@No Room For George wrote:
I haven't [gone] through this entire thread, plus I said my piece on Trump in the other thread, but I don't think Trump is racist per say. At least not in the KKKish view of the term, or even the mom/pop occasional nigger joke behind closed doors description of being racist. What I do believe is he's race bating in a subtle manner by pandering to certain elements within the crowd of Obama haters. I can't call the Tea Party racist because there's black Tea Partiers....
One thing that bugs me though, is his language. I thought that was completely inappropriate, and it actually played to my JW upbringing because I swear people are getting cruder and more [vulgar] in public than ever before.
@djeggnog wrote:
I don't believe your "upbringing" as one of Jehovah's Witnesses ever included the "occasional nigger joke," did it? You make not like Trump's language, but what [about] your language here? As I asked @moshe, I might ask how it is you would interpret the following?
Anyone in the majority that is more likely than not to treat others that they perceive as being, not just different than, but inferior in comparison with themselves, and for whom raising questions as to the character, abilities or intellectual achievements of someone in the minority because of their race isn't viewed as offensive but as copacetic to them, is a racist.
@No Room For George wrote:
Actually DJ, you're only partially wrong on what you believe about my upbringing as one of Jehovah's Witnesses, although I have to add, my upbringing as a black Jehovah's Witness. Amongst other black JWs, I've never heard any "nigger" jokes, but I've heard plenty of "nigga" jokes. Obviously no white brother will make a "nigger" joke in my presense, so on that end of things, you're right.
I have no beliefs about your upbringing. I don't know you at all, and your race is beside the point seeks to derail mine, which is in part what you yourself said here about Trump:
What I do believe is he's race bating in a subtle manner by pandering to certain elements within the crowd of Obama haters. I can't call the Tea Party racist because there's black Tea Partiers....
However, where you and I part company is that you believe seem to be of the belief that only whites can say things that might be construed as racist in nature. Your response makes you sound like someone that sees things through the lens of race (which isn't a disability from which only whites suffer), and makes you sound naive as if you find it implausible to believe that whites would ever play the proverbial "race card" to pander to white audiences.
Someone is "playing the race card" when they exploit, as did Trump in his comments the other day, the prevailing prejudices of people against other races to obtain some political or economic advantage. An example of this I mentioned in my previous post here, when, in the aftermath of the Katrina Hurricane, survivors in New Orleans were being referred to euphemistically as "refugees" by whites, as if these Americans needed to be assigned "refugee status" in order to be recognized as the American citizens they already were, and not just pundits, but many people -- all of them white -- indicated at the time that the use of the word "refugees" should have been regarded as an inoffensive label although they were being told that the word "refugees" was considered by some -- some white and some black -- as a substitute for the n-word.
You also illustrated the evolution of outward racism in this country from how it was manifest several decades ago, to how its manifest subtlely today.
No, I didn't.
One question DJ, what gives? Its unlike you to participate in a thread such as this. Something touch a chord?
A thread like what now? What "chord"? You seem to have concluded that JWN is the only message board I read, the only online place where I might post messages, but on what basis did you so conclude? Whether someone is or isn't a racist is a rather silly topic, so I decided to post something scriptural to give some substance to this thread, for threads like this one reveal that even here on JWN, there is no love for one's neighbor. You might be one of the few non-lurkers here that is actually reading my posts! Did you get my point when I wrote that neither Trump nor POTUS Obama is capable of saving anyone from the Avenger of Death?
Racist comments are the norm in the US, and one has to be stupid not to know that the ignorance in people that hate their fellow man isn't just limited to those among the American electorate since the politicians bring some of the prejudices and biases of their constituents with them to Capitol Hill and to the White House.
Tim Wise wrote: "If we have never seen racism as a real problem, contemporary to the time in which the charges are being made, and if in all generations past we were obviously wrong to the point of mass delusion in thinking this way, what should lead us to conclude that now, at long last, we've become any more astute at discerning social reality than we were before? Why should we trust our own perceptions or instincts on the matter, when we have run up such an amazingly bad track record as observers of the world in which we live? In every era, black folks said they were the victims of racism and they were right. In every era, whites have said the problem was exaggerated, and we have been wrong.
"If you want to know about whether or not racism is a problem, it would probably do you best to ask the folks who are its targets. They, after all, are the ones who must, as a matter of survival, learn what it is, and how and when it's operating. We whites on the other hand, are the persons who have never had to know a thing about it, and who--for reasons psychological, philosophical and material--have always had a keen interest in covering it up. In short, and let us be clear on it: race is not a card. It determines who the dealer is, and who gets dealt."
@djeggnog
