Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Czarjorge]

I wonder how much of this is 'good ol' boy'-ism. I moved away from small town Kansas when I was twelve and going back to visit found that the kids I went to school with were rather rednecky. They would say things that would be considered horribly un-PC, but I didn't sense any malice aforethought. They might make crude jokes about Jews or blacks, but I don't think they really felt that Jews and black were lower than themselves.

I'm not apologizing for these guys at all. Maybe they are scummy Republican dousches. But dudes that think alike in a room together might act a little differently than they would in society at large, and how do you truly judge those people? By their words while trying to outdo their dumbass friends and compatriates or their broader actions in their daily lives. Some of those guys probably are racists, and some just like to talk trash with their buddies.

[Ya-ta Boy]

Even I don't think the entire Republican Party is racist.

[Gopher]

[wannago]

[Ya-ta Boy]

[stillnotking]

[stillnotking]

[Gopher]

Stillnotking: your position faults "the Republican leadership" for racial politics, for exploiting the Democrat-Dixiecrat split, for example -- mostly to achieve political ends.

By your same logic, I will fault "leftist academics" generally for racial politics, for exploiting, obsessing on, and indeed further reifying racial categorization and racial differentiation in their teaching and scholarship -- mostly to achieve political ends (and, of course, tenure promotions via a long line of new and exciting publications on race, class, and gender; class, gender, and race; and or course, gender, race, and class).

[stillnotking]

[Ya-ta Boy]

[Gopher]

Politicians will exploit whatever opportunities present themselves, Ya-ta Boy. I am sorry if this surprises you. But that is one of the many ways politics functions. Whether you and I morally approve or not, politics will continue to function as it does. It has probably been so since the Neolithic, if not earlier, in human history. And, no, I am not alleging that "that makes it OK." I am simply stating that that is the way it is.

If you or anyone else introduces "racism" and its institutionalization in American thought and practice, and make allegations regards exactly that which cultivates, creates, and brings to life such opportunities to exploit in the first place, I am justified in pointing out that leftist academics and even more general leftist politics and especially "identity politics" -- affirmative action and race quotas, for example -- have done more in recent decades to reify and institutionalize racial classification and difference and even racism itself than any other thing or anyone else.

I do not know anyone, including myself, who applauds Republican or Democratic politicians bringing up the race issue, by the way -- and was it not just two years or so ago that Hillary Clinton got into trouble for her palpably manipulative "plantation" analogy, Mr. Democrats have such clean hands? Do you deplore that strategy, too?

In any case, we would certainly have to expand our scope to advertising and market segmentation strategies as well as leftist academics and leftist politics, when fleshing out and apprehending the full dimensions of this problem and its origins and understand exactly what it is that exists today and how at least some Republican strategists systematically exploit it. Also, there is so much more to understanding the Southern Strategy than simple reference to the Dixiecrats, Stillnotking. And there is even room to bring in even more than the usual Republican and Democratic "villains" for the demonization treatment, which appears to be this thread's primary purpose.

This notwithstanding, your desire to limit this discussion to Republican racism is artificial at best, Ya-ta Boy. A weak attempt at strong-arm, clever polemics -- especially a paradoxical and intriguing exploitation of racist politics for political ends, that is, establishing Democrats' alleged moral superiority using Republicans as a foil -- at worst. Racism is an American-wide problem -- actually, a worldwide problem, but that seems to enlarge our scope too far.

[wannago]

[Nowhere Man]

Is it wrong for them to compare Obama and Clinton to the Nazis?

[stillnotking]

[stillnotking]