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.There has been an
incredible amount of heat with little light regarding the issue of
racism, prejudice and bias. For some DUers, any suggestion that some
white progressives are holding President Obama to a higher standard
than they would a white President is tantamount to calling them a
racist, something that is deeply and genuinely offensive to them. On
the other hand, some DUers have been trying to explain that:
- pointing out that some progressives
are holding the President to a higher standard is not the same as
accusing all progressives of doing so;
- prejudice and bias is NOT the
equivalent of racism; and
- even the most well-meaning people can
be biased and prejudiced, even if they don't hate blacks or wish to see
us fail.
First, let's define our terms. Prejudice
is the act of prejudging someone based on assumptions made because of
their race. Such assumptions can be negative or positive - e.g.,
assuming a black person is poor or more prone to crime vs. assuming a
black man is a better athlete or assuming that a black President will
be more progressive solely because he is black. Decisions based on
prejudice are made all of the time by even well-meaning people.
Prejudice does not necessarily include the assumption of racial
superiority or inferiority.
Racism, on the other hand, is a specific kind of prejudice - a belief
in the inherent inferiority of another race, coupled with the power and
desire to subjugate or otherwise negatively impact others as a result. [An
observation about racism, prejudice and bias continued]
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Is this racism? Or just a black thug doing
thug things?
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I have for a long time moseyed over to democraticunderground.com when I
wanted a nice idiotic quote, and was seldom if ever sidetracked by
cogent observation from this lot. Of late however, I've
noted that there are some (I said some) pretty thoughtful folks
over there, as opposed to, say,at Moveon.org which is a flat
loony-bin.
The author "Empowerer" (a
black man) here shows savvy about race that even a lot of conservative
bloggers I know could learn from.
And while I'm giving credit where credit is due, Tony
Romo is a very good quarterback,
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