
That's also where I see most of the "soft bigotry" of low expectations....the paternalistic, condescending attitude toward blacks that the racism of "others" is so pervasive and systemic that blacks are unable to compete on a playing field that is level, so the field must be artificially tilted with a government-enforced regime of quotas, preferences, and set-asides. That such a system stigmatizes ALL blacks...those who benefit from the system and those who succeed on their own merits...doesn't concern them, because their primary concern seems to be to think well of themselves.
It amazes me that so many lefties (not the well-read, enlightened ones here, of course)who delight in the broad-brush smearing of Republicans as racists, are so ignorant of their own party's intellectual DNA and their own despicable history of racism. The Democrats are, after all, the party of segregation, the KKK, Bull Connor, Jim Crow, eugenics, opposition to the Civil Rights Act...and on and on. Links:
http://bit.ly/d4qH1chttp://on.wsj.com/Ks91IToday they are so reliant on the monolithic electoral support of blacks that the very notion of the existence of black conservatives is an existential threat to them. Hence the hysteria and unchecked smear tactics used against any black conservative. The treatment of Clarence Thomas (and to a lesser degree Condi Rice) is among the American left's most disgusting moments in recent years. They either ignore or vilify black conservative intellectuals like Thomas Sowell, Shelby Steele, John McWhorter, Walter Williams, etc, who don't toe the line on leftist victimization orthodoxy. Meanwhile they (mostly) refuse to repudiate execrable race-baiters like Sharpton and Jackson, and nitwit Congressmen like Maxine Waters who need racism to perpetuate their careers.
http://on.wsj.com/oivLCCAll this of course makes a sad joke of the lefty pretension to intellectual sophistication and tolerance of opposing viewpoints that they are constantly congratulating themselves for...but they don't care. Because their good intentions trump any bad (or disastrous) results....black educational outcomes, urban living conditions, black illegitimacy rates...all largely the results of leftist policies and leftist management for the last 40 years, are not to be evaluated in terms of results for actual black people. They meant well, you see. Where would blacks be today without the benefit of all this enlightened compassion? Ask that question, and prepare to be smeared as a hater and a racist.
The primary (if not the only) Tea Party message is that government spending and debt are out of control, and they want politicians in Washington who take the threat to our future seriously. Only if one equates opposition to Obama policies with racism can the case be seriously made that the TP is racist. Reason Mag had a pretty good piece on the question of tea party racism:
http://bit.ly/3OfolT
