Quote:
Originally Posted by Princess Doreen
Saying a Nazi, a member of the KKK, a member of the Aryan Nation, or any hate group is a racist is accurate.
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True, but it is really inaccurate to limit racism to members of those groups. Are there people who believe racist things, or who sometimes behave in racist ways that are associated with the Tea Party movement but aren't a part of any of these groups? You bet. Everybody who is a thinking person knows that.
But it goes a lot farther than that. There are a lot of people I know who have said some pretty racist things over the years who voted FOR Obama. They would never consider themselves racist, and I know some who would love to point to their vote for Obama as some sort of "get out of racism free" card. But none of that changes the fact that they view the world - at least in part - through a prism of racism. That doesn't mean they won't vote for a guy because they consider him "black," or that they would refuse to work with a person they consider "black," or that they are going to be attending a Klan meeting anytime soon, but it does mean that race and racism plays a role in their lives.
I bet there are a lot of "white" people who voted for Obama and hate the Klan, but would still be somewhat disturbed or bothered if their son or daughter decided to marry a person they considered "black." Those people aren't frothing-at-the-mouth racists, but would a term like "not a racist bone in their body" apply to them? I don't think so.
The world is not neatly divided into people who wear sheets on their heads and people who are "not racist." It would be nice if it worked that way....but it doesn't. These are complicated issues, and racism continues to play a huge role in society, although in much subtler ways than it did in the nineteenth or twentieth centuries.