When you look around and see the myriad effects of racism around you, do you start to wonder where all the klan hoods must be hiding for the number of Actual Racists necessary to perpetuate this situation? No, obviously. Racism is more than bigotry, it's institutionalized. This is the claim I'm making, that the GOP as a whole is the largest contributor to the perpetuation of racism (institutionally and therefore individually) in America today, and in large part because of the facts of history. Since the Civil Rights Act it has been empowered through overt racism, empowerment it continues to enjoy today and which has permanently shaped its platform.* Therefore it is relevant to discuss GOP policy through the lens of racism, and proponents of its policy should accept this perception and affirm it and make all reasonable guarantees to ease that perception, rather than become indignant and deny reality.

To say that this would do more harm than good by offending the sensibilities of Not Quite Actual Racists, I disagree. We cannot move past institutional racism without acknowledging its existence and causes, and neither is it acceptable to live with institutional racism and hoping it goes away on its own, since it never has.

To say that some Democrats have done their own work perpetuating racism, obviously I agree. I also agree that the party has done significant damage to our democracy by being complicit in the plutocracy and oligarchy of the two party system, especially since the Clintons, and through this have done their own share of perpetuating institutional racism by preventing real progressive remedies from emerging. However, as an organization, they are simply not comparable to the GOP to the degree of which overt racism contributes to their policies.

This is clear just by looking at the GOP's platform. They mention race and racism exactly twice, once to say they "denounce it," and another one to take credit for the policies of Abraham Lincoln. https://prod-cdn-static.gop.com/static/home/data/platform.pdf They pay some lip service to discrimination, but half the time it's in a way which dilutes the meaning completely, i.e. trying to equate it with abortion.

The Dems platform, to their credit, does talk about criminal justice reform, the wealth gap, and education all in a context of race. https://www.democrats.org/party-platform

So yes, clearly the Dems have a political advantage here by making institutional racism an issue, but that is insultingly far from the reason of doing so. The reason for making it an issue is that it remains to be an issue. The advantage they could gain from it is constructing a pathway for enlightening opponents about the detrimental effects of ignoring it, a pathway which ideally would lead them to progressive policy. I think the Clinton campaign specifically completely failed to use this advantage. The basket of deplorables was literally a demolition of that pathway, a shortsighted rejection of this advantage.

This leads me into my opinions about what the left should do with the concepts of identity politics and freedom of speech, but frankly I'm out of quarters to continue the conversation - I am stuck on this first level having made no progress and I fail to envision a scenario where I present new ideas and you two don't immediately try to lead me in new tangental directions. again.

*: Also out of quarters for providing you with the entire modern history of the republican party, sorry, also Broken window policy in NYC was Giuliani's platform

Last edited by rhaikh; 05/03/18 08:11 PM.
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