This isn’t really anything new. The Democrats are simply staying true to their party’s roots. They just express the racism in different ways.
Of course, the new socially acceptable bigotry is against southerners, and Christians.
26 thoughts on “How To Be A Bigot”
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Yeah, of course there’s all this bigotry against Christians in this country. Name a prominent politician in this country who professes to be an atheist.
Is that your criterion, Dave? If so, can others play, too? For example, can you name a prominent politician who proclaims his membership in the KKK? No? Well then I guess there’s no racism!
Can you name a prominent politician who professes women should stay barefoot and pregnant? No? Wow! No sexism either! Amazing!
Dave, the answer to your question is in this rather funny article:
See “www.nysun.com/national/california-lawmaker-becomes-highest-ranking/50312/” or click on my name. The article proves rather than disproves your point, but it does provide an answer.
About Rand’s comment: I couldn’t watch the video for temporary technial reasons, but I find blanket generalizations about Democrats to be silly (and bigoted) most of the time, even when their own political ideology is in question, and in this case, it is not. “Democrat” describes too much of our population to be particularly accurate, and even among politicans in the Democratic party, there is a wide variety of ideologies.
Also: there are plenty of Southern Christians who identify with,say, Jimmy Carter, and they are not self-hating Democrats. There are also plenty of Non-Southern Non-Christians who admire Jimmy Carter, like me, and having read Carter’s books, I believe his Southern & Christian upbringing is integral to his character. (I don’t completely agree with Carter on many issues, but as a Democrat, I admire him, and when I think of Christian Southern politician, I’m as apt to think of Jimmy Carter as I am to think of a Republican.)
Gee, Bob, seems to me you are indulging in special pleading, kind of like arguing that some Gestapo officers were honorable soldiers without a speck of anti-Semitism.
It is certainly true — and a truism — that “among polliticians in the Democratic Party, there is a wide variety of ideologies,” but it is also true that there is also but one, or perhaps a very few, dominant political ideologies that rule the actions of the party when it governs.
For example, there are certainly anti-abortion Democrats (e.g. Casey), but, nevertheless, the dominant ideology of the Democratic Party is staunchly Roe v. Wade, and hence when the Democratic Party is in power in Congress, public policy is staunchly pro-abortion. The fact that powerless minorities under the Democratic aegis do not necessarily agree with the governing philosophy in theory — although they go along with it for practical reasons — matters not a whit.
And I agree with the film that the dominant ideology of the modern Democratic Party is strongly pro-“affirmative action” and so forth, i.e. exhibits what I would call a clear case of paternalistic bigotry, the famous bigotry of low expectations. Democrats do not think black people (for example) are capable of competing on an equal footing with whites, and that fact colors how they govern, top to bottom. Even if some few politicians disagree in principle, it does not change how the party governs.
On the other hand, I think rooting this modern bigotry in the antebellum Democrats, the party of the slavocracy, stretches a point. After all, there were plenty of Radical Republicans in the 1880s with very similarly patronizing views of blacks.
Nevertheless, there is something to be said for the fact that it was, indeed, the party of Lincoln — indeed Lincoln himself, and his great general, Grant, who really truly first treated black men as free men, by putting rifles into their hands, while the Democrats, professing to take better care of their beloved extended “families” (of slaves), would never trust them with weapons, nor indeed with entreneurship instead of wages or the dole.
I think you can trace aspects of that fundamental distinction in how you judge your fellow man right down to the present.
Carl, I don’t think you can go from the true claim that Democrats are often in favor of affirmative action programs to your claim that “Democrats do not think black people (for example) are capable of competing on an equal footing with whites”. That’s not the claim of affirmative action. While I don’t support affirmative action programs, most Democrats support them because they believe that racial prejudice denies people an equal footing and it is fair and proper to restore that equal footing to them in the short term, while making it possible for role models to emerge which will demonstrate the stupidity of racial prejudice and make affirmative action unnecessary in the long term.
On the subject of generalizations: the view I just attributed to Democrats is in the most recent party platform (I think). Same with abortion – a woman’s “right to choose” shows up in the party platform (I think). When you stray from the party line, you’re more apt to get generalizations about Democrats and Republicans wrong, and I think you and Rand are doing just that (with the caveat that I have not seen the video).
Of course, the irony here is rich. When Democrats are bigoted against the South, it is because of slavery and the subsequent history of racial bigotry in the South and so it is funny when you and Rand juxtapose complaints about this bigotry with bigotry of your own based on how the Democratic party acted in during the same time period. If modern Democrats should look forward and not back with regard to the South, then Republicans and rightwing libertarians should look forward and not back with regard to the Democratic party. Do you agree?
Bob,
I think you missed Carl’s point.
It’s not that each and every Democrat believes “X”, but that the party hierarchy runs the party from that view point.
It’s the same situation the Republicans had with “W”, and some of his policies. I’m a registered Republican, but I’m way more fiscally conservative than he ultimately turned out to be. Or than the sitting Republicans turned out to be under his administration.
Tha fact that I don’t change parties doesn’t mean I agree with everything they do, it simply mean I’m more in line with them, than the other guys.
Personally I think there is a huge middle ground party in our country. Most people are more moderate than radical, to right or left.
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As to bigotry against Southerners and Christians, if you’ve not noticed that, you need to go back to the pinball machine Tommy!!
Religion is a big target in our country, Christianity, especially Right Wing, Evangelical Christianity, is under fire. It’s OK to have Islamic, Buddhist, Animist, whatever religion “festivals and awareness” gatherings, but when Christian Men had the Promise Keepers assemblies, the MSM hd a fit and swore it was about racism and overthrowing the government. But, I’m not concerned, James Taranto has coined the phrase, “The Roe Effect”, and I see it working around me.
Bigotry against Southerners is an old problem, or maybe problem is too strong a word. I can’t name a NY or LA comic who doesn’t have a joke or ten in their acts over the years who doesn’t talk about working down south. It’s a much bigger problem with people from elsewhere who move to the south.
Most of them act like missionaries come to help the ignorant natives dig the blue mud out of their navels. Oddly most move to the SE to get away from the taxes, laws and foolishness they themselves voted into existence. And what do they do upon arrival? Vote for th very same kind of liberal foolishness they voted for in WI, MA, NY, NJ, CA, WA, OR, etc.
So who are the real backward, nonthinking boobs, the blue mud southerners or the lib voting newcomers? Hand me some more blue mud please.
It used to be safe to be a certain kind of Christian, if you were white: that would be the sort of Christian that goes to some safe, bland, Protestant church where everyone is very decorous and no one ever mentions God outside of Sunday. But along came George W. Bush, who is a Methodist (and as I was raised mostly Methodist I can assure you that it’s one of the country’s mildest denominations), and he got the full-on freaky frothing Christian treatment. That’s because he made the mistake of mentioning God every now and then.
Black people, of course, get a pass on the fervent worship and mention of God every other sentence, because white people have such fun the two times per decade they venture into a black church.
Bob,
Your point is that Rand is a bigot for saying Democrats are bigoted. But that isn’t what he said. He said this:
Of course, the new socially acceptable bigotry is against southerners, and Christians.
That is a different point. In truth, many bigotries are socially acceptable these days, depending on the social set in which you are operating. In the Democratic social set bigotry against Fox News, Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, George W. Bush and Republicans in general is socially acceptable. In the Republican social set bigotry against MSNBC, Keith Olbermann, Rachel Madow, Maureen Dowd, Bill Clinton and Democrats general is socially acceptable. There are soccer fans who are bigotted against football fans, Spartan fans who are bigotted against Buckeye fans, and so on. And almost everone is bigotted against model railroaders. đ “Grown men playing with toy trains?”
Yours,
Tom DeGisi
The new socially acceptable bigotry list also includes the overweight people in our society.
“I admire him, and when I think of Christian Southern politician, Iâm as apt to think of Jimmy Carter as I am to think of a Republican.)”
Do you admire him for calling those of us who dislike Obama and his polices racists or for giving Hamas a pass and blaming Israel? Do you admire him for legitimizing election fraud in Venezuela or ignoring election fraud in Zimbabwe since his responsibility for promoting Mugabe 30 years ago led to the ruination of what was once called the “breadbasket of Africa”?
Carl, I donât think you can go from the true claim that Democrats are often in favor of affirmative action programs to your claim that âDemocrats do not think black people (for example) are capable of competing on an equal footing with whitesâ.
Quite right. Nor do I. Although belief in affirmative action 147 years after slavery was abolished is decent prima facia evidence that one secretly believes black people cannot stand on their own, there is much else in Democratic Party rhetoric and action that leads me to my conclusion. I trust you will forgive me if I do not adduce it all right here.
Thatâs not the claim of affirmative action.
I don’t care what the claim of AA is, in the same way that I do not care that Stalin claimed the purpose of starving 30 million Ukrainians to death was to bring on the socialist utopia in which all want would be banished forever. What I care abouit is the actual effect of AA, which is to poison the path by which black people could achieve true respect and honor (as, for example, they have in sports or the military, without a shred of AA). You can’t be a black man in a position to which AA applies, even indirectly, and not have people wonder about your bona fides. That’s hideous, and black men of talent and energy must resent it bitterly.
One might have been forgiven not forseeing these consequences when AA was first thought of, but they’re crystal clear now, and the fact that Democrats still support AA makes clear to me that this effect is something they actually want — that they actually want to keep black men feeling in need of their help. It’s a culture of dependency not unlike that of the drug pusher and his client.
If modern Democrats should look forward and not back with regard to the South, then Republicans and rightwing libertarians should look forward and not back with regard to the Democratic party. Do you agree?
Maybe so. But the South has changed, long ago. The Democratic Party has, if anything, considerably worsened in the recent past. When I was born, and my entire family were registered Democrats (and as I was for many years), it reasonably was the party of the little guy, the worker, the family man. It supported unions when management power was extreme (once upon a time), but it was also staunchly pro-small-business and pro-individual liberty.
No more. Now it is the party of the intellectual and money aristocracy, the professors of liberal arts, the wealthy divorce and trial lawyers, the $6 million a year network news anchors, the Wall Street wheelers and dealers, and the idle rich (Senator Kerry comes to mind). In a neat weird inversion, they almost are exactly what they caricature the Republicans as, and it is to some modest extent that the little guy, the entrepreneur, the worker, the solid family man finds more support in the Republican Party, although they are not all that much better.
There are soccer fans who are bigotted against football fans, Spartan fans who are bigotted against Buckeye fans, and so on. And almost everone is bigotted against model railroaders.
Moral relativism is so tiring. Those are not “bigottry” [sic], and the inability of so many people these days to recognize and condemn real bigotry is a major part of the problem.
Sure they are bigotry, Raoul. But on a scale of bigotry where zero is no bigotry and ten is ‘has killed for bigotry’, most of these are examples are around a one. But there are some football fans who can’t stand soccer fans.
I know one Missouri Tiger Fan who still remembers with vivid emotion the bigotry he received from a couple of Kansas Jayhawk fans. As a Jayhawk, I was rather dismayed by this. That sort of bigotry was probably around a two or a three, and was probably a worse experience for this aquaintance of mine than any of the typical mild racism white people like he and I might experience in person in this country.
Yours,
Tom DeGisi
Carl,
“Thatâs hideous, and black men of talent and energy must resent it bitterly.”
No. There is nothing wrong with giving people a chance to rise or fail on their own. AA is simply designed to give people a chance.
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“…the fact that Democrats still support AA makes clear to me that this effect is something they actually want â that they actually want to keep black men feeling in need of their help.”
That’s ridiculous, unfair, and unfounded.
Over and over again, I encounter the need for the adage “Never attribute to malevolence what can be explained by incompetence.”
I am against affirmative action, but only because I think it isn’t possible to select who should benefit from it, and because AA programs help keep us in a mental framework where people can’t start to realize that “race” is so ill-defined that it is meaningless. Incompetent people often fall into such traps, because they are dumb. Fortunately, dumbness is curable via education. But in the meantime, give them the benefit of the doubt and accept that maybe they are stupid rather than malevolent.
—
Maybe so. But the South has changed, long ago. The Democratic Party has, if anything, considerably worsened in the recent past.
[Carl’s Goalpost shifting from racial issues deleted]
You were talking about the problems of the Democratic Party in the 1800s, and then you say it has worsened in the recent past?! The modern Democratic party rebooted with FDR, and its race policies kicked into high gear under LBJ, at a time when the South was not enlightened, to say the least, when it came to race. The Sough has changed since the 1960s, but that change much later than the change in the Democratic party. Still, I think it is good to be modern and look forward. To your credit, you ARE looking forward, by shifting from criticizing the Democratic party based what happened in the 1800s as you did in your previous post to criticizing it on more modern grounds, as you do in this latest one. Well, given that you’re using class warfare, maybe not that modern, but it is still an improvement.
[I’m posting again. My last post started in the middle due to a bad cut and paste job. Rand, if you want to delete one of these, please delete the first one, not this one. Thanks!]
===
Carl,
” You canât be a black man in a position to which AA applies, even indirectly, and not have people wonder about your bona fides.”
Yes you can. If you are admitted to college via an AA program, and then you soar to the top of your classses in college, and go on to grad school, and then get a Ph.D. and then do world-class research, it is utterly irrelevant why you were admitted to college in the first place. Now, substitute “top-grades->grad-school->Ph.D.->world class research” with “graduates from college and become a competent mid-level manager. It is still true that it simply doesn’t matter why you were admitted to college. It doesn’t matter why you were admitted to college after the first month of college. College admission and college performance are two entirely different things, and that’s why you are wrong.
“Thatâs hideous, and black men of talent and energy must resent it bitterly.”
No. There is nothing wrong with giving people a chance to rise or fail on their own. AA is simply designed to give people a chance.
” the fact that Democrats still support AA makes clear to me that this effect is something they actually want â that they actually want to keep black men feeling in need of their help.”
That’s ridiculous, unfair, and unfounded.
Over and over again, I encounter the need adage “Never attribute to malevolence what can be explained by incompetence.” I am against Affirmative Action, but only because I think it isn’t possible to select who should benefit from it, and because AA programs help keep us in a mental framework where people can’t start to realize that “race” is so ill-defined that it is meaningless. Incompetent people often fall into such traps, because they are dumb. Fortunately, dumbness is curable via education. But in the meantime, while they are suffering from being dumb, there is no need to kick them while they are down. Give them the benefit of the doubt and accept that maybe they are stupid rather than malevolent.
If modern Democrats should look forward and not back with regard to the South, then Republicans and rightwing libertarians should look forward and not back with regard to the Democratic party. Do you agree?
Maybe so. But the South has changed, long ago. The Democratic Party has, if anything, considerably worsened in the recent past.
[Carl’s Goalpost shifting from racial issuesdeleted]
On the contrary, the modern Democratic party really only started with FDR, and its race policies kicked into high gear under LBJ, at a time when the South was not enlightened, to say the least, when it came to race. The Sough has changed since the 1960s, but that change came well-after the change in the Democratic party. Still, I think it is good to be modern and look forward. To your credit, you ARE looking forward, by shifting from criticizing the Democratic party based what happened in the 1800s as you did in your previous post to criticizing it on more modern grounds, as you do in this latest one.
“…a time when the South was not enlightened…”
And speaking of bigotry, here’s a typical example.
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Bob, I’ve traveled and worked all over the country. I lived in the south most of my life, but traveled even as a child all over the country. There was NO MORE enlightenment in the north or anywhere else then, than there was in the south. It is an absolute myth that ONLY southerners were against integration. Go back and look at how the elected officials everywhere dealt with the topic.
Bigotry knows no region. Imaginary map lines never stopped it.
And beyond that, I’ll tell you that to this day I hear many more racial slurs, and ethnic slurs, up north and in the west, than I do in the south. It’s especially bad in the northwest.
It seems that every ethnic group, either just dislikes, but runs often right up to despising every other ethnic group in those places I mentioned.
I certainly hear the words nigger, spic, wop, kike, etc much more in NYC than in Atlanta. And all those groups are in Atlanta too. In smaller numbers, but shouldn’t smaller numbers “band together” for protection and for likes and dislikes of food, music, or whatever in the south too if they were bigoted against everyone else? I cannot find a “Jewish” neighborhood in Atlanta, or a “German” neighborhood, or a “Russian” neighborhood. The same goes for Montgomery, Raleigh, Charlotte. Richmond, Memphis and I could go on with any other sizable southern city. However, NYC, Chicago, Milwaukee, Cleveland, etc all PRIDE THEMSELVES on this self segregation.
Bigots don’t live side by side with those the dislike or despise, they live in little, insular enclaves of like minded, racially and ethnically similar people. That’s done STILL to this day in NYC and Chicago, not Baton Rouge or Charleston.
You need to get out more, do some listening to real people living and working together. Quit listening to the tripe spouted by Al, Jesse, Oprah, Katie, et al.
Go back and look at who was FOR integration and who was AGAINST it. And BTW, the Civil War was not JUST about slavery, and Lincoln was a Republican.
I have little doubt Jim has heard, and dismissed as revisionism, commentaries from blacks who fled north to seek freedom, or who moved north after the Civil War, about how they were treated by white Northerners.
Apparently, despite being regarded as mere property before the war, and as noose bait by some afterward, black people in the South could at least count on being looked at by white people — but in the North white people simply looked through them.
“We fought a war to free them, wasn’t that enough? Why do we have to have them living among us?”
Oops, sorry Bob — didn’t mean to confuse you with Jim there.
:redface:
Here, here, to what Sharpen says, and I add this:
I think it is good to be modern and look forward.
Doctory, heal thyself
On the contrary, the modern Democratic party really only started with FDR, and its race policies kicked into high gear under LBJ, at a time when the South was not enlightened, to say the least, when it came to race. The Sough has changed since the 1960s, but that change came well-after the change in the Democratic party.
You’re not being Progressive. Your use of “still” doesn’t negate the fact that you just looked back. You are an opportunist trying to limit debate in a favorable manner:
Don’t go past FDR
Don’t mention that Democrats ran the South during slavery and segregation
Don’t mention Democrat Senator Robert Byrd was in the KKK
Yeah, don’t look back… unless you look back only to the point when Democrats started following the path Republicans did under Lincoln nearly a century earlier.
FDR was a discipile of that racist Wilson. It was Truman would finally did something about race. He integrated the armed forces. Brilliant. FDR didn’t. Hoover didn’t. Coolidge didn’t. Harding didn’t. And the tyrant Wilson (the worst American leader since George the Third) – with the wonderful excuse of WWI – didn’t.
Yours,
Tom
The regional difference in bigotry (post 1960’s):
In the south: “I don’t care how close he get’s as long as he doesn’t get to big (powerful)”
In the north: “I don’t care how big he get’s as long as he doesn’t get to close (de facto segregation)”
Leland, congratulations, you get my goat every time! This time, you employed your most common tactic — you ignored context. I was only talking about the old times in response to Rand and Carl, who brought them up first.
Sharpen, I think you don’t understand ethnic enclaves in the US, perhaps because they are generally not found in the Old South. I don’t know how to convince you in a few paragraphs. I don’t know to even describe such places except to say that they are usually fun and welcoming and people are not grouping out of fear or prejudice. Visit a Chinatown, ask people why their neighborhood exists. Visit the grocery stores and restaurants and shops on Devon St. in Chicago – you’ll find a joint Indian/Pakistani neighborhood next to a Russian Jewish neighborhood – ask people why they live there. I’m sorry – you deserve a convincing argument and I’m not sure how to quickly provide you with one, but my life experience tell me that you are mistaken.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinatown
(read how chinatowns transformed from ghettos to wealth-drivers which are enjoyable for residents and visitors.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinatowns_in_the_United_States
(note the regional patterns – not passing judgment – just noting a difference)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_named_ethnic_enclaves_in_North_American_cities
(Again, note the regional patterns)
We probably don’t disagree about regional patterns, but I think we do disagree about the malevolence of people’s motives. I’m leaving out a discussion of how poverty correlates with ethnicity/race, and how poverty correlates with dangerous crime. It is a big discussion, full of cliches and economic determinism that you could ridicule. đ My basic point would be that is that people in the North and the South increasingly have no problem with a middle class or wealthy neighbor, no matter what color his skin is. Thanks for the conversation, I’m sorry I don’t have more time today.
My point, Bob, and perhaps I made it badly, was that people in the south could just as easily move into “ethnic enclaves” but don’t. As to my misunderstandings, I’ve lived in Chicago, and it’s a CHOICE people make to live like that. I have relatives in NYC, and LA and in Atlanta and Charleston, people are making choices to live “enclaved” where it occurs and are choosing not to do it where it does not occur.
Or are you saying that it would be impossible to build such enclaves in the south? Again I’d say hogwash. The apt complex where I live now, was 90% Asian college students 5 years ago. It then changed to about 80% working class Mexican and Central American. (there was even a split of common association within that group, between legals and illegals there was NO mixing and associating) The building I live in now is mostly Anglo. BUT three of the seven Anglo families are actually from the UK.
Even within that movement, in my experiences here, I just don’t find the kind of ethnic distrust and animosity that I’ve found elsewhere. Ethnic enclaves are indeed possible here. But the mindset of “my race or ethnic group is better than yours”, that drives and sustains those enclaves, just doesn’t run in the general populace in the south like it does in the places already mentioned. I contend that it’s NOT my misunderstanding of possible or probable situations, but yours.
Of course it is possible in the South. And yes, it is a choice in the North. My point is that all but the poorest of such enclaves are welcoming and fun and are not continued because of fear or insularity as I think you suggest. I’m making a distinction between ghettos, which aren’t entirely formed by choice (look at the original Ghetto, in Venice), and ethnic enclaves/neighborhoods, which are formed by choice and are not, loosely quoting you, “driven and sustained by the mindset that my race or ethnic group is better than yours.” But I can’t quickly prove my claim (although maybe I don’t need to hurry, as I’ve been on hold the whole time I wrote this comment!)
Bob,
we’ll have to agree to disagree on the mindset aspect of Northern Enclaving.
Bob, I don’t want your goat, just honesty. I get that Carl and Rand brought it up first. But you are chiding them for doing so, and giving a pretense of superiority by suggesting they should look forward. Again, only after you make your own backward glances.
Here’s a suggestion, if you don’t want people noting these things, quit doing them.
Sharp,
I just donât find the kind of ethnic distrust and animosity that Iâve found elsewhere. Ethnic enclaves are indeed possible here. But the mindset of âmy race or ethnic group is better than yoursâ, that drives and sustains those enclaves, just doesnât run in the general populace in the south like it does in the places already mentioned.
I agree with this. Indeed, this is what I find pathetic and shameful when people in the North try to paint people in the South as racists and bigots. First, I don’t see a lot evidence to support the claim. Second, I don’t see people in the South, as often, trying to paint people in the North as racists. That is, Southerners don’t tend to isolate themselves as different from the North. There is an exception, people in the South do tend to believe they live better lives in their regions, but I found that evident in all locales I traveled. It even makes sense. Few people, like Rand, end up living some where they wish they didn’t, and when they do, they tend to resolve that problem as quick as they can. So, I expect people to be proud of where they live, or even their ancestory. I don’t consider such pride racism or bigotry.