If we can get back on topic, it should not go unnoted that Trent Lott was once a Democrat. It was only in response to Richard Nixon's so-called Southern Strategy that he joined the Rebublican Party. Racism knows no party affiliation.
When the conscience of the Democratic party said "No more racism" the Republican party took advantage of the fact the Democrats, who had been all inclusive to that point, no longer welcomed these types. Being a minority party, they were willing to take them on. The Democrats who had taken racist positions were obliged to either switch parties or quit doing the racist thing.
Edgar, I would like to believe that was so, but How do you explain people like Robert Byrd and George Wallace?
Thanks, Swimp, for grabbing the steering wheel. (And a Happy New Year to everyone.)
No party has a platform, or gets a pass, on bigotry.
And the topic didn't mention political parties, but persuasions.
Remember once upon a time there were liberal Republicans--Nelson Rockefeller comes to mind-- and conservative Democrats--well, there still ARE those; most of them have crossed over to the dark side :wink:
William Rivers Pitt is a distinguished author with strong opinions. He gave a sample of some of the strong responses to his opinions he gets in his inbox and posed the question that began the thread.
So, let me address the question:
I believe the neoconservative mindset allows and enables a variety of biases, not just racial but also cultural. Not just of color, or sexual persuasion, but of class and religion as well.
Someone who went unmentioned in the dust-up over Lott and Strom Thurmond (and Robert Byrd and Jesse Jackson) was George Wallace.
Let me summarize from his biography in the Washington Post at his death in 1998:
"...he made a political career, usually on the national stage, as a man who opposed the advancement of rights for blacks, as well as the powers of the federal government. After notable clashes with Washington over school integration in Alabama, he took his campaign to the nation.
In 1964, Wallace was a candidate in several Democratic primaries, scoring what were then surprisingly large vote totals in such states as Maryland and Wisconsin. In 1968, he ran for president on his own American Independent Party ticket, winning nearly 10 million votes, about 13 percent of the total, in a campaign in which he vilified blacks, students and people who called for an end to the war in Vietnam. He carried five Southern states and won 46 electoral votes.
In 1972, he returned to the Democratic Party fold and was a formidable candidate in that year's presidential primaries. As the most forceful national opponent of "forced busing" for school integration, he galvanized supporters who had never supported him before. But his campaign effectively ended in Laurel, when he was struck down by bullets from a gun fired by Arthur Bremer.
Nevertheless, he won primaries in North Carolina, Michigan, Maryland, Florida, Tennessee and Florida. He no longer could be dismissed as a mere regional candidate."
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George Wallace never left the Democratic party. But no one would have ever called him liberal.
This voting bloc has gone by a variety of names since their bigotry was marginalized: Reagan Democrats, 'angry white males', etc.
They're still out there, and they still vote a straight ticket.
To say that the conservative mindset does NOT contain racism is to deny decades of historical evidence.
But can minds and hearts change? George Wallace's, and those of black voters in Alabama, apparently did.
Again, from the WP:
"In 1982, he ran for governor a fourth time. In a watershed moment, he admitted that he had been wrong about "race" all along. He was elected by a coalition represented by blacks, organized labor and forces seeking to advance public education. In that race, he carried all 10 of the state's counties with a majority black population, nine of them by a better than two-to-one margin. He retired four years later, an increasingly remote and physically tormented man.
"We thought [segregation] was in the best interests of all concerned. We were mistaken," he told a black group in 1982. "The Old South is gone," but "the New South is still opposed to government regulation of our lives.""
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I believe ol' George was probably wrong about the New South. The evidence, again, includes people like David Duke, Jesse Helms, and others.
As a wealth of electoral votes, the South has always been coveted by both parties.
As parties increasingly fractionalized and Democrat became 'liberal' and Republican 'conservative', the strategies of the pols evolved to speak to the blocs to sway their loyalty. Wille Horton and Bob Jones are names that have no business being known to most of us were it not for the racial connotations.
We all know this exists, and to ignore it or refuse to look at it is the very definition of ignorance.
(more in the next...)
The debate now seems to be whether those Southern Republicans are closet racist. Democrats like Byrd are also suspect but I haven't looked that closely at his voting record (but he does need to watch his mouth!) Unless one knows them intimately, there's no way to tell without slipping up like Trent Lott or carefully scrutinizing and analyzing their voting record. I have trouble believing him -- his effort to apologize was still too obviously an effort to save his own skin. Not to discount what's beginning to look like the Clinton curse (opening up the impeachment may be tantamount to opening up King Tut's tomb). The fact that he did change parties is just another reason that makes hard to believe the thoroughly ingrained racism has miraculously and entirely dissapeared from his psyche. I've recently had a personal experience of racism here in Orange County which the offending person didn't realize was insulting my brother-in-law and that isn't an isolated incident. I don't display any obvious political affiliations and people are often off guard, revealing more than they'd intended. It's also not just in the South. I can't call it's a fault of conservatism per se as much as baggage that too many hardcore conservatives still carry around. It is true that you'd have to be a hypocrite if you subscribe to the live-and-let-live philosophy of a true liberal and have racists feelings. Since this post appears to be aimed more at politicians and none of the people on this forum are known intimately so we cannot know their true feelings, let's try to keep the darts aimed at the proper dart board. That is, unless you're inclined toward hero worshipping your favorite politician and want to take it personally. That's anyone's own call.
So when you hear someone say, "I'm not a racist, but..." every words that falls from their lips after that is contradiction.
I mentioned this earlier and it bears repeating:
The Republican Party has a unique opportunity to quash what's left of the Democrats by hosing out the subtle bigotry of the Trent Lotts and replacing it with something meaningful. The minority bloc feels disabled by the Democrats; the Democrats are still wandering around in the desert; and there is still no credible third option.
Will the conservatives seize this chance?
Nah....IMO. They're much too arrogant and megalomaniacal in the wake of Election 2002.
And they've never had it in 'em anyway.
Robert Byrd renounced his own racist past years ago, not now, when Lott gets all the focus.
C'est moi, cobalt popping in on a political thread, imagine that. I had given up those threads with abuzz when they became so 'personal' and attacks were common. Also had to blow through those when the rants became so predictable. Here in a2k I have been able to enjoy and actually read some of the more political threads because the atmosphere is less hostile.
So, that said, I am in 100% agreement with LW who said:
Quote:As a suggestion, might we all make a New Year's resolution to dampen the contentious atmosphere even in threads as potentially explosive as racism?
Everyone has an opinion but as a comparison, try to imagine you are speaking to a person face to face. I think one would stop and think how they were addressing another person if they really wanted to make a point and didn't really have a desire to insult anyone. That, after all, is the least likely way to even begin to convince anyone of your side of the story.
I have always appreciated hearing from Lash, PDiddie, Anon and Max when their posts were thoughtful and had some 'balance'.
I have pulled the more offensive posts from this dispute from this thread and will lock this thread for 24 hours in the hopes that cooler heads will prevail. Some posts may have been pulled with these that referenced the offending posts just to help clean up the discussion.
As a reminder (for all!): CIVIL debate and discussion is expected. Personal attacks are NOT permitted on this forum. If you can not address a topic/discussion with resorting to persoinal attacks please do not post in the thread at all.
Amen, fishin'.
I am in the middle of reading all of this, but I want it to be known, and I want this to be crystal clear.
We don't care what happened in other forums. I'm sorry if people had words before. I'm sorry if any of you didn't get along. But that was then, and that was there, but this is now, and this is here. Carrying over baggage from Abuzz, Slate, CNN boards, chat rooms, MSN sites, Yahoo sites, private conversations you have had, telephone calls you may have engaged in, emails you've traded, etc. just plain isn't going to sway anyone on staff one way or the other in terms of disputes that happen here.
What we care about is what is said here.
Let me repeat that, so that there is no misunderstanding:
What we care about is what is said here.
When Craven and I began this site, one thing we agreed on was that we would do our best to not be swayed by happenings on other boards. And it's not always easy, but we do our best in this area, and we encourage the Moderators and Forum Guides to do the same. There's a reason for this. However other boards were/are managed is the business of those other boards, and not A2K's business. They don't tell us how to run our ship, and we don't tell them how to run theirs. If they allowed stuff that was out of line, or if they selectively pulled stuff, or if stuff was lost in outages, there's no way of us knowing that now, today, in 2003. All of that, far as we are concerned, has to be treated as ancient history. We are not in the business of deciding what was right and what was wrong on other boards, or who started what on other boards.
Our concerns are with Able2Know. These concerns don't go beyond Able2Know. We are not here to clean up the failings of the management of other sites.
If you don't get along with another poster, then don't mix it up with him or her. There are thousands of threads here on Able2Know. Surely there are other places to speak your piece. Create a new topic, if you wish to get your ideas across and if the area you want to discuss hasn't been addressed. There's always room for more threads.
And one more thing. The question of who started a dispute means nearly nothing to us. It's not who starts it or how it starts, but how it ends that matters. Whether you were the one to take the first shot, or the one to fire a responding volley, tends to be immaterial. We just want the name-calling and nastiness to cease.
If someone attacks you, don't be a vigilante about it. Know why I'm here? And fishin''s here? And Phoenix32890 is here? And the Politics Forum Guides (roger, blatham and Lightwizard) are here? We are here to address these problems. Send us a PM if you're seeing problems. If one of us is out, then send to another one until the problem is addressed. We do our best to cover this forum as well as possible, but there are other forums that we have to address. And, we have lives. You might not get us immediately, but keep trying. The problem will be addressed. You have our word on that.
Thank you.
I have "unlocked" this thread again in the hopes that it can resume in CIVIL discussion.
This is the link to W.R. Pitt's column,
in toto, the excerpt of which began this thread and which prompted the vitriolic e-mail he received, (which you may read by clicking on pg. 1, above):
All I Want for Christmas
Yeh! That goes for me too!
PDiddie:
Sorry about the thread guy, sure managed to murder the topic, wouldn't you say!
We're leaving the Cove today, so I get off this darn dialup and it won't be so slow and painful to post something. I'm suffering a severe case of slow motion here!
Again, sorry to have murdered your thread!!
Anon
You think this garbage is representative of most conservatives?
I have always thought that the political makeup is as follows:
20% Far Right
20% Far Left
60% Somewhere in between there. Down the middle, a little right, a little left.
The twenty percent of the far right are most certainly exactly like this, especially if you go south of the Mason-Dixon Line! Also if they are in the Military.
I deal extremely well with conservatives, but not the people described above!
Anon
Anon, There is a solid 15% strong leaning (Right and Left), so, in the event there is no significant + or -, politicians only have about 20% to play with, IMHO.
BillW:
I was beginning to think most conservatives were the way this e-mail reads. I was starting to hate them all because of the other site we have come from. I found myself taking the exreme left view just to be against them.
Truth is I'm very close to the middle. A little left about most things, much farther left about Social Security and the Environment.
Thank God we have this alternative now. Discussions can go as discussions, not open warfare!
One of my best buddies is Fishin', who I started off fighting tooth and nail about gun control. Now he and I e-mail each other once in a while, and get along famously.
Timber is another conservative that I have every intention of getting together with this summer, maybe even try to tempt Fishin' out too, we'll be hanging in Fishin's old stomping grounds.
I was damn near killed by a drunk driver last year, and these two, along with a host of other conservatives came to my virtual bedside!
Like I said, I deal well with conservatives, I just can't stand the haters.
Anon
