AP poll: Majority harbor prejudice against blacks

[OnMyWayID 1,489]

The actual results from the survey are here. It is a PDF and the racial questions start on page 17.

One example:

How well does each of these words describe most blacks

"Complaining"

Extremely well

Very well

Moderately well

Slightly well

Not at all

Refused/Not answered

What the "non-racist" answer for that one?

...and it seems like if you are asking me to put a rating on the laziness of all people that are black - the question is asking me to label a group of people.. The question is racist.

Look on page 24.. Two questions that are actually asking the exact opposite question. The first is asking if Black are asking too much from society, the next question is asking if they are getting too little from society.

Same page, awesome question: "Most blacks who receive money from welfare programs could get along without it if they tried" .. is it a negative view thing to say yes or no??

.. and if this was not entertaining enough.. As you judge those that filled out this questionnaire read page 28 to find out that less than half said that Obama was born in the U.S. and nearly 1 in 10 think Hawaii is not a state of the United States.

Anyway interesting though really the numbers are only useful to track changes over time.. the actual numbers themselves are useless.

[Bad_Daddy 2,209]

Its laughably absurd when White people claim reverse racism. Prejudice exists withing all of us - no exceptions, but institutional racism that has permeated in this country for such a long time that the repercussions continue today as this poll indicates. It was only 40 years ago that in many states, it was illegal for a Black man to marry a White woman, or for him to attend school at an all White college. Dr. J (Julius Erving) remembers his early days in the NBA where there hotels that he and his Black teammates were not allowed to stay in while on the road. The South is still riddled with racism and with groups like the neo-nazi's and the KKK, who refuse to accept an integrated society where Blacks are on equal ground with White folk. That's the reality of race in America and it will probably take another century or two before we no longer see people wearing hoods and burning crosses.

That first sentence pretty much sums it up about you and what you think.

[OnMyWayID 1,489]

Its laughably absurd when White people claim reverse racism. Prejudice exists withing all of us - no exceptions, but institutional racism that has permeated in this country for such a long time that the repercussions continue today as this poll indicates. It was only 40 years ago that in many states, it was illegal for a Black man to marry a White woman, or for him to attend school at an all White college. Dr. J (Julius Erving) remembers his early days in the NBA where there hotels that he and his Black teammates were not allowed to stay in while on the road. The South is still riddled with racism and with groups like the neo-nazi's and the KKK, who refuse to accept an integrated society where Blacks are on equal ground with White folk. That's the reality of race in America and it will probably take another century or two before we no longer see people wearing hoods and burning crosses.

What is the point of this rant? I've never treated anyone different because of their skin color and I am insulted if someone suggests that I should somehow be punished because of mine. I've seen white racists, black racists, and all the shades in-between racists. I feel the same about all of them. Rants like the one above only accomplish one thing and that's to make those that say them feel better about themselves.

[We Keep Receipts 9,238]

Do you think I just fell off the last box car? Seriously. I'm 48 years old and have been following the news for as long as I can remember and that includes when Walter Cronkite was doing the news. Try someone else with that but please spare me.

Well good for you, I'm 40 and I watched the news too, you made a claim that he was the most racist president, what are you basing that off of? We've never had a minority president before so where does this source come from?

[The Nature Boy 4,224]

You fail to understand that prejudice exists within all of us. This study focused on racial prejudice where the subject was not even aware of their prejudice. We are conditioned by permeating stereotypes and the best thing you can do is recognize that prejudice within yourself and break it down using logic and reason. For example, if you live in a predominantly Black neighborhood and the crime rate is high, you might have the tendency to correlate crime to the Blacks, but that's neither scientific, nor rational.

I live in a county in which 90% of the violent crime is committed by young black males. When I am in certain situations with young black males present I am on heightened awareness. If young white Mennonites started committing 90% of the crime I would act the same way. It is actual very scientific.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

What is the point of this rant? I've never treated anyone different because of their skin color and I am insulted if someone suggests that I should somehow be punished because of mine. I've seen white racists, black racists, and all the shades in-between racists. I feel the same about all of them. Rants like the one above only accomplish one thing and that's to make those that say them feel better about themselves.

Are you blind or just being coy? Someone right here in this thread labeled our first Black president a racist, and with hardly a blink from anyone here save for Marvin and myself. And Kip didn't just pull that idea of a hat - the Right Wing media has been pushing the narrative of reverse racism since Obama moved into the White House.

While I would agree that prejudice exists within everyone, racial stereotypes about Blacks continue to permeate in this country as indicated by this study. But to buy into the notion that things like Affirmative Action or that the President is somehow racist is absurd, and anyone like Glen Beck who says it is being asinine.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Conservative race-baiters set their clocks by the dog-whistle. They can't dismiss Trayvon outright: blaming him explicitly because he is black goes nowhere. That would just shift the conversation onto the accuser. Nobody illustrated this principle better than former Reagan and Bush I strategist and Republican National Committee chairman Lee Atwater, in a kind of "Come to Jesus" moment shortly before his death (emphases mine):

You start out in 1954 by saying, "n!gger, n!gger, n!gger." By 1968 you can't say "n!gger"—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "n!gger, n!gger."

Atwater addresses national policy, particularly the linguistic erosions that allow us to arrive at "entitlements" as code words for "welfare queens cashing lavish checks while rutting like animals on the whites' dime." But this is just the Trayvon treatment writ large, on a national scale: the same linguistic counterrevolution has been imposed on blacks on the personal level as well. Look to the frequent application of "street thug" to Obama, invoking images of saggy-pants gangbangers, chugging 40s. Look to Newt Gingrich calling him "the food stamp president," hammering that point home in the South Carolina and Florida debates. There's no value for Gingrich in citing food stamps as a program: the plurality of Americans on assistance are white, not black. But to an audience reared on the Southern Strategy since 1968, calling Obama the president of food stamps sends a familiar mute signal to those meant to hear it: the danger isn't that the president is black—which we know—but rather that his economics will complete the ghettoization of America. Why, if you had to go on food stamps, you'd be just as shameful as him—as them.

The dog-whistling tweets and rants against Trayvon were inevitable. As Read pointed out, the right lustily impugned his character for his having a screwdriver, an impulse of vandalism and some loose (though not dispositive) association with someone who had possessed marijuana—all of which qualified him for nothing more than being an American boy. Right-wing blogs ran pictures of him flipping the bird, which also qualified him for being an American boy. Most damning of all, there were pictures of him wearing fake gold in his grill—a gangster signifier shared by me at a party once and probably 10% of all white kids at American colleges goofing around with a roll of Reynold's Wrap. Trayvon Martin is a boy in the worst possible way.

This thin characterization is all they need. The right-wing audience only needs a few traits from the bad novelist's toolbox. Like the big-titted blonde used and murdered by a Japanese man in Tom Clancy's Debt of Honor, whose sacred American ####### serves as both metaphor and explanation for that tiny, vengeful people's plunder of America, all you need are one or two red flags. They first say that Trayvon was black, and then they reference vandalism and "marijuana residue." A fake grill, tattoos and the word "thug" do the rest of the heavy social code-wording. By the end of that four-phrase personal inventory, anyone predisposed against blacks wants to know if the coroner shaved Trayvon's eyebrows to reveal hidden left-to-right "**" and "WHITEY" tats. These people are already on board. You just have to punch their ticket.

The most important effect of race-baiting through the dog whistle, however, is that it really does function as bait. When you conspicuously label black kids as "thugs" and white kids as "unruly teens," you bait someone else into noticing it and responding. In this respect, conservative commentators for the last 20 years have been nothing short of masterful. They've turned unregenerate racism into a thought exercise you might as well call "Schrödinger's Black."

A classic (oversimplified) version of the Schrodinger's Cat thought-experiment describes how a cat in a box, with a given atomic particle, can be alive or dead up until the moment you open the box and check on the cat. The act of observation ineluctably helps determine the outcome. Until you looked at it, everything was up in the air. You, the observer, are at fault for the result.

Placing the burden of racism on its observer is the natural, cynical result of decades of conservative dog-whistle racism. Commentators throw out deliberately "ambiguous" statements intended to motivate racists willing to read into them what they want to hear. They make repeated references to Obama andwatermelons. They talk about "strapping young bucks" with t-bone steaks. Then, when black or liberal commentators denounce those statements, conservative pundits label them as the racists. After all, you'd have to be a racist to think there was racist commentary there; the only people who think about racism are racists. You have to be importing your own racial hangups to the exchange: you altered the outcome of the reaction when your gaze introduced a racial force to the social reaction.

This is largely how the American right wing created "reverse racism."

http://m.gawker.com/5899322/the-dog-whistle-has-sounded-how-the-right-talks-about-thugs-like-trayvon-martin

Edited October 28, 2012 by Commie Appeaser

[Bad_Daddy 2,209]

Lets see if I have this correct. The president could never be racist because he is black. Anyone who thinks otherwise is only because they are racist themselves, they read right wing sites, they are white, or all of the above. Only white people can be racist of course according to what I have read on this thread. Funny thing is I rarely if ever read Fox news unless it's linked to Yahoo news which it is sometimes but not often.

Here's a thought. Click on the links I posted and actually read them. Of course those links don't go to any wingnut sites so that right there might impede the interest of a certain poster on this thread knowing his craving for any site that isn't credible.

[lostinblue 1,989]

[We Keep Receipts 9,238]

I live in a county in which 90% of the violent crime is committed by young black males. When I am in certain situations with young black males present I am on heightened awareness. If young white Mennonites started committing 90% of the crime I would act the same way. It is actual very scientific.

Now here is where I come in. I am from St.Louis, Mo. And there is a lot of crime there, perpetrated by blacks so I can agree with him on that, when I take my wife to visit my parents or go shopping there are some area I have to avoid to ensure her safety. But here is my question, when you go to the movies, do you watch out for the white people as well? If you go to church, are you leery or the bishop or pastor(you know the history), do you worry if your kids were in the boy scouts or going to Penn State? if you invest, do you think someone is going to take your money?

These are crimes committed by older white males, and yet those folks are paying for it by themselves, they don't speak for the rest of you. That's the difference between us.

[We Keep Receipts 9,238]

Lets see if I have this correct. The president could never be racist because he is black. Anyone who thinks otherwise is only because they are racist themselves, they read right wing sites, they are white, or all of the above. Only white people can be racist of course according to what I have read on this thread. Funny thing is I rarely if ever read Fox news unless it's linked to Yahoo news which it is sometimes but not often.

Here's a thought. Click on the links I posted and actually read them. Of course those links don't go to any wingnut sites so that right there might impede the interest of a certain poster on this thread knowing his craving for any site that isn't credible.

I'll shed the light on this one:

Anyone can be racist, but when has this man made a racist comment? His old pastor, the second he made those comments, Obama stop messing with him, that's all he could do. Don't get me started on how many republicans make racist statements(jokes, emails, and much more) and Romney just keeps his mouth shut, because once again when one does it it's just them, if one of us does it, it's all of us. Sarah Palin just did this a couple of days ago, where is the outrage from the right? Everyone knows shuck and jive is racist as hell. I don't see Romney saying anything about this, and this is an ex VP nomination, not some preacher for a church.

He made a comment about TM, let's look at that: He's black, his wife is black, so if they mated and had a son, he would be black(oh the horror) that's what he meant, but of course Fox News had to put the spin on it.

Colin Powell endorses the president, so what happened? Another GOP member said, oh that's just because he's black. Like our president has no merit besides his skin color. He's got 2 degrees, he's well spoken, an all around nice guy and a loving father and husband(not according to some of our members here but oh well) and yet this all gets stripped away because all that matters is the color of his skin.

Donald Trump has basically offered 5 million dollars to prove our president isn't american. Funny how when Mccain was questioned, I didn't see Trump in the front asking to see his papers. If the government vetted Obama, why can't anyone accept that? Calling him a Kenyan and such, what do we call Mccain? An american. See the difference.

It's astounding that as a country we hold our government and values to the highest standard. We are a world superpower, yet when our government and people elect a man of color in the highest position in the free world it's all a conspiracy, or the system that has never failed before somehow has now.

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

Now here is where I come in. I am from St.Louis, Mo. And there is a lot of crime there, perpetrated by blacks so I can agree with him on that, when I take my wife to visit my parents or go shopping there are some area I have to avoid to ensure her safety. But here is my question, when you go to the movies, do you watch out for the white people as well? If you go to church, are you leery or the bishop or pastor(you know the history), do you worry if your kids were in the boy scouts or going to Penn State? if you invest, do you think someone is going to take your money?

These are crimes committed by older white males, and yet those folks are paying for it by themselves, they don't speak for the rest of you. That's the difference between us.

Well, since my area is different that St. Louis, MO, I am on guard against a different demographic. Here, it is white homeless folks that steal anything that isn't secured. And there are other neighborhoods, closer to the county seat of Santa Rosa, where violent crime is more likely to occur. These tend to be high density and subsidized housing - what they used to call "The Projects" decades ago. The population there is a mix of White and Mexican. It is not skin color that seems to be synonymous with crime, it is an economic condition. Of course, crime is relatively low here. The county only budgets for one high profile case every year. The few times when we had two, it almost broke the county government.

But along the Russian River Resort area where I live, we do get a lot of problems with gangs on some of the beach areas, bringing their problems with them when they come here to escape the heat in the inland areas. The locals know when to avoid certain beaches. However, we get more deaths from accidental drownings than gang activities.

Edited October 28, 2012 by The Patriot

[We Keep Receipts 9,238]

Well, since my area is different that St. Louis, MO, I am on guard against a different demographic. Here, it is white homeless folks that steal anything that isn't secured. And there are other neighborhoods, closer to the county seat of Santa Rosa, where violent crime is more likely to occur. These tend to be high density and subsidized housing - what they used to call "The Projects" decades ago. The population there is a mix of White and Mexican. It is not skin color that seems to be synonymous with crime, it is an economic condition. Of course, crime is relatively low here. The county only budgets for one high profile case every year. The few times when we had two, it almost broke the county government.

But along the Russian River Resort area where I live, we do get a lot of problems with gangs on some of the beach areas, bringing their problems with them when they come here to escape the heat in the inland areas. The locals know when to avoid certain beaches. However, we get more deaths from accidental drownings than gang activities.

I can get behind that statement:)

[The Nature Boy 4,224]

Now here is where I come in. I am from St.Louis, Mo. And there is a lot of crime there, perpetrated by blacks so I can agree with him on that, when I take my wife to visit my parents or go shopping there are some area I have to avoid to ensure her safety. But here is my question, when you go to the movies, do you watch out for the white people as well? If you go to church, are you leery or the bishop or pastor(you know the history), do you worry if your kids were in the boy scouts or going to Penn State? if you invest, do you think someone is going to take your money?

These are crimes committed by older white males, and yet those folks are paying for it by themselves, they don't speak for the rest of you. That's the difference between us.

There are absolutely crimes committed by older white males. If we ever have a serial murder around here, I think we need to look for a white male (yes I know one black dude did some a while back, but almost always they are white)

I don't have a kid but if I did , i would exercise extreme due diligence before I let my kid in any program, especially more if it was run by Catholic priests. However I hate to break this to you but as a percentage of race, blacks are slightly over represented in the child molester category. Not by a huge margin but they commit a greater number statistically than they represent in the population.

No I do not watch out for for you average white person in the same way I would young black males. I freely admit it. However young black males are committing most of the crime in my area.It's not racial it's statistics, heck even my black friends admit they same thing. I jsut don't see it as racist. I would not pay more attention if it was a group of 100% older black females. So it's not race alone.

[The Nature Boy 4,224]

Well, since my area is different that St. Louis, MO, I am on guard against a different demographic. Here, it is white homeless folks that steal anything that isn't secured. And there are other neighborhoods, closer to the county seat of Santa Rosa, where violent crime is more likely to occur. These tend to be high density and subsidized housing - what they used to call "The Projects" decades ago. The population there is a mix of White and Mexican. It is not skin color that seems to be synonymous with crime, it is an economic condition. Of course, crime is relatively low here. The county only budgets for one high profile case every year. The few times when we had two, it almost broke the county government.

But along the Russian River Resort area where I live, we do get a lot of problems with gangs on some of the beach areas, bringing their problems with them when they come here to escape the heat in the inland areas. The locals know when to avoid certain beaches. However, we get more deaths from accidental drownings than gang activities.

Exactly. There is a group that is more likely to commit crime and you can identify them. If it's white homeless then pay attention when they are around. In my area it just happens to be young black males.