Current Events > So. Why did racism make a comeback in America?

(+) Yeah! (+)

It kind of predates Trump's era as well, you could kind of see the rising tide even before 2015
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comeback?

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where'd it ever go?

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Since when were you under the impression that it ever left?

It never left. People are just more comfortable being open about it. Thank the GOP for that. You can blame it all on Trump but this truly started when Obama was elected. Racists couldnt take it, the GOP encouraged that, and Trump just used what was already brewing to his advantage.

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All of the above

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9/11 was the catalyst for people to be COMFORTABLE being openly racist again.

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It never left

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UUA

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Because the elite figured out that they could control both sides of the political spectrum quite easily by turning everything that isn't a race issue into a race issue.

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It's always been around

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TheVipaGTS posted...

It never left. People are just more comfortable being open about it. Thank the GOP for that. You can blame it all on Trump but this truly started when Obama was elected. Racists couldnt take it, the GOP encouraged that, and Trump just used what was already brewing to his advantage.

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If you're a racist, and you start hearing that racism is suddenly everywhere again, how much effort are you going to make to continue hiding that you're racist?

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The goddamn dirty liberals had the gall to elect a black man. Obviously.

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I blame Aunt Jemima, and Uncle Ben, and their nephew, Cream of Wheat.

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most those peeps are still alive today

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It never left, we just became more aware of it via social media, and a lot of people being very mad about a black President.

It was a sad time for me, I had genuinely believed things were getting better overall.

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TheVipaGTS posted...

It never left. People are just more comfortable being open about it. Thank the GOP for that. You can blame it all on Trump but this truly started when Obama was elected. Racists couldnt take it, the GOP encouraged that, and Trump just used what was already brewing to his advantage.

This. Racism never stopped, it's just (unfortunately) become more empowered and mainstream thanks to Trump and the GOP.
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NinjaWarrior455 posted...

It's always been around

skermac posted...

It never left

TheVipaGTS posted...

It never left. People are just more comfortable being open about it. Thank the GOP for that. You can blame it all on Trump but this truly started when Obama was elected. Racists couldnt take it, the GOP encouraged that, and Trump just used what was already brewing to his advantage.

Murphiroth posted...

Since when were you under the impression that it ever left?

Fony posted...

where'd it ever go?

These.

Trumble posted...

If you're a racist, and you start hearing that racism is suddenly everywhere again, how much effort are you going to make to continue hiding that you're racist?

And this.

Racists are more emboldened now than they have been in years.

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_BIueMonk posted...

comeback?

It's like non minorities assumed racism didn't exist until smartphones came about recording these "incidents" for the world to see.

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This country is literally built on racism, designed from the very beginning.

The only thing is open and blatant racism became more 'acceptable'. Coincidentally right around the time a black man became President of the United States.

Well okay really 9/11, Muslim Americans got mistreated pretty horribly so can't say that was just xenophobia.

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The 90s bubble made people feel like racism was comfortably "over", so anything not super overtly racist is just perfectly fine. There was a pretty concerted shift in media post 9/11 which resulted in the media landscape harping on dishonest issues during the Obama era and ignoring level headed issues of the common citizen. As more and more power gets concentrated at the top, politically, there's less and less push-back so long as people aren't literally dying. The issue of social media certainly doesn't help. In the past, if you see a crazy asshole enter your circle of peers, you'd just shut him up. Now that crazy asshole is in a circle of other crazy assholes and able to make real social change.

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I mean the racists didn't go away. They just quieted down for a bit.

It never left

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Pretty much what everyone already said, plus the rise of the internet and social media over the last two decades has fueled the ease in which people can express themselves anonymously.

Back in the 80's and the 90's, you knew maybe 2-3 people TOPS that had racist tendencies. Now you can look at almost any social media post, and it'll eventually devolve into a argument about race.

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Humans as a species are naturally racist and bigoted. That is in their blood. That is in their nature. We're an inherently violent, hateful species.

Accept these facts.

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Why does it sound like you're celebrating the negative attributes of humanity?

Also, while we can be right bastards, our nature is ultimately to work together for a common good. We wouldn't have made it this far otherwise. You couldn't solo a mammoth.

We just um... have much bigger 'tribes' now.

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Racism has never gone away. Racism is more American than anything else. When people praise America theyre praising racism.

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GhostFaceLeaks posted...

Humans as a species are naturally racist and bigoted. That is in their blood. That is in their nature. We're an inherently violent, hateful species.

Accept these facts.

I don't think that's necessarily true.

Racism and bigotry is learned behavior, not a natural instinct.

Babies aren't born with prejudice. It is taught via observation.

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GhostFaceLeaks posted...

Humans as a species are naturally racist and bigoted. That is in their blood. That is in their nature. We're an inherently violent, hateful species.

Accept these facts.

These are too vague to be called facts.

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Before this moment, racism had been defeated

bigblu89 posted...

Racism and bigotry is learned behavior, not a natural instinct.

I don't know if it should be called instinct, because the various natural preloaded functions have different terms based on factors like complexity and where they originate in the nervous system. To deny that there's a natural cause to the things we learn and emphasize doesn't make sense, though. Fear of the "other" is omnipresent in social animals. What sets (some of) us apart from other animals, in this sense, is that we're be able to understand that our emotions can be wrong about things.

edit: jesus what happened to my sentence structuring, i need more naps

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I'm not an anthropologist, but as far as I know, humans have always had a degree of tribalism. But what that tribalism means has differed greatly by culture. Many cultures in the past haven't been effectively skin color agnostic, but rather focused on paternity, or maternity, or the country you hail from, or your religious group, or any number of factors. So to say humans have always been "racist" is wrong, "race" is a fairly modern concept in the history of humanity and ancient cultures would have had very different sentiments.

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I may be one of the few individual's alive who just accept that people don't like me for my skin color and will just tell those types to fuck off, leave and never associate with them again.

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skermac posted...

It never left

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Prismsblade posted...

I may be one of the few individual's alive who just accept that people don't like me for my skin color and will just tell those types to fuck off, leave and never associate with them again.

Sure, this is a good approach to racism when it comes to random ass people. Because random ass people dont matter. But when its prevalent in the justice system, law enforcement, and housing market it becomes significantly less mockable and significantly more potentially life crippling.

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It never went away.

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It never went away, but in the last 6 years, Americans discriminate heavily now. Not just your skin color, but also your social status. Sometimes people confuse that with racism.

I wouldnt know racism exists if not for the news and school. Never seen it in person.

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The current incline of racism began with the murder of Trayvon Martin.

CNN doctored photos to lighten George Zimmerman's complexion, they referred to him as a "White Latino," and they selectively omitted audio to make it sound as if he volunteered the information "he's Black" when he was responding to an officer's question. (CNN's non-apology was to blame the omission on a technical error.) Fox News, ever scraping of the barrel, went on a big campaign about how George Zimmerman was being unfairly treated and how he was allegedly just defending himself against the unarmed 17 year old whom he'd stalked for over a mile. Then Barack Obama, in a move meant to generate sympathy for the victim, uttered the now infamous line, "Trayvon could have been my son." A lot of White people took it as an attack -- for reasons I cannot fathom -- and sided with the murderous wannabe rent-a-cop.

People forget that Trump came on the political scene essentially as the anti-Obama. He promoted the conspiracy that Obama was foreign born and demanded that Obama present his birth certificate. The right tried to make Obama out to be anti-White, tried to make his statement one of division, and sought whom they felt was the best option for defeating whomever the left would choose as Obama's successor. Trump's position as the proverbial thorn in Obama's side is what gave him a realistic chance at the White House. Then he ran on a campaign blaming America's problems on Latino immigrants, referred to COVID as the Kung Flu, and coddled white supremacist who fawned over him.

Sadly, it's only natural that bigotry would grow when the fucking leader of the nation enables it if not outright encourages it.

tl;dr, bigots got mad that Obama sympathized with the victim of an attack that was potentially racially motivated and elected a president who passive-aggressively used bigotry as a rallying point