Sunday, May 01, 2016

POLITICS, RACE AND RACISM

By Allan McNew

I have not been a Trump supporter. However, a few months ago I was angrily confronted with, out of nowhere and out of context (no political discussion or any at all with this individual at the time), with “Trump isn't going to be president”. Looking back, it seems that he based his assumption that I am a Trump supporter on the facts that I'm white and he's brown.

More recently, a friend I've known for years said to me that he thinks Trump is a racist in large part by the people who are around him, that they look like white supremacists. I replied that those people he's pointing to in a CNN news clip on the TV at that very moment are the Secret Service, the same people who protect President Obama, whereupon he looked doubtful and changed the subject. I'm white, he's brown and I wondered to myself where he got the assumption that those government
employees were white supremacist thugs.

A few weeks ago, I told a funny but true story half in Spanish to a woman, the funny part doesn't come through in English. She laughed and said to me “My people don't know this, but you're a good guy.” I asked “What do you mean by 'your people?'” The answer was basically brown people who speak Spanish.

Over the past few days there have been violent activities at a number of Trump rallies, large and small, perpetrated by mostly brown people who oppose Trump and aggressively push their physical presence into those with whom they politically disagree. It seems to me that they were prepped by one party media, which confuses partisan slant and political talking points with journalism, and whipped up by activists who prize emotion over fact and prefer to allege racism over utilizing reasoned argumentation.

Last night I watched the White House correspondent's dinner, which was comprised of bitter mockery liberally laced with racial commentary pretending to be comedy. It went down just about every  offensive avenue except gratuitously throwing out the word “cracker” . Which would have touched off a apocalyptic firestorm if the President and the “comedian” had been whites using like material.

Obsession with race seems to be just as pervasive as it's ever been with the pot calling the kettle black.

-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary

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