So, IS Paul Ryan a Racist? | BillMoyers.com
quote:
Our political class is feuding about whether Rep. Paul Ryan is a racist. Rather than fearing that this donnybrook degrades political discourse, we should welcome it.
Ryan sparked the controversy when he blamed poverty on a tailspin of culture in our inner cities, while invoking for support Charles Murray, notorious for postulating the genetic inferiority of blacks. Within hours, Rep. Barbara Lee rebuked Ryan for launching a thinly veiled racial attack.
Other critics immediately piled on, with a Politico piece appearing under the title Is Paul Ryan Racist? and Paul Krugman in The New York Times calling out Ryan for racial dog whistling. But hitting back, National Review editor Richard Lowry slammed Ryan’s critics for trying to drape him with the Klan’s white hood and The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page fumed, Republicans are accused of racism if they ignore the least fortunate, and now they’re racist for taking poverty and its causes seriously.
To begin with, insulting people is not taking poverty or the causes of poverty seriously: providing jobs and a living wage, providing health benefits and good public school education ... that is taking poverty and the causes seriously.
Racists don't think they are biased in my experience (both down south and in rural Michigan), they think they are right\eous. And it is pretty unconcious when they don't confront it or people don't push back.
But there is more to it than just race -- it is not understanding other people and particularly not understanding why they are not like you, and it is not respecting people that are different.
I call xenophobia, rather than race, xenophobia against poor of any color or background, xenophobia against other sexual orientations, or against Muslims ... it's all the same bag and baggage -- and the belief that people could change to be like you and should WANT to change to be like you.
When you attack people for not being like you, that is xenophobia.
NO, people want to be respected for what they are, they want the justice and the equality that is the TRUE American promise:
We believe these truths to be self-evident, that all people are equal ...
... and that means rich or poor we ideally live by the same laws and regulations.
Get rid of the biases for rich in courts and companies in politics and we would also be treating some of the causes for poverty.
Convict and jail the bankers that caused the economic meltdown that put a lot of middle class people into poverty or on the street, and we would also be treating some of the causes for poverty.
Edited by RAZD, : added