Quote (IceMage @ Jun 11 2019 12:14pm)
First off, I think most polling shows that Americans are less racist today than they have ever been before. The alt-right movement organizes rallies and a handful of people show up.
Second, if being faced with ideas and history that shines a critical light on white people causes you to become so triggered that you begin to view your identity mainly through your white race(in a tribalistic way, us against them), doesn't that affirm what the liberals are saying? There's already something inside these people that gets brought out, not because more liberals are talking about these issues, but because these guys have a portal on their desk that presents a feedback loop of material that triggers their SWS(scared whitey syndrome, as Skinned says).
Why face the thoughtful, sophisticated liberal when we can just scour the internet for a liberal caricature and feel self-righteous when it gets knocked down by our favorite YouTuber?
Are we talking about white supremacists, or the alt-right? They're two different groups of people, let's not make the same mistake you discuss above and make caricatures of them.
I don't think many people are arguing that racism doesn't exist, or that slavery wasn't a historical ill. But you couldn't make it a few sentences without grouping "white people" into a single racial bloc. That's a problem. There is no white male conspiracy, and white men no more perpetuate "white male supremacy" than a Native American is guilty of perpetuating a cycle of poverty.
If we want to address inequality, let's work to implement narrow, specific policy designed to combat it. Greater funding and competition for schools in poor neighbourhoods, programs to combat gang violence, integration of police into the neighbourhoods they serve.
Instead we can't help but personify inequality, and we personify it as a white male. White men are responsible for oppression, and if they don't accept our specific solutions, they're guilty of supporting a racist status quo. All too easy then to dismiss the concerns of poor white southerners, who are objectively suffering from structural inequality, and dismiss their concerns as a case of them "clinging to guns and religion". After all, they're part of the problem.
You act like this is a fringe issue, and yet a number of high profile contenders for the Democratic nomination now call for reparations. Whatever you make of it, that's not a fringe discussion, it's mainstream. When Clinton refers to half the country as "deplorable", it's not a fringe issue, it's the candidate of this country's largest party dehumanizing half the electorate for refusing to accept a worldview that caters to the wealthy, greens, and corporate elite, all the while promising minorities that they'll visit unholy retribution on their supposed oppressors. Is there any more blatant a case of "us versus them"?
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