someproteinguy wrote:
I think in general the Republican Party's positions generally favor the white population over minorities.
I disagree. The Democratic Party positions
favor minorities. So by comparison a position which favors no one based on race appears less favorable to minorities. But that's not the Republican party being racist. That's the Democratic party being racist. The problem is that somewhere along the line the political Left has managed to redefine racism to mean "fails to help racial minorities", so by that bizarre definition the GOP is racist, while the Dems are not.
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Minorities will often see less relatively less benefit from Republican legislation, and feel negative affects more strongly.
Of course. The party that is *not* passing legislation that directly targets minority groups for benefits will always appear this way. But that's because the GOP is *not* being racist, not because we are. The problem is that we're being judged by a standard that is itself inherently racist.
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It's pretty much an unfortunate and unavoidable symptom of a traditionalist position. Things were generally worse for minorities in the past, and they had less political power. Any attempt to hold on to older moral values or fiscal practices is more likely to benefit the white population, as they were in a greater majority when those laws and ideas were put into practice in the first place.
This has nothing to do with anything though. The GOP isn't calling for a return to Jim Crow, or to segregation, or anything remotely like that. What we do is oppose the idea that the way to counteract those historical inequalities in our system is to balance them out with new inequalities today. We believe that equality under the law means just that: everyone is treated the same. Those are the kinds of traditional ideas we want this country to return to. Because we believe that we can't ever achieve anything remotely resembling actual racial equality as long as we're constantly rigging the system to benefit or disadvantage groups of people based on race. We believed this a hundred years ago when the Democrats were arguing for segregation, and we believe this today when the Democrats argue for affirmative action.
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There are certainly those that favor traditional values for reasons that have nothing to do with racism. However if those policies fall more heavily on the minority population, they are certainly racially-biased positions.
Except they only fall more heavily on the minority population in contrast to policies which actively target benefits to those minority populations. That's an incredibly unfair criteria to use though.
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That doesn't necessarily mean the people that hold those positions are racist, the degree to which that constitutes racism is going to be open to interpretation, and will vary from individual to individual. But there's a point where one should really acknowledge the disparity, and work to modify the law or whatever to minimize any unintended consequences.
How about we start the discussion with a workable definition of "racism" though. To me, racism involves treating people differently primarily based on their skin color. Period. Does not matter why it's done. Doesn't matter what the skin color is (cause that would violate the rule, right?). Doesn't matter what historical context may be present or what excuses are used. And by that definition, it's the Democrats positions which are racist, not the Republicans. The only way the Democrats come out as non-racist is by using a definition of racism which is itself racist.
And that's why I bristle a bit when people parrot the assumption that Republican positions are racist, and therefore those who support them are racist as well. It's just completely ridiculous from start to finish. There's no logical ground for it, but it's so politically valuable to repeat that it just keeps getting repeated. And sadly, most people don't stop and ask if it makes any sense.
Edited, Jul 3rd 2014 2:55pm by gbaji