Want to rant about rightwings and conservatives? This is your thread.

[Gromovnik]

I support self-determination for African-Americans. They have a right to live in a racism-free environment.

[alhoon]

Is destruction of evidence legal in your country?

I have no idea.
But in either country, I think it's not "evidence" if you have not been at the very least indicted. And we're not talking about destroying the murder weapon here, we're talking about deleting "embarrassing pics" from your facebook page.

[Exarch]

So apparently it was Mike Pence's secret service agent who murderd Ashli Babbitt, and trump already hates Pence for stabbing him in the back on Jan 6th; the trump mob is definitely going to go after pence.

[Ludicus]

No one here said that race is relevant to EVERY issue, but there is a wide array of issues where race is relevant...

...including the COVID.

The New England Journal of Medicine,
Structural Racism, Social Risk Factors, and Covid-19 — A Dangerous Convergence for Black Americans.

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The New England Journal of Medicine,
How Structural Racism Works — Racist Policies as a Root Cause of U.S. Racial Health Inequities.

There is no “official” definition of structural racism — or of the closely related concepts of systemic and institutional racism — although multiple definitions have been offered.^3-7 All definitions make clear that racism is not simply the result of private prejudices held by individuals,8 but is also produced and reproduced by laws, rules, and practices, sanctioned and even implemented by various levels of government, and embedded in the economic system as well as in cultural and societal norms.^3,8 Confronting racism, therefore, requires not only changing individual attitudes, but also transforming and dismantling the policies and institutions that undergird the U.S. racial hierarchy.
As a legacy of African enslavement, structural racism affects both population and individual health in three interrelated domains: redlining and racialized residential segregation, mass incarceration and police violence, and unequal medical care. These examples, among others, share certain cardinal features: harms are historically grounded, involve multiple institutions, and rely on racist cultural tropes...
... Faculty and students need a more complete view both of U.S. history and of the ways in which medicine and public health have participated and continue to participate in racist practices. Reflection includes recognition of harms arising from the uncritical use of racial categories, which reinforces implicit assumptions that racial differences are genetic in origin. Furthermore, it includes measuring the success of interventions in terms of how well they narrow inequitable gaps in health (here, between Black people and White people) instead of focusing solely on the overall population. Rigorous, clear standards for publishing research on racial health inequities have been proposed.⁴⁵

According to our far right residents, The New England Journal of Medicine is a Bolshevik pamphlet.
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I support self-determination for African-Americans. They have a right to live in a racism-free environment.

You are joking, but even the wiki knows the historical roots of the white structural racism. Haiti as an notorious example. I quote,

Haiti was the first independent nation in Latin Americana and Haitian evolution was the only slave uprising that led to the founding of a state which was both free from slavery.
The American President Thomas Jefferson—who was a slaveholder himself—refused to establish diplomatic relations with Haiti (the United States did not recognize Haiti until 1862) and imposed an economic embargo on trade with Haiti that also lasted until 1862 in an attempt to ensure the economic failure of the new republic as Jefferson wanted Haiti to fail, regarding a successful slave revolt in the West Indies as a dangerous example for American slaves.
France's demand of payments in exchange for recognizing Haiti's independence was delivered to the country by several French warships in 1825, (1)twenty-one years after Haiti's declaration of independence in 1804. The government of the United States funded the acquisition of Haiti's treasury in 1911 in order to receive interest payments related to the indemnity.
It took until 1947 – about 122 years – for Haiti to finally pay off all the associated interest to the National City Bank of New York (now Citibank).
In 1915, following the assassination of Haitian President Jean Vilbrun Guillaume Sam, the US invaded the country and was responsible for introducing racial segregation laws known as Jim Crown laws. US troops would remain in Haiti until 1934.

(1) In detail, When France extorted Haiti – the greatest heist in history- The Conversation

...Just as the legacy of slavery in the United States has created a gross economic disparity between Black and white Americans, the tax on its freedom that France forced Haiti to pay – referred to as an “indemnity” at the time – severely damaged the newly independent country’s ability to prosper. To deny that the consequences of slavery were also material is to deny French history itself. France belatedly abolished slavery in 1848 in its remaining colonies of Martinique, Guadeloupe, Réunion and French Guyana, which are still territories of France today. Afterwards, the French government demonstrated once again its understanding of slavery’s relationship to economics when it took it upon itself to financially compensate the former “owners” of enslaved people.
The resulting racial wealth gap is no metaphor. In metropolitan France 14.1% of the population lives below the poverty line. In Martinique and Guadeloupe, in contrast, where more than 80% of the population is of African descent, the poverty rates are 38% and 46%, respectively. The poverty rate in Haiti is even more dire at 59%. And whereas the median annual income of a French family is $31,112, it’s only $450 for a Haitian family.
These discrepancies are the concrete consequence of stolen labor from generations of Africans and their descendants. And because the indemnity Haiti paid to France is the first and only time a formerly enslaved people were forced to compensate those who had once enslaved them, Haiti should be at the center of the global movement for reparations.

Racism -structural, obviously- did not magically, mysteriously disappear in a few decades, at a snap of a finger.

[irontaino]

Uh oh, Ludicus...you made a post suggesting the existence of racism in the U.S. Cue some of our forum's conservatives coming in to tell us that there is no racism and America is perfect in every way.

[Ludicus]

Sad news for white supremacists, Robert E. Lee Statue Removed in Charlottesville | Time

Charlottesville Mayor Nikuyah Walker said...
“Taking down this statue is one small step closer to the goal of helping Charlottesville, Virginia, and America, grapple with the sin of being willing to destroy Black people for economic gain,”

----

Cue some of our forum's conservatives coming in to tell us that there is no racism and America is perfect in every way.

Systemic racism is a global phenomenon - in the US, Europe, Latin America, etc...

[Prodromos]

Charlottesville Mayor Nikuyah Walker said...
“Taking down this statue is one small step closer to the goal of helping Charlottesville, Virginia, and America, grapple with the sin of being willing to destroy Black people for economic gain,”

So it's the government's job to combat sin now? What happened to "separation of church and state"?

[Cope]

The concept of "colorblind racism" didn't originate in the thread, it comes from a 1997 book written by Leslie G. Carr, and counter to your previous assertion regarding the difference between "colorblind" and "colorblind racism", Carr asserts that colorblindness itself is a racist ideology. So to reiterate, the claim of those ideologues who subscribe to this notion of "colorblind racism" is that "personal, group, and institutional policies or practices that do not consider race or ethnicity as a determining factor" are racist. Therefore, race must always be a determining factor in every policy and every practice.

Carr, the aforementioned originator of this particular divisive idea, is an old white Marxist guy with a fetish for revolutionary black nationalism. Following Lenin (supposedly), he argued in his seminal publication that African-Americans are an oppressed nation, out of which he concludes that the characterization of African-Americans as a race rather nation was a ploy by the "White nation" to deny the "African American nation" its right to self-determination. I say supposedly about Lenin, because I don't know much or care about the topic, but it's something Carr has written about elsewhere: The Origins of the Communists Party's Theory of Black Self-Determination: Draper vs. Haywood.

The intellectual origins of colorblind "racism" are neo-Marxist, but the theory has been appropriated by the liberal/corporate mainstream. Traditional Marxists typically reject racial identity politics in principle, viewing it as an obstruction to class unity (one of the few things they are correct about), but many still see it as the most expedient way of damaging the US.

[sumskilz]

The intellectual origins of colorblind "racism" are neo-Marxist, but the theory has been appropriated by the liberal/corporate mainstream. Traditional Marxists typically reject racial identity politics in principle, viewing it as an obstruction to class unity (one of the few things they are correct about), but many still see it as the most expedient way of damaging the US.

Yeah, it seems obvious that the reason the Soviets supported black separatism was simply to stir up trouble in the US, but in that article I linked, Carr is trying to legitimate his racialist ideas by claiming that they're ideologically derived from Lenin and old school communism:

Once it is understood that Lenin really did see the black American question as a national question, the whole range of Lenin’s extensive, general theoretical work on the national question can be brought to bear on the particular subject of black nationalism in America.

Secondly, the view that Stalin created the theory ignores the active participation of black Americans in the processes leading up to the 1928 resolution, and the focus on "Moscow" ignores the international participation that was involved as well as the manner in which the question was examined in the international context of world-wide colonial and national questions.

Finally, there is a serious ideological problem. Tagging any idea "Stalinist" invites an almost automatic rejection of that idea in this society. Similarly, when it said that the theory was "made Moscow", this plays into the fact that in all probability, the theory, at first, will strike the American as alien and "un-American".

It really shows how out of touch he is with mainstream American thought, thinking that it's the "Stalinist" label that would lead to the rejection of black nationalism, whereas being supposedly communist/Leninist would make it much more palatable. The whole premise is absurd on multiple levels, but then this is coming from the guy who came up with "colorblind racism".

[alhoon]

So it's the government's job to combat sin now? What happened to "separation of church and state"?

It's the government's job to act on what they think it is best for their constituents. And in much of the world, we have elections to see if the constituents agree with the government or change the government.

If the mayor of Charlotteville thinks that will please the majority of his constituents, he's doing his job. If he is wrong, and his constituents think it is an important issue, they will replace him.

[EmperorBatman999]

So it's the government's job to combat sin now? What happened to "separation of church and state"?

As the astronaut said to the other astronaut: "Always has been."

We've seen the US government regulating the moral standards of the nation since its founding. There are so many prevailing opinions from the Supreme Court where the justices claim to have ruled on various cases in order to maintain the government's responsibility in protecting the morality of American citizens. This has varied across different cases, ranging from whether people have a right to refuse a vaccine (they don't according to Massachusetts v. Jacobson, where the health of the community is morally prioritized over personal choice), the countless cases on drug possession, as well as cases pertinent to sexual morals (contraception, abortion, homosexuality, miscegenation, etc.). The idea is that the government needs to be a moral arbiter so as to create a civil and orderly atmosphere, and in many cases, protect citizens from harming themselves and others by their immoral habits.

The United States didn't need to pursue the prohibition of alcohol through an amendment to the Constitution (one of the most idiotic choices our government has ever made, in my opinion), but they went through with it because the government's views on morality suggested that alcohol caused too much societal damage to be left alone any longer. Even after shown the stupidity of Prohibition, the ghosts of those times remain in the form of high excise taxes on the production and sale of alcohol, as well as in the litany of inane laws limiting the sale of alcohol on municipal, county, state, and even federal law books in this country. Same thing with drugs, and once again increasingly in many states, abortion. These laws all exist in order to enforce a set of moral standards decided upon by the government, all under the almost Hobbesian assumption that citizens can't regulate themselves out of making immoral choices, like over-drinking, OD'ing on drugs, or deciding that they won't to raise the child they are carrying in their uterus.

[Heathen Hammer]

Uh oh, Ludicus...you made a post suggesting the existence of racism in the U.S. Cue some of our forum's conservatives coming in to tell us that there is no racism and America is perfect in every way.

Damn whitey and his emancipation, de-segregation, equal rights and other ways in which white devils repress minorities.

[alhoon]

Another rant:
America is a continent. US of A is a country. "Everything is perfect in America" means that "Everything is Perfect in Cuba" too.

[irontaino]

Only one country in the Americas actually has America in it's name, so dibs

[Heathen Hammer]

Just call continent "Americas" or something. Its pretty obvious that 99.9% of the time when someone says America they mean USA not whole Western hemisphere.
People that point out stuff like that must be insufferable to deal with IRL. Imagine going to get food and say "I could eat a horse", then this guy's like "Akchually you can't eat a full horse in one sitting", like bruh its a figure of speech, have a cigarette.

[alhoon]

Just call continent "Americas" or something. Its pretty obvious that 99.9% of the time when someone says America they mean USA not whole Western hemisphere.

I agree. But that doesn't change that 99.9% of the time, those people are wrong. There was a time where 99.9% of the population would tell you the Earth is flat. Doesn't make them any less wrong.

[Cope]

I agree. But that doesn't change that 99.9% of the time, those people are wrong. There was a time where 99.9% of the population would tell you the Earth is flat. Doesn't make them any less wrong.

They are not "wrong". It is not unusual for different entities to share a proper noun. The term "America" is not somehow owned by the continental definition.

[antaeus]

I wonder if people from South or Central America, or Canada, call United States of Americans... American

[alhoon]

I wonder if people from South or Central America, or Canada, call United States of Americans... American

They do and once a while they may tell you they don't like it. Then, they keep doing it so that we can communicate with each other. A Mexican in a conference when were talking about an American friend of mine asked me "Is he a citizen of the USA? Because I am an American too, you know" in jest.
Frankly, it bothers Southern European me more than it bothers any American I have spoken with, from Canada to Argentina. And to be 100% honest, it doesn't bother me very much. When I bring up the issue, most Latin Americans or Canadians would be confused as to what I talk about. Some are bothered that I take 30 seconds of their time to voice an non-issue.

[PointOfViewGun]

Debating with right wingers and conservatives is getting very cumbersome. You make an argument of 100 units. They take 1 unit, twist it through use of straw man arguments and red herrings, and then rant about mostly irrelevant or completely untrue stuff, while also projecting their own position's shortcomings. You end up spending most of your time trying to get them on the actual topic reaching nowhere.