It would be great if conservative and progressive right wing could help to not let those communities devolve into prejudice, racism and eugenics. It is a problem when an ideology attracts the worst in human kind, as much as I hate the authoritarian left.
The real issue is that we've had succession of more or less right wing governments, with increasingly bad integration policies, leading to ghetto formation and social friction.
This on its own may or may not be a good thing, but remember to keep it in context:
Our country has had a centuries-long problem with racism, sexism, homophobia, and classism keeping large numbers of people from accessing the mainstream of American life. We have tried to create a variety of often imperfect tools to combat this situation and create a more equitable country — something right-wingers in general and the Republican Party specifically in the last couple of generations have worked hard to tear down. Lately they've been getting extra aggressive and, sadly, successful at it.
So, again, this action on its own may or may not be a good thing. But we need to make sure not to let the bigots in our country return us back to the very broken situation of thirty, fifty, a hundred years ago.
I see you've decided to make up a cartoon version of my views and argue with that. I'll try one more reply, but I'm not optimistic.
I didn't say it was an immutable characteristic. I said it was an endemic problem. I would like it to go away, but we won't get there by pretending it has gone away. We have to make that happen, and that first requires looking honestly at the history and present facts of it.
A positive example here is Germany. They stopped denying they had an antisemitism problem and have worked assiduously to remove it. And plenty of western nations have moved fitfully in the direction of acknowledging previous and current oppression. In the US, both Reconstruction and the Civil Rights movement are positive examples there. But in both cases, society gave up before finishing the job (see first and second Nadirs). My proposal: this time let's not let those trying to conserve oppression win.
As with polio, it's perfectly possible to eliminate something endemic. But also as with polio, some people of a conservative bent will try to conserve even the harmful parts of the status quo. (My part of the US was settled by a bunch of Dutch who thought things like vaccines and insurance were refusing to accept God's will, for example. And in the modern era, the US right has caused at least a couple hundred thousand deaths through various pro-Covid actions.) So yes, conservatives trying to conserve harmful things may end up feeling bad about that.
I'm fine with that. I understand that conservatives are used to being coddled by society, and that this is uncomfortable for them. As they say, when you're used to privilege, equality feels like oppression. But my goal here is minimizing actual oppression, and I think that's more important than preserving the very delicate feelings of those who previously got away with not examining the consequences of their politics.
The problem is there are desires for which there are no compatible solutions. One group desires to oppress another; those are the common issues we're polarized on. The right desires to oppress minority groups and the left refuses, there is no solution to this problem the right will accept as oppression is their goal. Conversely, the new extreme regressive left wants to oppress all who simply disagree with them in word; they oppose free speech, there is no solution here either.
When two cultures cannot agree, the only real solution is to segregate them, the US is too big, it needs to break down into several smaller countries where different cultures can go their own direction.
Yes, but reality is muddy and people affect each other. Look at the rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide, and see how well they correlate with the liberalization of American culture since 2012. Look at the declining rates of sex in our youth, the number of school shootings, the rise of populist politicians... If a generic goal of diversity and avoiding hurt feelings was what our country truly needed then our country would be better than ever, but its not.
You are obviously right when you look at the far right. Complete oppression is a bad thing. But swinging to the other extreme and saying that no ways of life are better than others causes social instability too.
Whether it should be government's job to do that is another matter.. I'd much prefer that our society handles such social pressures itself, though such social feedback systems seem to have broken down.
Sometimes I wonder if answer to all of these problems is to divide lands based on ideology, politics and other factors. People are then given a choice to migrate between them every 5 years or so.
Nations shouldn't be so big and migrating shouldn't be that hard. Just divide and divide until the group of people stop complaining.
Racists can live with racists. Progressives can live with progressives.
In the Western context, that's probable. But no matter where you look, some groups will still lag in a bunch of metrics, xenophobia and racism will still exist in some form and will still be holding them back. That's always been the case and they certainly won't be solved with the two suggestions above.
Would you care to elaborate, because I don't understand. Usually people would like the society in general to have less bigotry, hatred, and racism. Do you think Trump will help us get there, and how?
Hard not to when antisocial policies are intentionally used to disadvantage minorities after the 60s.
We might agree they're focused on a symptom, not a disease, but conservative policy objectives are definitely causing disparities that now even poor white people are finally feeling.
Conservatives shut down public pools in reaction to integration and then proceeded to shut down socialism.
The conservative approach to racism would be to equalize opportunity (to the extent the government is allowed
to) and replace the instincts that lead to racism with strong civic nationalism and then wait a very very long time, which is a solution that acknowledges that social change takes a long time.
You claim this is denial, but that's a biased reframing of the stated solution. This is a potential solution, but is not acceptable to the 'woke'
Empirical analysis of our current society shows that there are divides and power relations along racial, gender and class lines. If you can't acknowledge them, there is no way to fix them. And most importantly, in practice the left reduces the divide.
If you have a better idea of how to fix it, I'm all ears. But fixing a problem without recognizing it exists is, well, not typically accepted as solid practice.
This country is pretty bad about race. It's a struggle getting the average person to even acknowledge that racism is still a thing. But I don't agree with tedks that banning racism (or other bigotries) is going to solve anything. People are still going to be bigots. They'll just hide it better.
Making them hide their bigotry will seem like a solution in the short term, but it never ends well. And on a personal level, I would rather the bigots be open about it so I can avoid them. As long as they're not voting away my rights or being violent, the psychological harm is manageable.
I think we're better off with a rich, mixed, and multicultural society but it may actually be true that a more homogenous society that tosses fringe races into the shredder or whatever is actually a safer place for the "right" people. Maybe they were protectors in their own racist way.
I agree 100%, the sooner people get over their petty tribal instincts the better. Unfortunately it's still a few generations away. We have made huge strides against racism, homophobia, sexism, etc. in the last couple of generations so I have hope.
reply