How Should We Address The Uss History Of Slavery And Racism Heres What Americans Think
Discussion of racial issues has intensified in recent years, with vigorous debates emerging at the national and local level over once obscure academic arguments such as critical race theory. At the core of much of the discussion is how we should confront Americas history of slavery and racism. As this debate continues, a recently released report from the Pew Research Center sheds new light on the question.
Here are the core findings: Although 48% of Americans think that the country has made real progress on race over the past 50 years, 50% say that a lot more needs to be done, 57% believe that whites benefit from advantages that Black Americans lack, and 53% view increased attention to slavery and racism as positive for society.
Beneath these aggregate statistics, there are significant differences among different groups in the population, mainly along racial, partisan, age, and educational lines. For example, 46% of whites think that giving increased attention to slavery and racism is a good thing, compared to 75% of Blacks, 59% of Hispanics, and 64% of Asians. The partisan gap is large: 78% of Democrats favor highlighting slavery and racism, versus just 25% of Republicans. Young adults are 19 percentage points more likely to approve than seniorsno doubt a reflection of the fact that, as we know from the recent census results, younger Americans are more diverse than older Americans. The same gap divides the most- and least-educated Americans.
White Republicans An Outlier On Views About Race In America
Data: Axios/Ipsos poll; Chart: Axios Visuals
A new Axios-Ipsos poll on race relations one year after George Floyd’s murder shows in stunning detail how there’s no such thing as “what white Americans think,” with Republicans and Democrats seemingly living in two different worlds.
Why it matters: Such a vast gap between the left and right inside the majority U.S. racial group belies the notion of a compromise view, and it shows why Congress has been so slow to act.
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It also helps to explain why Donald Trump still has such a hold on the GOP.
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Watch: Axios’ race and justice reporter Russell Contreras and managing editor for politics Margaret Talev discuss the poll’s findings on “Axios on HBO” on HBO and HBO Max.
Details: Black Americans are the most dissatisfied or worried about the status quo on issues from policing to employment to politics.
57% of white Americans say that “the events of the past year have made me realize there is still a lot of racism in our country,” but that breaks down as 35% of white Republicans and 93% of white Democrats. By comparison, 80% of Black Americans agreed with that view.
The poll also examined racial and ethnic disparities around policing and the criminal justice system, which Axios’ David Nather unpacked as part of our Hard Truths series.
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This same split between white Democrats and Republicans can be seen across most of those questions as well.
Not A Generalization But The Majority Of Racists Are Republican
OK, as current proof of my point, http://img3.allvoices.com/thumbs/image/609/480/95031869-vote-romney.jpgSorry for the long link, but it completely proves my point. RACIST!Also, it is not uncommon for people to hold up highly offensive posters at rallies, speeches etc. For example, one said ‘Impeach the half-breed Muslim’ . Tell me again that that isn’t racist. I also want to make the point that NOT ALL MUSLIMS ARE TERRORISTS! PEOPLE SHOULDN”T CARE IF THEIR PRESIDENT IS MUSLIM ANYWAYS!!!!!!!!! I actually know many Muslims and they are awesome and some of the nicest people on earth . Just because some Muslims screwed up doesn’t mean that every Muslim is the same way. Don’t pull the argument about slavery, the parties have morphed and current examples are better.
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Democrats Or Republicans Who Do You Think The Happier Group Is Overall
Based on my unofficial research and that of some of our readers, the Republicans and Conservative Democrats appear to be the winners. Why do I say that?; Well, just by their demeanor. During interviews they generally seem to be the calmer, more respectable of the two. Republicans certainly arent perfect, and they certainly dont always have the right idea or say or do the right thing.; And, they tend to exaggerate a bit .
Analysis: A Reckoning On Racism Not For Many Leaders Of Gop
NEW YORK If the nation is in the midst of a historic reckoning on racism, most leaders of the Republican Party are not participating.
On the day last week that a jury convicted the police officer who killed George Floyd, Republicans in Washington focused much of their energy on condemning the longest-serving Black woman in Congress. In the days since, former President Donald Trump attacked what he called the racist rants of basketball icon LeBron James. And some of Trumps staunchest supporters on Capitol Hill are considering forming a new group that initially planned to champion Anglo-Saxon political traditions.
Beyond simple rhetoric, Republican state lawmakers are pushing forward with new voting restrictions that disproportionately affect people of color and are resisting legislation designed to prevent police brutality.
The moves reflect a stark political reality: As America grows more diverse, the Republican Party continues to be led almost entirely by white people, particularly men, who cater to an overwhelmingly white base. And despite fierce criticism from civil rights leaders and growing concern from business leaders who are traditional allies, many Republicans see no problem.
Its unfortunate that more in the Republican Party are not willing to stand up for what I would define as creating a more just and humane system, Martin Luther King III told The Associated Press. It makes you wonder if they really even care.
Passage remains uncertain, however.
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More Than Half Of Republicans Think Minorities Are Favored Over Whites In The United States
At its heart, the Black Lives Matter movement is focused on the ways in which racism is embedded in American law enforcement, resulting in a disproportionately large number of deaths of Black people at the hands of police. This idea that racism may be embedded in governmental or social systems is the crux of critical race theory. Racism, the theory postulates, isnt simply a function of racist people acting out against others because of their race. Instead, some of racisms most significant effects are felt from long-standing systems that have integrated, often invisibly, race-specific differences.
That the Black Lives Matter movement has been so successful at drawing attention to issues of race and racism, though, means that its much easier to notice complaints about systemic racism than it is to notice the racism itself. It means that there are good-faith but clumsy efforts to draw attention to issues of race that have little to do with critical race theory but which become a focal point of aggravation. It also means that groups that benefit from systemic advantages mostly White Americans may feel that they are the ones being criticized. If you dont see the purported racism but feel that youre being held to account for it, frustration would naturally result.
In 2017, fewer than half of Republicans said that minorities are favored over Whites. Now, a majority say they are.
But When You Watch The Republican In The Media Being Attacked The Majority Tend To Handle It With More Grace Then The Majority Of The Democrats
I dont think its because the Republicans have more money because the Democrats tend to be the wealthier group.; The majority of the richest people in the world are Democrats or Liberals.; Yet, they sure dont look like a happy group of folks .; I think a lot of people who are rich were their happiest when they were working hard coming up through the ranks and earning their money.; I also think sometimes the social issues they get caught up in when they become wealthy can be frustrating causing many people to lose their tolerance over time.
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Why Did The Debate Become A National Controversy
Arguably, a large part of the debate has been inflamed and muddled by the activism of a conservative documentary filmmaker named Christopher Rufo.
As detailed in an extensive New Yorker profile, Rufo built a cottage industry exposing government racial awareness training across the US. While doing so, he discovered the academic writing behind it – and set out to raise awareness about what he saw as an organised effort to “re-engineer the foundation of human psychology and social institutions through the new politics of race”.
He labelled all of the various episodes and instances he was cataloguing as examples of “critical race theory” in practice, even though the academic discipline was not always an exact fit for what he was documenting.
“The goal is to have the public read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think ‘critical race theory’,” he wrote . “We have decodified the term and will recodify it to annex the entire range of cultural constructions that are unpopular with Americans.”
The term, he told the New York Times, made for the “perfect villain” because it sounded academic, elitist, racist and divisive.
Legislative as well as grassroots rebukes of public-school teaching labelled as CRT have cropped up around the country.
Because it is a concept, not a stand-alone subject, opponents have assembled lists to help parents identify what they see as harmful terms and topics in the classroom.
What Do Supporters And Opponents Say
There’s a cartoon that circulates among critical race theory supporters showing children, one tall and one short, trying to peer over a fence to watch a baseball game. Equality, the illustration explains, is giving children the same sized box to stand on – with one child still unable to see over the obstacle. Equity, on the other hand, gives the shortest child the most boxes, so that everyone can see the field.
The idea of equity is to provide more to those who are perceived to have the greatest disadvantage in order to achieve better equality of outcome and to compensate for the historical wrongs of discrimination and systemic racism.
“A key part of the argument of critical race theory is that racism is endemic to American society because of the way society is structured,” says Lynn. Teaching with the framework addressed issues that “people have been trying to do for a long time to correct some of the problems we have in schools” he says.
It’s a view that animated affirmative action programmes – race-based preferences in hiring and college admissions – in the past, and currently influences everything from road repair in Oakland, California, to the Biden administration’s vaccine outreach efforts.
He says the idea of “equity” is more than just policy prescriptions, it’s about “abandoning the broad political philosophy that has traditionally held this country together”.
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How Is Critical Race Theory Taught
How – and even whether – CRT is being taught is the subject of contention that lies at the heart of the current debate.
As a curriculum subject, critical race theory is largely the purview of university law schools and graduate programmes.
The concepts, however, have influenced historians, journalists and educators in school districts across the US who say they want to do more to teach the public about the US struggles with discrimination rooted in race.
One high-profile effort, the New York Times magazine’s 1619 Project, was a series of essays and articles that sought to “reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very centre of our national narrative”, per the paper’s description.
It received mixed reviews, including sometimes sharp criticism from historians who disputed its accuracy.
How the concepts translate into a public-school curriculum and teacher training have become the flashpoint of the CRT controversy.
An elementary school in Cupertino, California, for instance, asked third-graders to label their own power and privilege in an “identity map”. At least 30 schools recommended that students should read Not My Idea, a children’s book that called racism “a white person’s problem and we are all caught up in it”.
Instances like these have led to what has become an increasingly intense criticism.
Reagan’s Neshoba County Fair States’ Rights Speech
Aistrup argued that one example of Reagan field-testing coded language in the South was a reference to an unscrupulous man using food stamps as a “strapping young buck”. When informed of the offensive connotations of the term, Reagan defended his actions as a nonracial term that was common in his Illinois hometown. Ultimately, Reagan never used that particular phrasing again. According to Ian Haney Lopez, the “young buck” term changed into “young fellow” which was less overtly racist: “‘Some young fellow’ was less overtly racist and so carried less risk of censure, and worked just as well to provoke a sense of white victimization”.
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There Is A Lot Of Flawed Logic Here
Anyone who equates conservative or Republican with racist is the exact thing they are projecting on others. Plain and simple.Racism is simply the lumping together of large groups of people and claiming they all have the same traits. Anyone who says that all conservatives are racist is exactly the same. The most racist people I have ever met have been liberals. But that doesn’t mean I think all liberals are racists. That’s absurd. But you continue on making generalizations about people you don’t even know. That just shows how tolerant and open-minded you really are.
When Minorities Vote Gop The Media Smears Republicans As Racists
The racism smears stink of fear.
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.
In just one week, the Washington Post churned out two op-eds on the same theme, “The GOP is Now Just the Party of White Grievance” and “The Republican Party is Making Jim Crow Segregationists Proud”. The D.C. Democrat paper doesnt bother clarifying why Democrats from two generations ago would be thrilled that 1 in 5 black men voted for President Trump.
Ever since the election, the media has been beating its narrative drum with one message.
CNN howls that Republicans are the worst racists. The New York Times insists theyre even more racist than that. And MSNBC will counter that only white racists would vote Republican.
The most famous media exponent of the white grievance line is Stuart Stevens: Romneys senior strategist, who went on to join the Lincoln Project. Stevens claimed on MSNBC that the GOP, “went down a path to embrace white grievance as its core” and that, “of the Americans who are 15 years and under, the majority are nonwhite. They’re gonna be nonwhite when they turn 18 and start voting and that’s the end of the Republican party as we know it.”
My party obviously has an embarrassingly small share of African American votes, Senator Romney claimed after embarrassingly participating in a Black Lives Matter rally.
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Americans Who Say A Lot Has To Be Done To Ensure Equal Rights For All Split Over Whether Many Laws And Institutions Need To Be Completely Rebuilt
While half of Americans say that a lot needs to be done to ensure equal rights for all Americans, those who express this view are divided over what needs to be done.
A quarter of Americans say that to ensure equal rights for all Americans, most U.S. laws and major institutions need to be completely rebuilt because they are fundamentally biased against some racial and ethnic groups. A nearly identical share says while there are many inequities in U.S. laws and institutions, the necessary changes can be made by working within the current systems.
Overall, nearly six-in-ten Black adults say that in order to ensure equality for all Americans regardless of their racial or ethnic backgrounds, most major U.S. institutions need to be completely rebuilt because they are fundamentally biased against some racial and ethnic groups, while just 19% say necessary changes to address inequities can be made within the current systems; about two-in-ten say little or nothing at all needs to be done. Among other racial and ethnic groups, smaller shares overall say a lot more needs to be done; those who do are roughly evenly split between those who say changes can be made within current systems and those who think most institutions need to be completely rebuilt because they are fundamentally biased. As a result, Black adults are significantly more likely than Hispanic , Asian American and White adults to say most institutions and laws need to be completely rebuilt.
Democrats Are The Real Racistsand Minority Americans Are Taking Note
Who are the real American patriots?
Who are the real racists?
These two questions will play a big role in the 2020 election.
The left is desperate to turn any traditional patriotic appeal into an act of racism. The left is desperate to smear Republicans and moderate Democrats as racists.
This past week, between Sunday and Tuesday, CNN and MSNBC reportedly used the word “racist” more than 1,100 times.
Part of this desperation is in the left’s inability to debate the facts and their hope that strong smears can shame their opponents out of broaching the argument.
Part of this desperation is in the left’s growing realization that President Donald Trump and the Republicans are beginning to attract minority support in a serious way.
The 2018 election was a watershed in the shift of minority voters toward Republicans.
Consider the example of the very left-wing African American female candidate for governor in Georgia, Stacy Abrams. She alienated enough African American males with her platforms that the Republican candidate got a significant percentage of African American male votes.
In Florida, a left-wing African American candidate for governor lost almost one out of five African American female votes because of his opposition to school choice.
All around the country, Trump is attracting Latinos to his rallies. There is strong support in the Latino community for job creation, income growth, small business prosperity and enforcing the law.
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