XDA

My definition of racism is: A malignant heart's pre-judgement of a person's essence and worth based not upon knowledge of the content of the person's character but merely on the color of that person's skin. Racism applies only to race, not religion or country of origin. We have other words for those forms of bigotry. Racism is not merely noting facts about the differences in the actual conduct of various races.

Which brings me to the hate-filled rantings of Jamelle Bouie today, here, in Slate. Its headline is: "There is no such thing as a good Trump voter." Plenty of invidious, bigoted, pre-judgment right there but it just gets worse and worse. I'll hit the low points.

Donald Trump ran a campaign of racist demagoguery against Muslim Americans, Hispanic immigrants, and black protesters. He indulged the worst instincts of the American psyche and winked to the stream of white nationalists and anti-Semites who backed his bid for the White House. Millions of Americans voted for this campaign, thus elevating white nationalism and white reaction to the Oval Office.

OK. Muslims are members of a religion, not a race. Hispanics are termed that based on their country of origin and culture so again, not a race. So the only actual possibility for a valid claim of racism is Trump's alleged "racist demagoguery" against black protesters. But wouldn't the limitation to protesters and not all blacks be some sort of sign that the criticism Mr. Bouie calls racist, was actually a criticism of the actions of the protesters, not their color? Just asking the questions Mr. Bouie apparently never thinks of. And what white nationalists? Who are they? Name one. What "winking"?
This piece is long on name calling, short on supporting facts.

On Twitter, Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post gave his version of this argument. “The assumption that ‘Trump voter = racist’ is deeply corrosive to democracy. Also wrong,” he said, adding that there “is nothing more maddening—and counterproductive—to me than saying that Trump’s 59 million votes were all racist. Ridiculous.”

I think Cilliza is making perfect sense. We don't yet have the numbers for the votes Trump got from white voters who picked Obama in 2008 and 2012, but I am pretty sure it is in the millions. Were they racists when they voted for Obama, Mr. Bouie? If they were, your definition of racism seems to be "white = racist" which is a racist thing to say.

In the wake of Trump’s win, the United States was hit with a wave of racist threats, agitation, harassment, and violence, following a year in which hate crimes against Muslim Americans and others reached historic highs.

What? The main thing that happened in the wake of Trump's win was the wave of protests usually devolving into violence and destruction by the sore loser branch of the Democrat party. I would say from the the little bit of TV coverage I've seen that each single protest contained more than the 300 incidents of harassment or intimidation he complains of in a different paragraph. How many protest/riots have there been? Those might be a better thing to call a wave than the 300 SPLC reports, some of which have already been shown to be hoaxes. However, MR. Bouie is absolutely silent about the protest/riots. Hate crimes in America against Muslims (again, some of the reports are fraudulent) reached the trivial number of 257 in 2015 well less than 1/2 the number of hate crimes against Jews that year. In a country of 310 million, 257 is not much of a wave. Then Mr. Bouie goes to the distant past.

Between 1882 and 1964, nearly 3,500 black Americans were lynched. At the peak of this era, from 1890 to 1910, hundreds were killed in huge public spectacles of violence. The men who organized lynchings—who gathered conspirators, who made arrangements with law enforcement, who purchased rope, who found the right spot—weren’t ghouls or monsters. They were ordinary. The Forsyth County, Georgia, sheriff who looked the other way while mobs lynched Rob Edwards, a young man scapegoated for a crime he did not commit, was a well-liked and popular figure of authority...And the people who watched these events, who brought their families to gawk and smile, were the very model of decent, law-abiding Americana. Hate and racism have always been the province of “good people.”

But the lynchings were all by Democrats. What have the long ago crimes of Democrats to do with the Republican party or the people who voted for Trump? Hate and racism have always been the province of bad people, Mr. Bouie. And the bad people you were just talking about were Democrats.

OK. All in all, Mr. Bouie is judging the white people who voted for Trump only by the color of their skin and I am morally certain that he doesn't know that he is reproducing in this piece the same sort of malignant heart, skin color pre-judgment he is accusing others of. The lack of self awareness is astounding.

The only good thing to come from the Democrats' constantly crying wolf/racism, is that no thinking person believes them any more, at least not without some serious evidence. When everyone is a racist, no one is.

Labels: Jamelle Bouie; Self Deluding Racist