Blimey. I am flabbergasted at the amount of overt racism that Americans have to put up with. I don't necessarily think we in the UK have the best way of tackling racism but any politician expressing a racist view in the media would be universally condemned, probably sacked by their party and would be unlikely to be re-elected. Even our ultra-far right parties, the EDL and the BNP, maintain an outward fiction that they are not racist and avoid racist language and sentiments in their interviews. Thankfully, their chances of being elected anywhere other than the odd local council seat are very few and far between.

During the 2010 election campaign there was a huge brouhaha when then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown misheard a woman during campaigning, and dismissed her as a bigot. Just implying someone was racist when they weren't being so (though her views aren't entirely politically correct) was a massive gaffe which definitely contributed to Brown losing the election, so important is it here for everyone to avoid even the hint of racism in public.

Race isn't recorded on birth certificates here, and we've never had segregation, as the above quote regarding wartime attitudes pointed out.

Here, a business with a sign saying "nigger" would be forced by the police to take it down - our free speech laws are different and there is a specific crime of inciting racial hatred. That bumper sticker shocks me, it wouldn't be something that anyone would put on a car here. Even in the town nearest to the village where I live, which is 96.6% white, a business with a racist sign would be shunned by almost everyone and would end up out of business even after removing the sign.

We do have problems with racism here, and I deplore it. It's easy for me to say that as a white person, but I have friends who have been affected and I wish we were all further along towards a more accepting world.

Because of our different histories what works for the UK wouldn't work for the US, or vice versa; but I'm just gobsmacked at the overt racism of the bumper sticker and that anyone would put that on their car without shame.

What Hagmann says isn't really a problem until Alex Jones repeats it, at which time it becomes factual.

Rosy said


You're not the only one. I'm fairly sure that anyone with that bumper sticker on their car in LA would be chased down and given a severe talking to. Someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but that kind of public display of that sentiment is limited to the South and maybe rural West. I hope.

Sigh.

I have to take that last post back. Today I saw a bright red pickup with flags fluttering from each pillar of the bed. Each flag, as well as a banner draped across the tailgate, said WHITE POWER! and there were several bumper stickers with something nasty to say about N words. He actually got a honk and a wave!

Heavy sigh.

I hear what you are saying. I know it is shocking to see how the American First Amendment functions in real life, to many people (including to many Americans). But I am a strong believer in it. The overt racism of the bumper sticker is not all that reflective of anything. A moron racist exists in Georgia. That's all we know.

The issue of racism in the United States compared to in other countries interests me deeply, as someone with brown skin who has lived in many countries around the world, and whose parents frankly left England to move to North America because of British racism. Americans, I would say, are true experts on racial relations compared to people in other nations, and they have evolved in ways the rest of the world simply has not. They have had to confront the deepest, most emotional aspects of this evil characteristic of humanity for hundreds of years. They fought a war over it, costing hundreds of thousands of lives. (A war in which, it should be noted, the British supported the pro-slavery South.) And, what many non-Americans do not appreciate or are even aware of is that many of America's largest cities are, and have been for generations, majority non-white. Even as diverse a city as London is, its population remains over two-thirds white.

Consequently, when a brown person like myself identifies myself as "an American," my fellow Americans don't even blink. Of course I'm an American. You know who does blink though, when I travel abroad and say the same thing? Europeans. Usually the look is, "Ha ha, I know you just called yourself an American as a joke. But really. What are you?" And yes, I have occasionally gotten the same reaction in this country in the past, on rare occasions. But... this country has a president named Barack Hussein now. I'm really not that weird anymore.

As that moron in Georgia proves, racism is not dead in this country. But it isn't what it used to be.

I observed almost no racism directed at people of European descent during the years I lived in Ethiopia, and as a Southerner, that was a puzzle. I expected it, but it just was not in the nature of the people; the Ethiopians were very open-minded and respectful of other races and cultures. Yes, they even forgave the Italians, who had treated them so brutally. Emperor Haile Selassie set the example and issued an edict that there was to be no retribution after the war, so thousands stayed and were fully absorbed into the national life.

There were several hundred Americans there at that time, and even though many were from backgrounds that would lead one to assume otherwise, few exhibited any racist tendencies.

I learned a lot about race and respect there.

Unfortunately, this is not snark.

Obama Loses West Virginia Delegates To Prison Inmate

Weigel was tweeting incessantly about it yesterday.

I think this says more about West Virginia then it does about President Obama.

And not a bit of it good.

Confirming why this primary result is in this thread, from the above link:

Has anybody seen exit polls for the 2012 Democratic Primary?

President Obama switched his pre-campaign position of "There is no such thing as clean coal" to a delusion that technologies will produce ways to burn coal cleanly to produce electricity. I believe that he did this to secure what he thought might be the crucial support of West Virginia. The support for the felon was highest in the coal country of West Virginia, including in the labor stronghold of Mingo County.

I think it is likely that racism played the larger role in this outcome, as evidenced in prior elections. However, I also think that a desperate need to hold onto coal mining jobs played a role. Coal mining is arguably the most dangerous, life-shortening job in the U.S. Steelworkers send chills down my body when I see them walking on beams in the air, but the death rate from coal mining is higher worldwide. Coal kills everywhere it touches. China alone makes that obvious. The President must know this. West Virginians surely know that modern Republicans will do nothing to regulate the coal-mining industry, much less put it out of business.

If West Virginia is ever to be lifted from its present doldrums, it will have to be through educating the kids so that they can eventually leave the state and find good employment elsewhere. Despite Sen. Robert Byrd's efforts, not enough of the Federal government has been moved to West Virginia to provide employment outside the coal mines. The chief opponents here are the coal companies; they are also the most active deniers of climate change. We have repeatedly seen the value that they put on human lives. It is time to shut them down and offer the kids of West Virginia an alternative.

Quote:

Obama Loses West Virginia Delegates To Prison Inmate

Keith Judd was arrested twice in my presence at the University of New Mexico in 1996 - both times armed - when he was running around free and unhinged.

First time, I was riding my bike to the school paper (where I wrote), and I saw him as he was tackled by university cops, walking through campus with no shirt on and carrying a rifle. I wrote it up (I was on the scene) and published an article in the Daily Lobo under a "staff reports" byline.

Two weeks or so later, while waiting in the rain for Al Gore to appear at the ASUNM to speak at a re-election event, I saw Judd about twenty feet from the stage, kind of off in a corner, and looking just as sketchy as the guy I'd seen parading through campus with his rifle - this time with a long coat on. Of course, I alerted the first Secret Service agent I saw, and Judd was immediately shuffled away by 6-8 very eager agents.

Didn't hear another thing about the incident until about three years later, when I read in the Albuquerque Journal that Judd had been imprisoned for 210 months in Texas on "firearms charges." The article mentioned that he'd been arrested twice at UNM, once at a Gore rally, carrying a gun.

That was my Forrest Gump moment. Who knows, if I hadn't been there, what would have happened (and I've had to consider the very real and macabre possibility that if I hadn't taken action that day, there may not have been an election debacle in 2000).

That's all I have to say about that.

Quite the story, jt!

West Virginia is also the #1 in Prescription Drug Abuse - Oxycontin and Oxymorphone (two hightly addicting semi-synthetic narcotic pain relievers). The Oxycontin scandal that is going on in Florida (includes Pharmacies (recent CVS busted for selling way more pills than any other pharmacy nationwide), wholesalers (Cardinal for not questioning the huge quantities of narcotics), and doctors (with about to be criminals)) backing them (pain clinic scandals).

This was the top end of the pipeline feeding West Virginia. Since the feds have been trying to close them down, the folks in W Va. have a "shaky" future.

Folks BUS people down from Tn, Ky, WVa, etc to the Florida "pain" clinics for their drugs (like they do with the medications for the elderly for folks along the Canadian Border).

White Supremacist Leader, Crew Nabbed In Fla. Terror Probe

Nick R. Martin May 8, 2012, 5:39 PM 29928


more...
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.c ... fpnewsfeed

If anybody is missing from dr kHate's place, I'd bet they're from Florida.

More about that story I posted just above.

tweet:


US Soldier Trained Neo-Nazis in Florida for "Race War"

—By Adam Weinstein
| Wed May. 9, 2012 12:53 PM PDT



Here's the page the snippet shown on MoJo is from:





remainder, including scribd of the arrest affidavit:
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/05 ... -neo-nazis

Pastor Terry Jones of Koran-burning fame has moved up to lynching:




Warning: There are screen caps from the video and they are sickening. I couldn't bring myself to actually watch the video itself.

These people will not be satisfied with a defeat at the polls. I have never feared for this country more than I do now.

Guess MIB will be paying the good pastor a visit?

I'm still hoping for the MWBN (Men With Brass Knuckles...).

Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs reports an interesting approach to determining "How Racist Is the United States?". It is based upon a scholarly article "THE EFFECTS OF RACIAL ANIMUS ON A BLACK PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: USING GOOGLE SEARCH DATA TO FIND WHAT SURVEYS MISS" by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz at Harvard.

The problem is that conventional surveys are consistently bad at measuring racism. It is not socially acceptable to admit to racism except in very narrow and closed circles, so people will not or cannot answer direct questions about their racial attitudes. Sometimes we sneak around their reluctance by asking indirect questions, such as

but even such questions must be asked of different respondents, because a single respondent will notice the racism in the harsher response that they were considering for "a black man."

Johnson's article tells much of the story and includes a neat graphic from the article. The abstract:

The researcher summarizes:




Google searches are just a proxy for a direct measurement, and the "hits" are likely to include some false positives. For example, some of my searches of the far right literature would show up as racism right here in little ol' Connecticut. However, this is a step forward in answering the question in the article's title: racism did matter.

Many thanks to Charles Johnson for bringing to light an article that I would surely have otherwise missed. It is in the working papers collections at Harvard.

‘Non-Racist’ Watch 2012: AZ Radio Host On Obama, ‘I Call Him A Monkey’.



You can listen to the segment of the show being discussed. It is just under 3 minutes and is worth listening to.

To quote Barbara:


I do want to note that one of her callers rips Barbara a new one for saying what she said and then he hung up. The caller's comment is included in the audio clip. Barbara believes that the First Amendment makes one immune from criticism. Poor Barbara.


On her blog, American Freedom By Barbara, Barb wrote 2 posts on the issue. As I was writing this comment, Barbara deleted both posts. I can't find archived copies of the posts. However, here is some of what she wrote.



The pic used to accompany the above blog post by Barbara:



Barbara wrote this in her defense:



H/T Daily Kos.


Barbara then wrote an update: "Update!!! On Yes I Did Use The Word Monkey", but then scrubbed the post.

Barbara is pissed that the AZ GOP isn't backing her up. I can't really follow much of this post because it is about insider bickering and because Barbara doesn't format her post in any way that makes sense. However, Shane Wikfors, who is the lead spokesman for the AZ GOP is not happy with Barbara.



Barbara is thrilled that her story is going viral.

Barbara's Blogtalk Radio Show, Hair on Fire.

What the f*ck are they putting in the water in Arizona....It's Arizona and Racism same same...

I hadn't seen this article.

The Godfathers of G.O.P. Racism
by Thomas Adcock
Posted Thursday, May 03, 2012 7:08 PM




I snipped just a few:










The article is here:
http://highbrowmagazine.com/1138-godfathers-gop-racism