No. of Recommendations: 5
We were in Scotland in late May, and while 1poorlady and 1poorkid were shopping tartans, the attendant asked me -in essence- "what is wrong with America that the convict is the nominee"
I have short FB discussions with my foreign friends. Some of them have lived in the US and know a bit. A while back they asked me about racism in the US, I told them it was always there, just under the surface. The ones who hadn't lived in the US were surprised. So I showed them two quotes that illustrated the point:
You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.” Lee Atwater 1981
“If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.”
― Lyndon B. Johnson
The first quote illustrates how we developed dog whistles to speak to the racists, etc. The second quote is on point for how Trump's grift works.
It's still there and it is never going away. If we think it isn't there, we're deluding ourselves.
