musiqsoulchild wrote:coldfish wrote:TheSuzerain wrote:The problem I have with the "Well, the percentage of white's is the same as Romney!" notion, is that Romney was a very qualified Governor, who by all accounts was a great person (Mormon). There were reasons to vote for that guy.
It should be rather alarming and/or telling that the white vote pretty broke the same way despite the seismic difference in candidate quality and character.
There was a lot of talk of the supposed "moderate" right that couldn't stomach voting for Trump. Obviously that was bull.
And don't even get me started on the Evangelicals...
What is funny is that Romney lost with that percentage. If you look at the numbers, Trump actually did better with minorities than Romney. Beyond that, the candidate quality between 2012 and 2016 for the democrats was also "seismic". Democrats don't want to hear this but apparently Hillary was driving away people even faster than Trump was.
Democrats have their heads in the sand on the racism thing. That's all they want to see. This election had a race based component, but that isn't what flipped it. As I have been saying, what flipped this election was a number of democratic strongholds that strongly went for Obama (meaning they aren't racist) switching to go for Trump. It was largely economic based.
Instead of having a discussion about the real why's and policy directions, we have this constant discussion about racism that had virtually nothing to do with the outcome of the election.
The policy direction that Trump is promising is inherently anti-immigrant and anti-minority.
Systemic racism is also racism.
OK, let's discuss his general policy discussions.
Immigration: He is clearly against illegal immigrants. He hasn't outlined much of a policy at all for legal immigrants. Illegal immigration creates a supply of cheap labor which suppresses wages for low skilled workers. Given that in many cases these are also minorities, this is not inherently racist. All of that being said, immigration on its whole is beneficial to the greater economy. Personally, I have a huge issue with ILLEGAL immigration on two fronts:
- It creates a second class group of people without the full rights and benefits of being a citizen who can be exploited.
- When presidents pick and choose which laws they enforce, then they become dictators. Its a really slippery slope.
Trade reform: The intent is to get more jobs for poor and middle class people who again are minorities. Not racist. Beneficial to the greater economy? Interesting debate.
Banning muslims: An immigrant from Afghanistan is far more likely to carry out a domestic terror attack than one from, say, Denmark. With that said, this policy is inherently racist as it is using statistics to paint an entire ethnic group. Beyond that, immigrants from Afghanistan are still pretty unlikely to carry out an attack.
Infrastructure spending: Not racist. Technically disproportionately benefits poor and middle class. Again, actually helps minorities more than white people statistically. Is it worth the additional debt though?
Repeal and replace obamacare: This hurts the working poor getting heavily subsidized health care from the government. Helps small business owners. A lot depends on what the "replace" is. Given the statistical distribution of minorities, this likely is not pro-minority.
Global isolationism: Not racist. Again, would technically free up money used for defense for domestic programs which disproportionately benefit minorities. Would this really be a good idea though?
I'm sure I am missing something. With that said, Trump's policies overall seem to benefit poor african americans more than anyone. . . . if they work. A lot of these things are aimed at helping poor and middle class people get jobs. With that said, if implemented poorly this could send the whole world economy in the toilet.
I just wish we could have a little deeper conversation about this than shutting down every discussion by shouting "racism".
As a side note, the biggest issue here is that Trump is blatantly anti-non American. He isn't trying to hide that. He is putting america and americans first and if he is successful, non americans will not benefit. A lot of the global angst is based around that. Not ever really discussed but important is just how much areas like Western Europe, Australia, Canada, etc. benefit from the global economic system that the US subsidizes. Trump is threatening to take those subsidies away.