Mitt gets booed at the NAACP convention.
 

I'll give him some credit for showing up and speaking but I'm not sure if he made the right decision to forcefully declare that he would cut extra spending on programs and that would include that he would repeal "Obamacare." It got a resounding big boo for that.

Yes, there are AA voters that vote conservatively, perhaps Republican but unfortunately the ones that get in the news mostly are the likes of Herman Cain and Allen West, a couple of real nut jobs.

I was a little surprised that he would go talk to the NAACP. I would expect the reception to be a poor one. It would be like Obama talking to the NRA.

I also think the use of the term Obamacare was not smart. Many AA see the POTUS as one of their own and the term is seen as derogatory. Furthermore whether you like the health care bill or hate it, the fact is that many working and successful African Americans are either without insurance or pay high costs.

I looked back at the 2008 convention and both Obama and McCain spoke but if you look at McCain's speech it was received in a better way and he even took time to compliment candidate Obama:

“Don’t tell him I said this, but he is an impressive fellow in many ways,” Mr. McCain said of Mr. Obama. “He has inspired a great many Americans, some of whom had wrongly believed that a political campaign could hold no purpose or meaning for them.”

Call it kissing up but isn't that what one would expect?

I wonder if he's hoping to gain tea party cred for going to NAACP and telling them he'll repeal Obamacare. I don't think he had much chance of converting his audience, but he may get some other votes by going to the NAACP and "telling it like it is".

There are two ways this could have gone for Romney.
He gives the speech, and is met lukewarmly, proving that Romney has some potential with independent african-americans, or
He gives the speech, and those uppity black folks act like a bunch of savages and shout down the poor white man when he tells it "like it is".
either way, Romney gets to spin it as a victory.

As an aside, the Mormon Church was hostile toward black people everywhere. For example, while all Mormon (white) men are considered priests, black men were barred from the priesthood (women get to be members of the ladies sewing circle and obey their priest. Since blacks could not be priests, they were barred from celestial marriages in the Temple and thus barred from salvation.

In 1978, Mormon leaders suddenly had a revelation from god telling them to allow blacks access to the priesthood and all the rites of the Mormon Church. Prejudice lingers however:



Wikipedia

As an active Mormon, I'm sure Romney had no compunction about telling the NAACP that he would roll back the new health care law. Those folks should know their place, right?

Clone thread I'm too lazy to make:

Mitt gets boned at the NAACP convention.

Different word. Same meaning.

When visiting a confrontational crowd, a politician should meet them half way. He did not do that probably fearing loss of wacko extremists that must vote in great numbers.

Which then begs a question. Why did he even bother to go to a 'no win' situation? Somewhere must exist a good reason. It sure it not obvious.

He did it because he honestly thought middle ground would be easy to find, in the same way that he honestly believes he's in touch with middle-class America because he knows some people who own NASCAR teams.

lol - yup. Sure can.

Tw calls fiscal sanity the province of wacko extremists. That demonstrates the inadequacy of tw's thinking. His opinions are so unreal even he has no business having them. He defines the ultima Thule extremity of wacko. Bad enough to embarrass the entire continent of North America, to say nothing of the Cellar.

Well, at least he didn't try to come up with some humorous anecdote about his great great grandfather and his favorite house slave.:cool:

Actually, I think his handlers expected this. I think that this was done to beef up his credit with the "I'm not a racist" racist crowd in the GOP. Having the NAACP boo you is a backwards endorsement.

WOW! tw has the ability to embarrass the entire continent of North America? I'd be nice to a guy with powers like that. No telling what tw will do next. He might decide to embarrass you as well.

I saw a clip and thought poor ol' Mitt looked extremely nervous.

Not his usual crowd.

he was just quoted at a fundraiser this evening (trying to source it, Rachel read it out loud as breaking news straight from the press pool) as saying "if they want more free stuff, tell them to go vote for the other guy"... cause he's tooootally not just a race-baiting cunt or anything.

Oh, he's tooooooooootally not! I mean, I can relate to Mitty. I, myself, own a dressage horse AND several negros!!

Still cannot find anyone other than Dem Under, Daily K & her all saying it and the first two referencing each other as sources... :eyebrow:


**Change bolded for "accuracy"**

It was posted somewhere how out of sorts and nervous Biff was in a classroom full of kids.

Yeah, we can count on a guy who doesn't even have social skills outside his comfort zone.

Please don't fall for his bumbling act. Falling for the poor sad clown gave us eight years of g-dub.

Not sure if its true or not, but this would worry me a LOT more than what he was purported to have said.

That it. I am never having sex with Rush Limbaugh again. Posting as UG is his idea of foreplay. Its no longer fun.

Has that story not made its rounds of the cellar? it.. should. yeah, thats a big deal. i just wanted to shed a little light on the obviously racist undertones of the followup to the NAACP booing, given the fact that more than one of us here have pointed out that he probably basically wanted to be booed (so he could say something like, THAT)

I'll probably get in trouble here because I have not heard the quote in context... but that never stopped me before. Will it be racist when Biden says, "Vote for us, we'll give you free stuff." There are many ways to be racist, assuming people are not capable of taking care of themselves would be one. Romney is expressing an actual political position. He is full of shit since he believes in free stuff for the oligarchs, but the position is only racist if his lack of commitment to the under-class is based of skin color not an assumption that they are capable of independence.

Oh wait. No. I'm thinking "so...Mitt...what is that name short for? Certainly he's a matthew or something."

Willard Mitt Romney

Really? Poor guy, no wonder he beat people up and pretended to be a cop and pulled people over. He was bullying as compensation for the dumbass name his parents gave him. :lol:

You know who else dressed up as a cop and pulled people over?

Several serial killers.


AND THE DOG ON TOP OF THE CAR THING, PEOPLE!

This man is one banana phone away from being Jeffrey Dahmer!

Save yourselves!!!!!!

This was actually a win for Romney. He proved to the people he REALLY panders to, the ultra-rich right, that he's not afraid to confront the other side and that he won't give anything to anyone unless they ARE ultra-rich and ultra-right wing.

and Ultra WASP-Y!

He's the Ultimate WASP! except for that pesky Mormon thingy. That's not so much as a P as a C as in "cult"

but, whatever. He's a rich white guy and we know they always know best. Right, daddy-o?

the racism is in the othering of black people inherent in the rhetoric and the policies of the party as a whole, and mitt's own personal consistent comments. Also, "racism" isn't "stuff that acknowledges race" - its stuff that helps contribute to the systems of oppression of minority groups, duh. "Reverse racism" is not racism.

I don't agree with your definition of racism.

Prejudice, based on racial stereotypes is most definitely a form of racism. And there are a thousand ways it can be expressed. Furthermore, it's possible to have racist attitudes and still express opinions that are not racist. There's no causal dependency nor are they mutually exclusive. Griff had it right, racism is rooted in attitude, even unconscious ones, intention. It is about prejudice, pre-judging.

I'm sorry, but this is horribly wrong Ibby. Racism is asumptions made based on race, period. They don't even have to be negative assumptions: the stereotype that all Asians are good at math is just as much racism as the stereotype that they are bad drivers.

"Stuff that helps contribute to the systems of oppression of minority groups" is just a longer phrase for "oppression."

Nope.
Via a good friend of mine, who has to keep this on her tumblr page cause tumblr sure is full of racist fucks.

There's a lot of hate in the room....

Your tumblr friend... she makes some good points, but the part about

is bullshit. I'm not going to argue with her through you. Your quote even mentions "prejudice" as the key factor of racism several times. It's about the prejudice, not about whiteness (sorry tumblr friend). There are without question many, many, many, many *white* racists. But being a "POC" does not immunize one from being a racist. As long as a person can exercise prejudice based on "race", they
can be racist, and the color of the racist's skin (or other "racial" identifiers) do not matter.

I think I see now what you meant by "reverse racism is not racism". Still wrong though.

PoC can be racist...
but not against whites. at all.

wrong again.

a person of color who makes prejudicial judgments about white people, that's being racist "against" whites.

You are still missing the point.

Sorry, but I still disagree.

I'd still like to pursue the idea that Mitt seems to be getting at despite his lack of commitment to it. Free stuff for everyone is a problem. Every government program from the F-35 to Head Start to corn subsides to tuition assistance to bank and auto bailouts builds dependence. Some folks would like to ask which ones are worth the price without being called an anti-American, racist, farmer blaming, middle class killing, capital hating, union buster. We attack because it is our livelihood, our support structure, or maybe even our belief system appears to be on the chopping block. We are dependent on a program. Is our level of dependence acceptable or unacceptable? If we grow government we grow dependence, at what point is that no longer sustainable? The USSR fell, obviously too dependent. Greece is close, probably too dependent for American sensibilities and let's face it, not a productive society. Our commitment to right wing spending (guns not butter) seems close to Greece's belief in left wing spending maybe we're already too dependent or just out of balance.

It is very hard to shed our skin and look at this rationally. I work for a non-profit with a Head Start contract. Is it happenstance that the only untouchable program in my previous list is Head Start? You are a very left wing kid whose views are probably largely unchallenged at a very left wing college, can you shed that skin when you talk politics, because we are talking about a whole country here not just conservative PA or liberal Vermont.

I'm not missing anything. You and I clearly just disagree about what the word "racism" means.

Prejudice against white people from poc is prejudice. It's not a good thing but it isn't racism.

Hundreds of years of institutionalized prejudice and hatred against poc from white people, and anything that plays into that, is racism. Never the other way around, until poc have oppressed white folk for hundreds of years.

It goes both ways. Believing one race is superior is just as racist as believing another is inferior. Doesn't matter which race is doing the believing.

Yet the question of "power" didn't enter into the OED or Merriam's definitions at all, and is only loosely mentioned in tandem with the Macquarie definition. Racism is prejudice based on race. The concept your friend is discussing is "institutionalized racism in America and Europe," which is a very valid and discussable subset of racism, but it does not account for all examples of racism.

So you're saying you misread my original post, because I never said shit about poc on white racism/predjudice.

as in, what romney said was racist because he's talking about "giving 'them'" - by who he specifically means the audience at the NAACP, by which he means black people - "free stuff", in a way that is A.) entirely disingenuous and B.) extremely othering and exclusionary.

as in, it wouldn't be racist for Biden to address a crowd of poc and (obviously sarcastically) say that they'd love to give them all free stuff, because saying "we DON'T favor taking away what little many of you already have" isn't racist.

What if someone else said, in all sincerity and with deep compassion, "we have to care for our black citizens because they simply do not have the mental capacity to raise themselves to our level"?

...but that's not what anyone's saying.
Yes, that would obviously be racist. Most of the most racist shit that's gone down over the centuries has been to "civilize" people of color and "improve" their condition.
But ROMNEY is the one who made this about race, by saying that the black NAACP crowd "wants free stuff". the policies in place or supported by the administration are overwhelmingly not racially, but rather economically, and in the case of things like affirmative action, the effort is made to counteract existing racial bias in hiring decisions.

If Biff weren't such a social awkward, he would've said "yeah, I'm your boo, that's right."

So... oppression is not a necessary, defining characteristic of "racism."

You sure?

...thats still oppression.

Helping people is oppression?

Does that mean helping people to any degree at all, or only helping a lot instead of a little?

it depends on how you help.
if you help by giving them financial or economic support, it probably isnt oppression.
if you "help" by taking them from their homelands, enslaving them, forcibly converting them... it probably is.

What if you don't take them from their homelands, but have them live in a certain area, and allow them to have casinos?

Been busy at the rehab, so I'm coming in late on this ...

Yes, Mitt got booed over the Obamacare comments, but he got applause (and not polite golf-clap applause) to other parts of his message to the NAACP.

BZZZZZZT!!! Never said those words.

You can be racist and have perfectly good intentions of helping the people you are racist against. It happens all the time.


Since I'm a pyro...lets throw some gasoline back on this fire.

When it comes to arguing about what is 'racist' or not, it largely comes down to semantics, but this is how I understand it.

Prejudice: When you stereotype a group of people.

Example: PH45 is prejudice against Italians because he thinks they are lazy.


Discrimination: Acting out on a prejudice belief.

Example: PH45 discriminates against Italians by not hiring them. He thinks they are lazy.


Racism: An institutionalized prejudice by a society.
Racist: A person who attempts to institutionalize prejudice or acts out on an institutionalized prejudice.

Example 1: PH45 wrote a racist editorial in the newspaper by urging businesses to not hire Italians because they are lazy.

Example 2: PH45 did not hire an Italian for a job, even though he as qualified, because of a newspaper article.



Obviously racism is very fluid, complex, and the complete opposite of black and white but from my understanding, racism (sexism as well) must be somehow associated with a group of people.

I would agree with Ibby that racism results from people in a position of power. You have to have power in order to institutionalize a prejudice belief. Although, I strongly disagree that racism solely stems from white people, even in the United States. There are a lot of racist beliefs about white people in minority groups and while those racist beliefs may not be able to oppress whites very much, they are still racist since they have power within their own group.

What if Biff truly believes that "free stuff" has the outcome of enslaving the recipient? Bread and Circuses were put in place to reduce rioting not lift people up.

Then I would agree with you Griff. Just because someone makes a statement that can perceived as racist doesn't mean it is.

I wonder how this discussion applies to the apparent prejudice/auto-distrust/vilification of true red-headed people, especially kids. They're fair-skinned but seem to get it from other Caucasians as well as everyone else. Or is that Okay because, "hey, we're all white here!"?

Stuff like this...
Attachment 39597
Attachment 39598
Attachment 39599

I believe this would represent a good turning point in the discussion from "what is racism?" to "what is race?".

I expect the same amount of agreement.

Giving financial/economic support is exactly what this hypothetical guy said he was going to do. Is it oppression, or isn't it?

To be serious for a bit. I think the term 'racism' is outdated because our idea of 'race' has progressed significantly. A fundamental assumption behind 'race' is that humans are split up into distinct subgroups (white, black, red, yellow, jews, and gingers) but with human migration, it turns out human phenotype is just a very complicated gray scale.

Yes, an Scandinavian blonde looks very different than a Somali but if you go from Somalia to Ethiopia to Egypt to Turkey to Greece to Italy to Germany to Norway there isn't really a good dividing line. It is a gradient.

Saying that, I think constraining the term 'racism' to institutionalized prejudice against outdated racial groups is stupid. Racism should be applied to any group whether they be blacks, Muslims, or gingers.



Cyberwolf, I am showing that second picture to all my ginger friends. That is amazing.

Very very few get anything "for free". You truly have to be incapacitated to get a substantial amount of stuff for free, and I think we can all agree that those who are incapacitated probably should get stuff for free. There's this pervasive idea started by the "welfare queen" comment that people live lives of luxury when they are on the dole, anecdotes of people on welfare driving Cadillacs. That's not a case of poor people who can afford expensive things, it's a case of wealthy people criminally getting welfare payments. The way to fix it is to monitor the system more closely, but that would cost more money and increase the size of government, so we can't do that.

Then there's the issue of people getting help when they can afford it. I am offended that millionaires get social security payments and access to medicare. I am appalled that people who can afford multi-million dollar beachfront homes get their flood insurance subsidized.

If there's not a program to be dependent on, folks would be dependent on a company - a retirement fund instead of social security, a health insurance company instead of medicare/medicaid. The difference? There's no incentive for a government program to screw you to make a few extra dollars. If the folks choose not to use a company for those services, and there's no program, then our fellow citizens would suffer, or they would be helped by charity, or by family or other individuals. It WILL happen, and the cost WILL be expended. It doesn't make a big difference to my wallet if my money goes to a government program, a company, a charity, or I give it directly to a person in need. The cost is there, and it will be paid.

I don't think the cause of the downfall of the USSR is obvious or because it was too dependent.

Racism was never about race. It was always about judging people on first impressions. They looked different, so they must be a different 'race'.

Racism is about hate. One benchmark racist was Nixon who would openly disparage other races sometimes right to their face. He was particularly harsh with Jews and Blacks (which were still called Negros back then). But ironically, his actions were often to use (promote) those same people (ie Kissinger). He was responsible for pushing school integration, affirmative action (the Philadelphia Plan), and other social improvements one would not expect from a racist.

More than a racist, Nixon was driven more by his own legacy. Everything he did was first for Nixon. So yes, a racist would also promote concepts he was opposed to but that would make him look good in history.

So how do we define a racist? We know Nixon did have openly racist biases. But then he also suppressed those biases when necessary for his reputation. So extreme so that we had to invent a term - “expletive deleted“.

His logical actions do not change his emotions. Racism is about emotions. Nixon was good at separating his emotions from logical thinking. Others who cannot will let their emotions inspire their racist actions.