Racism is still driving American politics and elected President Trump

Bilbo was also a virulent racist. “I call on every red-blooded white man to use any means to keep the n[*]ggers away from the polls,” Bilbo proclaimed during his successful reelection campaign in 1946. He was a proud member of the Ku Klux Klan, telling Meet the Press that same year that “[n]o man can leave the Klan. He takes an oath not to do that. Once a Ku Klux, always a Ku Klux.” During a filibuster of an anti-lynching bill, Bilbo claimed that the bill

will open the floodgates of hell in the South. Raping, mobbing, lynching, race riots, and crime will be increased a thousandfold; and upon your garments and the garments of those who are responsible for the passage of the measure will be the blood of the raped and outraged daughters of Dixie, as well as the blood of the perpetrators of these crimes that the red-blooded Anglo-Saxon White Southern men will not tolerate.

This was a Mississippi Senator in 1946 after we had just lost 500k Americans fighting fascism. The truth is that in a little over 60 years these sentiments are hardly under the surface any more, and the election of President Obama caused the hidden Klan in southern white males rush to support President Trump. Why beat around the bush when the problem is as obvious as the nose on my face. President Trump is tolerable to red-blooded Anglo-Saxon White Southern men. There is no splitting hairs.

Exactly.

It's not the only factor, o' course - not everybody who voted for Trump is racist - but it was what put him over the top. David Duke and the alt-right love him because they feel "legitimized" now. One of the main things racists want is to feel okay about being racist... and Trump gives them that. They feel validated. And that's going to be some of the ugliest, longest-lasting damage that will linger even after he's voted out. He's emboldened something that should have been starved.

He's emboldened something that should have been starved.

Exactly. I saw my sixty something female cousins all shed the outward racism they were taught when as kids we were swimming in a North Birmingham public pool in the sixties when some black kids jumped in the pool. All the white people and my cousins left the pool, except of course my brother and I who were taught by a mother who fled Birmingham to go to Art school in Chicago, and taught us from the beginning to treat all people the same.

My cousins had a black maid. My uncle was not wealthy. He started at the factory in North Birmingham called Acipco at 18 sweeping the floors and rose to superintendant with a couple of thousand reporting to him, but yet they had a black maid. My Grandfather was an engineer and a big Union man who supported Unions. Of Course my mother became a die hard Republican in the 1950s and was the family black sheep in her politics. However, something happened in the late sixties. All those die hard Democrats became Republicans. My cousins, my aunts, and uncles all switched party.

So when President Obama an intelligent good family man became President, it turned most of the South's deeply held truths upside down. My family was always kind to black people. I never once saw them fly a confederate flag, but the discussions around the kitchen table was always that the black man was inferior. My aunt who managed five dry cleaning stores would tell story after story about how black people were barely human. So a good many of these people have died, but not before they influenced another generation on how to use the dog whistle. At least until Trump became a candidate. He is an Anglo Saxon white person and that is ALL that matters. So that deep seated racism drives the hardcore 30%. It is a cultural thing. Having lived in it as a child, I am considered a race traitor when I talk about 1950s Birmingham and the perceptions of a child.

America must address the 400lb gorilla in the room. It is race. It is still the belief that blacks are inferior. I know people who followed the NBA for a decade when the acceptable Michael Jordan led the Bulls, but now only watch Hockey because as one educated lawyer I used to play golf with said.....who wants to watch a bunch of janitors play basketball. Racism was de Jure in the South, but it is De facto over the entire nation, and President Trump has released evil and starving the same will take a generation.

Why is Obama considered Black? His mother is white--is he not as white as he is Black? Why do we call him Black?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rule

2seaoat wrote:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rule

The One-drop rule is racist, cracker nonsense. If you buy into it then you're buying into the whole "Blacks are inferior" bullshit.

If you consider him Black then you have to question your own notions of race in America and how much they've been shaped by the Cracker mentality and government policy.

In The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America, Richard Rothstein, a research associate at the Economic Policy Institute, aims to flip the assumption that the state of racial organization in American cities is simply a result of individual prejudices. He untangles a century’s worth of policies that built the segregated American city of today. From the first segregated public housing projects of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, to the 1949 Housing Act that encouraged white movement to the suburbs, to unconstitutional racial zoning ordinances enacted by city governments, Rothstein substantiates the argument that the current state of the American city is the direct result of unconstitutional, state-sanctioned racial discrimination.
Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-federal-government-intentionally-racially-segregated-american-cities-180963494/#WQ4tePCvZEQLBeaf.99

We're ALL racist to a greater or lesser degree.

You asked why somebody is black......it is how they are treated. One of the first books which had an impact on me was "Black like me", and I remember that the author had a quote....."that I had expected to see myself disguised, but this was something else". The real question is what is President Obama's self image. I think the answer would be a child of mixed race, but if you asked him how he was identified by other his entire life......he would tell you as a black man. So you accuse me of buying into racism because I told you the American perception of people of color, but if President Obama came into the gas station with a gun and robbed the gas station, and the police came to interview you about a description of the robber, would you honestly say a white person, or a mixed person. You see Aborigines are whites with black skin, and many blacks are blacks with white skin, and there in lies the problem. It is a superficial classification system which is the American Caste system, where the the black man in America remains untouchables. I now have black members of my extended family with mixed raced children who are cousins of my grandsons. How they will be judged will be in the future, I do not know, but to deny racial classification is to stick your head in the sand.

but if President Obama came into the gas station with a gun and robbed the gas station, and the police came to interview you about a description of the robber, would you honestly say a white person, or a mixed person.

I'd tell them I refuse to talk to a cop without a lawyer, go pound sand.

to deny racial classification is to stick your head in the sand.

To meekly accept the current system of racial classification is to KEEP your head in the sand. To deny it is to pull your head OUT of the sand.

Not to question the status quo is to accept it. Silence is assent.

Race Is a Social Construct. There is no scientific test which defines what is scientifically defined in human diversity. Some argue that DNA testing can give you race, but:

"If a test-taker is just interested in finding out where there are some people in the world that share the same DNA as them, then these tests can certainly tell them that," said Deborah Bolnick of the University of Texas in Austin. "But they're not going to tell you every place or every group in the world where people share your DNA. Nor will they necessarily be able to tell you exactly where your ancestors lived or [what race or social group] they identified with."

So within the context of a social construct, one must face the reality of society's perceptions, which in the end is the 400 lb gorilla, not the naive idea that simply calling someone white changes the social construct. It does not.

2seaoat wrote:Race Is a Social Construct.  There is no scientific test which defines what is scientifically defined in human diversity.  Some argue that DNA testing can give you race, but:

"If a test-taker is just interested in finding out where there are some people in the world that share the same DNA as them, then these tests can certainly tell them that," said Deborah Bolnick of the University of Texas in Austin. "But they're not going to tell you every place or every group in the world where people share your DNA. Nor will they necessarily be able to tell you exactly where your ancestors lived or [what race or social group] they identified with."

So within the context of a social construct, one must face the reality of society's perceptions, which in the end is the 400 lb gorilla, not the naive idea that simply calling someone white changes the social construct.  It does not.

It must be embarrassing to be so certain and so WRONG so often.

https://jenjdanna.com/blog/2012/7/10/forensics-101-race-determination-based-on-the-skull.html

Do you even read your links?

Rarely do all of these indicators point firmly to a single race. Instead, it is the story told by the majority of physical characteristics that suggests the victim’s ethnic background. If in doubt, additional post-cranial (skeletal features in the rest of the body) can help indicate race as well.
[b]

Do you understand if you did read your link the word [b]RARELY

You just cannot be this stupid unless you are working on stirring the pot with stupid posts to get dialogue. It really is tiresome correcting somebody all the time.

Could there be a natural reason? One that's being overcome as cultures and ethnicities interact?

2seaoat wrote:   It really is tiresome correcting somebody all the time.

FINALLY! We agree on something.

You made the blanket statement that race is a social construct. I posted a link that includes the statement:

Physical anthropology considers that there are six main races—black, white, American Indian, East Asian, Polynesian and Melanesian/Australian, but for simplicity’s sake, we’re only going to consider the first three as they are the most comprehensively described.

Race is NOT a social construct as you claim but a physiological fact.

In your idiotic reply you even include, from the same link, the statement: Rarely do all of these indicators point firmly to a single race.  which further shows that race is NOT, as you ridiculously claim a SOCIAL construct. It is an empirically observable fact.

You are right about one thing, however. Correcting somebody all the time is tiresome. I'm exhausted.