Quote:
|
No. That's not what he's saying. He's saying that if you continually vote for the status quo and the status quo is racism, you are contributing to and maintaining that racist system and are, therefore, racist.
|
So unless one is actively working to undo the status quo, one is racist. You realize this standard effectively renders almost everyone a racist. Who was the candidate who was going to upend the status quo last election? Nobody. Hillary was going to preserve the status quo. Trump lied about changing it and did none of what he promised.
Quote:
|
Again, drop the good-bad binary. It just is. Maybe think of it two different ways. There are evil racists who have slurs bouncing around in their heads all day and there are those who benefit from racism at others' expense who absolutely do not want to give that up.
|
I'd agree with that. But there are also people who are "race agnostic." A farmer in NE isn't thinking much about race when he's voting based on which party is going to give him subsidies.
Quote:
|
If you're friends with and vote for the politician who is a member and whose policies permit such clubs to exist, are you still not an anti-semite?
|
Depends. If you're fine with bigotry, yes. If you're doing what adults have to do every day - engage in trade offs in imperfect situations - no.
I've uncomfortably listened to numerous vile and bigoted jokes during my life because someone with power over me was telling them. The trade off there was conceding a paycheck to stand on principle. Does that make me an enabler? Maybe. But there were a whole lot of mitigating factors at play.