live in a bright red state and the Alabama red necks make up a large percentage of my family.
Believe me if you lived in a small town with them you’d change your mind about which type of racism you prefer pretty quickly.
> Ironically, living in America usually means you have no idea about the level of violence, racism and suffering around the world, and lack much of the perspective of immigrants who sacrifice so much to move here.
It’s interesting you bring that up because if you come from a “shit hole” country, you wouldn’t even be allowed to be here if those voters had their way.
There are almost 8 billion people in the world. Even if 1% are bad, that's 80 million people. You're definitely going to encounter some, but America has way better quality of life because of the strong mix of cultures that mitigate such problems. Some "rednecks" in a small town is not indicative of the entire country, nor would you rather live in another country where that's the national norm.
The issue with immigration has been stopping illegal entry and ensuring the rest are valuable contributors to society. Nobody is stopped because of their national origin, nor has that ever been proposed. The USA still continues its green card lottery system which gives out many free slots every year. Very few countries come anywhere close to matching the immigration strength or desire of the USA.
> Some "rednecks" in a small town is not indicative of the entire country,
Neither is some asshole liberal you ran into once. Nor is the caricature of "Liberal elites" you read about in the National Review.
>nor would you rather live in another country where that's the national norm.
Who said I'd rather live in another country. You seem to be having the argument you'd like to be having rather than actually participating in a conversation.
>The issue with immigration policy has been stopping illegal entry and ensuring the rest are valuable contributors to society.
I'm sorry but if you aren't considered part of the in group, White Trump supporters won't admit this to you, but as a group they are terrified by the demographic changes in the country. Fear that their culture is being erased is the primary impetus behind their call for decreased immigration. Law and order, and calling for a points base immigration system is simply more palatable than outright calling for only letting in Whites.
>Nobody is stopped because of their national origin, nor has that ever been proposed.
Trump has instituted Travel bans multiple times. During his campaign he called for "a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on." He also reportedly said "Haiti? Why do we want people from Haiti here? Why do we want these people from all these shithole countries here? We should have more people from places like Norway.”
His advisors and and multiple national Republican politicians have said they are afraid that White birth rates are lower than immigrant birth rates.
>The USA still continues its green card lottery system which gives out many free slots every year. Very few countries come anywhere close to matching the immigration strength or desire of the USA.
Again this isn't from lack of trying. Trump isn't a dictator, there are limits to what he could accomplish in 4 years.
Maybe because your entire argument boils down to “Actually the people that say they want to end racism are the real American racists. The straight up racists aren’t that bad. I know I really don’t have much experience to base that claim on but I know some American liberals on the internet.”
If you make claims like that, people on the internet who have experience with actual racists will call you on your shit. They will attack you because you are acting like a complete ass. And then you will sit around smugly using those attacks to build on your confirmation bias.
Ever wonder why you keep attracting liberal assholes? If you meet an asshole in the morning, you met an asshole. If you meet assholes all day long, you’re the asshole.
> Ever wonder why you keep attracting liberal assholes? If you meet an asshole in the morning, you met an asshole. If you meet assholes all day long, you’re the asshole.
The fact you say that without even a hint of self-awareness is amusing. You seem to have unresolved anger issues by the way you approach the discussion with people who disagree with you. All in all you seem a very unpleasant fellow so I wouldn't propagandize too much your supposed liberal values. Nobody will believe them.
That’s an interesting debate tactic you have there. Walk into a discussion full of smugness and unearned confidence. Resolutely make generalizations about hundreds of millions of people with no more evidence than “you have some internet friends”. And clutch your pearls like a self satisfied concern troll when you get called an asshole.
You really sound a lot like your imagined liberal bogeymen with your patronizing concern my friend.
Yes, because the "people that say they want to end racism" are doing far more racist things like changing laws to take race into account, something that you're accusing the "rednecks" of attempting to do.
1. The person I'm replying to has never lived here so they have no idea what they're talking about.
2. Group A systematically robbed and cheated Group B for centuries. Now that Group B has some political power and legal protections, Group A wants to pretend that "they can't see color."
Despite the fact that Group B has 1/10th the household wealth of Group A, are more likely to be arrested for committing the same crimes, receive harsher sentences for the same convictions, are much less likely to receive callbacks for job interviews, less likely to be hired for jobs they are equally qualified for, less likely to be approved for mortgages, less likely to be rented to, their dialect is considered linguistically inferior to Group A's, they are less likely to be picked up by a cab, and their children are even disciplined more harshly in fricking kindergarten.
Can you not understand how Group B isn't thrilled with the status quo with Group A's insistence that "they can't see color."
>something that you're accusing the "rednecks" of attempting to do.
1. They don't need to change laws to take race into account, because the system already does that for them.
2. Every single Trump supporting "redneck" I know supported the Muslim ban. And nearly every single Trump supporting "redneck" I know supported requiring Muslims to register with the government for tracking. According to survey's about 10% of them don't approve of mixed race marriages. And I guarantee from personal experience that the real number is much higher than that.
The only reason they don't get to enact the laws they want to, and the only reason they are afraid to publicly espouse their racist beliefs is because of the hard work of those left leaning Americans you despise.
Those left leaning American's you hate so much are the only reason most non white immigrants are even allowed to be in this country in the first place. The majority of my family doesn't even support birthright citizenship and would remove any non white citizens who's parents haven't been in this country more than a few generations if they could.
1) I live here so I know what I'm talking about. Either way, anecdotes are useless.
2) What is this nonsense about group A and B? Are we responsible for our ancestors? Are you prepared to say everyone in group B is responsible for any and all harm they collectively do? The answer is no, you would elect to treat people as individuals instead, so it seems it's you that treat the different groups differently by assigning collectively responsibility to only one of them.
3) "can't see color" is absolutely the correct way forward. We've spent decades proving that what you look like has nothing to do with your talents, motivations, interests, passions and character. We will never progress forward if you continue to discriminate and treat people by the very characteristic you claim is being used to discriminate.
4) The system is nothing but laws. Anything else would be up to how a specific individual deals with those laws, which is a problem with that person and not the system.
5) Anecdotes are useless. The travel ban is not what you claim it was, but perhaps you should look at how members of that religion handle racism first. You won't find any multiculturalism there, that's for sure. As a foreign-born naturalized US citizen, I don't support birthright citizenship either. It's unique to only the US and Canada, not the norm, and repealing it would solve many problems.
6) I don't hate left-leaning American's. This is your projection, clouded by your bias and judgement. I only hate policies that enact the very discrimination they aim to solve, created by people who are ignorant in the problems they aim to fix while ignoring all consequences of those solutions and further blocking any potential discussion or feedback.
7) No, the modern left is not responsible for any of that. America is a melting pot and has been for centuries. This is not some new development, it existed for generations before you and there are no serious attempts to stop it. Again you keep using anecdotes to say a few people are representative of the whole. Is there a country without criminals? Does that mean we all commit crime? Clearly not, so why don't we look at what actually is the reality instead.
Do you think that systemic racism exists? That is do you believe Black people when they tell you their life is harder because they are Black. Do you believe that job interviewers discriminate against Black sounding names? Do you believe that Black people receive harsher prison sentences all else being equal? Do you believe that Black people have a harder time renting homes? Because there's hard evidence to back up every single one of those claims.
All of those issues and more combine to create a reinforcing feedback loop that creates a permanent lower class within our society, that erodes trust in institutions, increases crime and, directly impacts our economic development.
What specifically do you propose we do to end that feedback loop?
2. This isn't about blame. It's about ameliorating an issue that harms all of us. And it's only indirectly about our ancestors. There are people alive today who were directly harmed by the laws that were put in place by the municipalities, states, and the country they live in today. People who were never compensated for that harm.
3. Pretending that you "don't see color" is an absurd response. Of course you do. Everyone does and everyone has implicit biases. The key is to recognize those biases, and sometimes to consciously correct for them.
4. > The system is nothing but laws.
That is naïve to the point of absurdity. I'm sure if you think about it you can come up with a few counter examples.
5. If anecdotes are useless, why do you keep brining them up?
> The travel ban is not what you claim it was, but perhaps you should look at how members of that religion handle racism first.
The travel ban that Trump called for during the campaign that won him votes was much more expansive than what was actually enacted. He also suggested that we should register all Muslims.
A survey in 2016 said that 40% of Americans called for a registry of Muslims, the results were heavily correlated with party affiliation. I'm going to give you 1 guess on which party favored registering Muslims.
>but perhaps you should look at how members of that religion handle racism first. You won't find any multiculturalism there, that's for sure.
What happened to treating people as individuals not as part of a group?
6. >It's unique to only the US and Canada, not the norm, and repealing it would solve many problems.
I thought the US was an amazing unique melting pot? There are many conservative and liberal argument for how the melting pot is helped by birthright citizenship.
7. You really need to read a bit more history if you think this is true. Look up the 1965 immigration act.
> America is a melting pot and has been for centuries.
The Chinese exclusion act, and country based immigration quotas favoring European countries were the norm through most of that time.
>there are no serious attempts to stop it.
Here's a conversation between Steven Bannon and Stephen Miller (Trump's current lead advisor on immigration)
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“Isn’t the beating heart of this problem, the real beating heart of it, of what we gotta get sorted here, not illegal immigration?” Bannon asked Miller. “As horrific as that is, and it’s horrific, don’t we have a problem? We’ve looked the other way on this legal immigration that’s kinda overwhelmed the country?”
Bannon goes on to decry the “oligarchs” of Silicon Valley and Washington and call the number of immigrants in the United States “scary.”
Miller’s response is affirmation: “The history of America is that an immigration-on period is followed by an immigration-off period,” he said.
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Bannon and Miller are both obsessed with preserving "western"(European) culture. If you aren't from a European country, you very likely would not have been allowed here had Steven Miller been in power when you immigrated.
Believe me if you lived in a small town with them you’d change your mind about which type of racism you prefer pretty quickly.
> Ironically, living in America usually means you have no idea about the level of violence, racism and suffering around the world, and lack much of the perspective of immigrants who sacrifice so much to move here.
It’s interesting you bring that up because if you come from a “shit hole” country, you wouldn’t even be allowed to be here if those voters had their way.