#racism & the GOP

[mudwerks]

(via GOP New Jersey Official Called Cops on 9-Year-Old Black Girl Catching Spotted Lanternflies)

A former city council member of a New Jersey town and local Republican Party leader allegedly called the police on a 9-year-old Black girl when he saw her catching spotted lanternflies—an invasive species killing trees in the area—while wearing a hoodie, the girl’s mother, Monique Joseph, said at a local board meeting last week.

“There’s a little Black woman walking, spraying stuff on the sidewalks and trees. I don’t know what the hell she’s doing, it scares me though.”

An October issue of The Progress quite literally spotlights Bobbi’s work to combat the environmentally hazardous invasive species in the community. “She was not only doing something amazing for our environment, she was doing something that made her feel like a hero,” Hayden said. “Our neighbor across the street…decided it would be appropriate to call the police on my sister.”

[mysharona1987]

He’s mad that other Trump supporters started an absurd lie and Trump was always being going to stupid enough to repeat it.

But he still wants Trump as president.

[contemplatingoutlander]

The far-right weaponization of the term "DEI" or "DEI hire/applicant/student" against women, members of marginalized racial/ethnic groups, and the LGBTQ+ community has gotten way out of hand. In many ways, "DEI" has become an acceptable pejorative alternative on the right to overtly racist, sexist, and homophobic terms. It is now being hurled with full-force by some Republicans towards Kamala Harris. According to Newsweek:

Republicans are labeling Kamala Harris a "DEI hire" following her endorsement by Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee for president. [...] Republican Tennessee Rep. Tim Burchett blasted Harris in a social media post on Monday, calling her a "DEI vice president." "The media propped up this president, lied to the American people for three years, and then dumped him for our DEI vice president," Burchett said on X. He referred to Harris as a "a DEI hire" again in a brief interview on the same day with CNN in which he referenced Biden's 2020 comments about picking a vice president, claiming that [Biden] said "he was going to hire a Black female for vice president." [color emphasis added]

The problem with Burchett's assertion is that Biden NEVER actually said that "he was going to hire a Black female for vice president." According to Newsweek.

In a 2020 debate, Biden stated he would "pick a woman to be vice president," without specifying her race. In a later interview with ABC News, Biden said he "didn't feel pressure to select a Black woman." In another 2020 interview with MSNBC, Biden mentioned that among his potential running mates were four Black women. [color emphasis added]

Burchett and other GOP who are accusing Harris of being a "DEI hire" are using "DEI" in a derogatory way that assumes any woman, member of a racial/ethnic marginalized group, or member of the LGBTQ+ community must be underqualified if they hold a leadership position. They seem to have overlooked the fact that Harris was highly qualified to become VP. According to Newsweek:

Before becoming vice president, Harris served as a U.S. senator for four years and as California's attorney general for six years. She had previously served as San Francisco's district attorney and earned her law degree from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law. [color emphasis added]

In fact, it appears that Harris was way more qualified to be selected as Biden's VP than JD Vance was to be selected as Trump's VP. But then again, Vance is a White heterosexual male. No one ever seems to question White heterosexual male credentials. I wonder why? 🤔

[deaddee-anime-brownfanlady]

Basically a in-depth look of how Project 2025 will deeply FUCKED Over black people and will seriously harm black Americans. By making America " White " again and into a White only Christian Fundamentalist government controlled theocratic nation.

This shit isn't a joke and is terrifying as hell.

Literally, this plan is every white supremacist and Neo-Nazis dream come true.

FUCKING VOTE!

[odinsblog]

If you're a white guy and you have good scores and good grades, you can absolutely get in to school.

You see, white people are acting like it's a zero sum game, like there's one spot and 18 people are fighting for it, and only the Black people get in. No, that's not at all how it happens.

You can, of course, get into school regardless of your race, color, or creed.

What Affirmative Action does is that it allows the universities to look at their class as a whole, alright?

And you think about it.

Universities do this all the time, right?

The universities will say, okay, we've got 18 kids from New York. We should probably get one kid from Iowa in there, right?

And so if you're kind of choosing between kind of the 19th kid from New York or the first kid from Iowa, maybe you give the kid from Iowa a shot because you don't have a lot of people from Iowa in your class already, right? Nobody seems to have a problem with that. The Supreme Court certainly doesn't have a problem with that.

We see this all the time with gender admissions, right?

If you have a class that's like 60/40 men, historically, white women have been the biggest beneficiaries of Affirmative Action when schools say, you know what? We don't want a sausage fest, and so we're going to throw in some women, right? Right.

Now, if you look at the elite universities, they're given that bump to male applicants because in the modern context, it's men whose grades and test scores and standardized tests or whatever haven't kept pace with women, right?

So now if you're looking at a class that would otherwise be 60/40 women, you're like, you know what? We're going to throw in some extra guys here to make sure the class balances out. That's all Affirmative Action is.

And what the Supreme Court is saying, all of those other things to get somebody in from the Midwest when there's nobody in the mix, or to get somebody in to have a better gender balance is okay, but not race.

Race is the only thing that they can't look at.

So the schools can look at gender, geography, and wealth. They can look at legacy admissions. They can look at athletic accomplishments. They can look at whether or not you're good at chess. They can look at whether or not you're good at playing in the piano, but they can't look at whether or not you're a minority.

That is the incongruity and the hypocrisy of today's Supreme Court ruling.

—Elie Mystal

[booasaur]

They're realizing they come off as racist freaks to the rest of the country but their problem is they ARE racist freaks

[animentality]

[ranmagender]

[ID: post from bluesky from Phil Lewis. "Some Haitian families are keeping their children home for their safety, and one woman says she had her car vandalized, in the wake of the GOP’s repeated racist anti-Haitian rhetoric" END ID]

As previously stated the comments are nothing to laugh at

Source

[sbrown82]

“So you gon’ vote for a motherfuckin’ AKA or you gon’ vote for the motherfuckin’ KKK” 🎯🎯🎯

[meret118]

On Thursday, Indiana federal judge Sarah Evans Barker, a Reagan appointee, threw out a lawsuit filed by four Indiana professors seeking to block the state from enforcing its “intellectual diversity” law. That law, which went into effect on July 1 requires public higher education institutions to grant, review, and deny tenure in part based on whether the professor fosters “a culture of free inquiry, free expression, and intellectual diversity” and whether they expose students to a “variety of political or ideological frameworks.”

If that sounds vague yet still bad, that’s because it is. The bill was pushed by conservatives who believe that conservative students and viewpoints are discriminated against in higher education.

. . .

One of the professors who sued teaches about the Holocaust and explained that divergent perspectives in Holocaust studies include outright Holocaust denial or revision. Another teaches about slavery, and divergent scholarly work on the institution of slavery includes the notion that slavery benefited Black people. Under the law, those professors would, arguably, have to teach those debunked and and dangerous ideas to show a commitment to “intellectual diversity.”

More at the link.

[iamnmbr3]

Donald Trump: *claims to be cognitively fit*

Also Donald Trump: *literally cannot comprehend the concept of someone being biracial*

It's 2024 not 1824.

It is WAY past time to stop being weird and bigoted towards biracial people.

Republicans want to take the USA back. Don't let them. Vote Blue all the way down the ballot.

[mysharona1987]

[randomnoteforfuturereference]

When Loomy's racism is so overt that even Marge T "Jewish Space Lasers" Greene is telling her to dial it back a notch.

Though it does raise the question as to whether key GOP figures are trying to get into Desi good graces. Since there is obviously no internal pushback over the pet eater conspiracy.

EDIT: Holy fuck it's getting better.

[alwaysbewoke]

[contemplatingoutlander]

This Salon article by Ian Hanley-Lopez is well worth taking the time to read. Although it was written in Dec. 2013--BEFORE the age of Trump, it was prescient of the continued trajectory of the Republican Party towards a white nationalist agenda. The article describes:

How the indirect racist messaging of "dog whistle politics" began with George Wallace, using the language of being opposed to "arrogant federal authority," and being for "states’ rights," "law and order, running your own schools, [and] protecting property rights." Even though Wallace was a Southern Democrat (and later an Independent) the "dog whistle" strategies he employed were later appropriated by the GOP in the "Southern Strategy."

How the GOP's "Southern Strategy" slowly developed in the 1960s, when Goldwater began to push “states’ rights,” as well as “freedom of association." This strategy over time helped the Republican Party begin to appeal to those white voters who still held overt or covert racial prejudices.

How Kennedy and Johnson, by promoting civil rights legislation, turned the Democrats into the party identified with championing the civil rights of marginalized racial and ethnic groups.

How Richard Nixon fully embraced the "Southern Strategy," through his messaging of being for "law and order," and against the "forced busing" of children (to integrate public schools). As he gradually adopted this strategy, Nixon also turned against one of his own administration's earlier policies (developed by George Romney), which Nixon later derided as the "forced integration of the suburbs."

How, according to Hanley-Lopez, these changes in the racial strategies and policies of the diverging Republican and Democratic parties in the 1960s/early 1970s contributed to "the rise of racially identified parties," with a majority of white voters shifting to the GOP (which became "in fact, though not in name, the White Man's Party"), and the Democratic Party being associated with racial and ethnic minorities (as well as a smaller proportion of white voters, i.e., well-educated whites, especially white women). [color emphasis of terms, quotes added]

Echoes of Nixon's 1968 campaign ad in one of Trump's 2020 campaign ads

Hanley-Lopez mentions a 1968 Nixon campaign ad that focused on "exploiting the growing panic that equated social protest with social chaos." Above is the video of that 1968 ad: "The First Civil Right." Below is a transcript of the video:

TRANSCRIPT* (Music with snare drum and dissonant piano chords) MALE NARRATOR**: It is time for an honest look at the problem of order in the United States. Dissent is a necessary ingredient of change, but in a system of government that provides for peaceful change, there is no cause that justifies resort to violence. Let us recognize that the first civil right of every American is to be free from domestic violence. So I pledge to you, we shall have order in the United States. [TEXT: THIS TIME VOTE LIKE YOUR WHOLE WORLD DEPENDED ON IT. . .NIXON] [Color/ emphasis added.]

This 1968 Nixon campaign ad is eerily like at least one Trump 2020 campaign ad, "Abolished," which used some out of context video footage in order to exploit the fears of many white conservative voters regarding the Black Lives Matter protests and the poorly worded "Defund the Police" slogan.

Below is a transcript of the Trump campaign's 2020 "Abolished" video.

TRANSCRIPT*** [ Phone ringing/ Answering machine beeping/ background music. ] AUTOMATED FEMALE VOICE: You have reached the 911 police emergency line. Due to defunding of the police department, we're sorry but no one is here to take your call. If you're calling to report a rape, please press 1. To report a murder, press 2. To report a home invasion, press 3. For all other crimes, leave your name and number and someone will get back to you. Our estimated wait time is currently five days. Goodbye. [ TEXT: Joe Biden's supporters are fighting to defund police departments. Fox News, 6/6/20 | Violent crime has exploded. ABC News, 6/24/20 | You won’t be safe in Joe Biden’s America. | TRUMP   PENCE   KEEP AMERICA GREAT   20 ] TRUMP: I'm Donald J. Trump and I approve this message. [Color/ emphasis added.]

In conclusion, the barely covert racism in the GOP's political messaging that was so prominent during Trump's administration, and currently in the DeSantis Florida administration (among other GOP administrations) was not new. It was deliberately fostered by Republicans, starting in the 1960s, as they deployed their "Southern Strategy" to woo white voters who still had some overt or covert racial prejudices. The "Southern Strategy" relied on Republicans incorporating into their messaging strategies the kind of covert racist messaging that George Wallace used.

This strategy has unfortunately succeeded all too well.

[edited]

______________ *Transcript source (before layout changes/ edits) of the 1968 Nixon campaign's ad "The First Civil Right,"(alternatively called "Law and Order"): Museum of the Moving Image, The Living Room Candidate: Presidential Campaign Commercials 1952-2012. **Note that the "male narrator" sounds a lot like Nixon (at least to me). ***The transcript of the Trump campaign's 2020 "Abolished" ad is based on the English auto-generated YouTube transcript, as well as the video text and sounds/music.

[socialjusticeinamerica]

Redneck RepubliKKKlan racists.