Reply to Why aren't more discussions about blatant greed

Forum Index » Political Discussion

Reply to "Why aren't more discussions about blatant greed"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]When you can't call the man who spent 8 years insisting that the first black President wasn't born in the US a racist without people dismissing you as a far-left liberal loon...exactly how far do you think a discussion calling Republicans greedy is going to go?[/quote]
What does insisting that a person wasn't born in the U.S. have to do with racism?[/quote]

I liked Obama, and voted for him, and I don't care where he was born, but I've honestly wondered the same thing. I keep seeing people just reflexively call birtherism "racist." It just seems symptomatic of the increasingly broad overuse of the term to label basically any stupid comment that a white male says. Birtherism may have been wrong and pointless, but it wasn't racist.[/quote]

Because actual study of the issue indicates the association of birtherism and racism: See http://content.usatoday.com/communities/sciencefair/post/2011/04/social-scientists-look-at-racisms-role-in-birther-viewpoint/1#.WQ4LzXnD9Mt

The hacked emails of Colin Powell provided his thoughts on this issue as well:

In an Aug. 21 email from Powell to Miller, he blasted Trump for embarking on a “racist” movement that believes President Obama was not born in the US.

“Yup, the whole birther movement was racist,” Powell wrote. “That’s what the 99% believe. When Trump couldn’t keep that up he said he also wanted to see if the certificate noted that he was a Muslim.”

Source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2016/09/13/colin-powell-hacked-emails/90341788/

Finally, let's look at a couple of other potential examples. Ted Cruz was [b]actually[/b] born in Canada with a Canadian birth certificate, but the birther movement had no problems with his candidacy, and John McCain was born in the Panama Canal Zone. In neither of these cases did anyone repeatedly require ever-more-detailed “proof” that they are American citizens, nor were there conspiracy theories spread about how the documentation was "altered" or somehow being hidden.

So, the real question is how can anyone think that the birther movement, and its attempts to delegitimize first a candidate and then an elected president, was anything other than racist?

This column from the Boston Globe provides some interesting historical perspective - http://archive.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2011/05/02/birthers_shameful_racist_roots/

[/quote]

So, it was racist because Colin Powell said so? Sure, many of the people that went along with the birtherism were probably racists, but the proposition that Obama was not born in the US is not racist by itself. The reason Trump didn't question Cruz and McCain likely had more to do with partisanship. And Cruz is latino, you know, the kind of people that Trump is trying to deport en masse. It's not like Trump would let accusations of racism stop him from doing anything if he felt the urge.

If anything, birtherism was motivated by Islamophobia. Both racism and Islamophobia are rooted in xenophobia and bigotry, and I understand why Average Joe commenter might conflate Islamophobia with racism. But I expect journalists who write for "serious" publications to use the term correctly.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics