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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Paul Smith who wrote (142185)	8/8/2010 11:32:23 AM
From: epicure	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 540882

Paul, the way we use words is a window in to how we think- a window that isn't always open. When people use words they should not use, it's quite clear they think with those words- and the structure of those thoughts involves racism. McCain is clearly deeply ingrained in his racist thinking. He may have his reasons, but it's not an excuse for racism. You may think the "charges" are not appropriate, but I happen to think there's a lot more racism in this country than people think there is- ALL people (I'm not singling out whites). If you look at some threads, where people enjoy posting about folks of other nationalities, you'll see a lot of interesting stereotypical thinking emerge- and you'll see "jokes" and mocking of languages. It's all very racist, but people don't even notice. Because there are a lot of people like you, who'd rather believe that racism isn't prevalent, it's hard to have a meaningful discussion about race. There is racism from whites, blacks, Hispanics, Asians- but we can't really talk about it. In one corner we have some whites who think they aren't racist, but all the other minorities are ganging up on them. In another corner we have whites who think "minorities" aren't ever racist. In another corner we have the confused whites, who don't know what they think. Then we have blacks who think only whites are racist- no matter what kind of racism we have coming out of the black community (and let's not forget the Hispanics who think that way too). We have model minority Asians angry at being a model minority, and we have Asians angry at each other because of interAsian racism (come to think of it, I've seen that in the Hispanic community as well- and I'm not even going to try to speculate on where you deal with the light skinned/dark skinned black conflict- is it racial? Cosmetic? Who knows) So Paul, while you may think racism is used too often, I think it's used to rarely. If you are honest, you will admit that for most people color is the first thing they notice, and something they have stereotypes about, and many people act on those stereotypes. They joke about those stereotypes in private, with other people they know who will reinforce their bigotry. This goes for all colors of people. There is no need for a Godwin's law for racism. Unlike Nazism, racism is still a real problem for us.