This entire thread has a very serious framing issue, a framing issue to common to many debates about race in America. It seems somehow that the discussion of racism is deliberately turned to one of individiual opinion, as if "He's a racist" or "I'm not a racist" is meaningful, or if racism boiled simply down into whether one discriminated against someone of a different race or not. It's a really unfortunate diversion because it leads otherwise good people into debating back and forth about whether they are racist or not, or whether some tea party leader is racist instead of addressing valid questions about race. Questions about how race influences our institutions, and whether there exists actual institutional racism in healthcare or policing, education or finances. Quite simply there are differences, and a vast amount of time could be spent by educated people debating those issues and their potential solutions.
Instead, we get this worthless garbage about whether the NAACP is a "racist organiztaion" or if the Tea Party is racist. And we get all sorts of platitudes and truly intellectually devoid arguments pushed in defense of "I'm not racist, see!"
I'm not particularly selecting you Dunedan, as much as your argument:
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by The Dunedan
This despite the fact that there are, in fact, "minority" Tea Party members in large numbers (a fact conveniently ignored by the NAACP and mainstream media: doesn't fit the narrative, see)
|
There's two things here which really make this a problematic argument. The first, and most obvious, is that "large numbers" is rather specious. If you mean to say "in large percentage", e.g. a large percentage of self-identifying Tea Partiers are themselves minorities, you're simply factually incorrect. But beyond that inaccuracy, even if it were a substantial percentage, would an organization comprised by a large percentage of minorities suddenly *not* be racist? You seem to believe the NAACP is racist despite its clear minority precense, so clearly that can't be the case.
The foolish goal of color-blindness addressed by pan is not even worth discussing at length, but it presents the same issues as a diversion from actual discussions of the absolute racial inequality in this country. If you're looking for examples, MSD's post above has some great examples.
It seems rather unfortunate that the discussion (and by "this discussion", I don't mean the current TFP discussion) is lead by white men claiming that the primary cause of racism is black groups look the NAACP causing their "diviseness" and that in fact there is significant racism against the dominant group. It's a demonstration of ignorance and not of coherent or defensible argument.