Bad actors
Cynical or stupid?
Lindsey Graham isn’t that stupid, so…cynical.
CW: Senator, is there systemic racism in this country, in policing and in other institutions?
LG: Uh, no, not in my opinion. We just elected a two-term African-American president, the vice-president is of African-American Indian descent, so our systems are not racist. America is not a racist country. Within every society you have bad actors; the Chauvin trial was a just result.
Talk about a non-sequitur. Obama was elected therefore our systems are not racist. You what? Can you show us your reasoning for that?
As for American not being a racist country…it’s a country that had a ferocious system of chattel slavery from 1619 to 1865, and a thinly veiled system of slavery from the defeat of Reconstruction to the mid-60s, and a pattern of imprisoning black people that’s barely distinguishable from slavery right on up to this very second – so how likely is it, given all that, that the country in question is not a racist country? How possible is it?
I’m sure it’s very comforting for Republicans to tell themselves that slavery didn’t shape the way all Americans see African-Americans, but the reality is, that is not possible. Human thinking isn’t that clever or advanced. If it were, we would see the enslaver race as the “spoiled” race, but it isn’t, so we don’t. Human thinking is all too good at unreasonable back-formations like “these people are enslaved therefore they must be inferior” instead of “these people are enslaved therefore the people who enslaved them must be immoral.”
The 2008 election didn’t magically erase all that. Sorry.
Even if our system were racist, that would only mean that our racism isn’t systematic. It might still be systemic. And Georgia’s new “voting” law seems like a racist system to me.
Hasn’t this been a classic argument since the Reagan era? “There are a few black news anchors on TV, therefore racism is over in America.”
When? All I saw was you had elected an illegal Muslim immigrant from Kenya or some other African shithole country, at least that’s what you and yours have told me for the last 12 years.
“The 2008 election didn’t magically erase all that. Sorry.”
Here in Germany there are a lot of people who really believe that. It’s changed a bit with social media and the televised murder of George Floyd, but the idea of “America” as a just land of opportunity for all is still strong.
Why is CW asking such a stupid question, with tacit acceptance that it is still open to disputation?