Reply #18: sure.... [View All]

[Nazgul35]

many have suggested that we should just ignore those who "display the confederate flag" as they are obviously racists....something I suggests is a simplistic view of what is actually going on....

The strategy of race baiting and exclusion politics is practiced by every politician, which is why, after 60 years of the civil right's struggle, we are still dealing with race...

I suggested that we address those variables that create an environment which makes good people, many of whom are not even aware that the have succumbed to these types of appeals, vote based upon issues that are counter to their own interest....

I in fact did live in the South for a decade, long enough to meet enough well intentioned southerners who saw the confederate flag as a symbol of many things other than slavery.....it not the symbol that needs to be addressed, but the causes of this symbolism's effectiveness.....

To do this, we have to change the issue dimension on which the debate is framed, something that the repugs are actually good at (since it's easy to be simplistic and go for gut level images that produce emotions like fear, hatred and distrust)....

to combat this we need to appeal to all poor...all middle class voters by showing them that in fact, they are getting screwed....show them that when we all have good schools, when we all have affordable health care, when we all have a decent living wage in an environment that isnt slowly killing us, than the ability for politicians to use the messages of division can not take root...

especially of we actually have a frank and open debate about the variables that cause this mistrust and hatred...this open wound on our psyche....

but we can not do it, when someone who tries to reach out is met with cries of racist and innundated with cries to the African American community to "not trust this guy...or he'll undo the last 60 years of gains...."

it's nothing more than trying to instill fear in a group in order to get that group to vote a certain way.....and the real crime (as if that wasnt bad enough) is that we never get to that point when we can begin to solve the problems that undermines our dreams of egalitarianism....

Democrats as well as Repugs practice this type of electoral politics, and all we do is inject race into an election in such a way that we will never be able to solve the problems....and it's only going to get worse! By 2050, there will be no majority race in the US, and people are going to feel more desperate and more frightened as the repukes ratchet up the rehtoric...and we must undermine this now!!!!

those are my points....how is it different for Bush to call terrorist evil doers, and ignore the underlying casuses that made tthe environment fertile for them to become terrorists...

Calling out Dean as a person who "embraces or endorses" the confederate flag or is some closet racist....is only designed to try and drive African American voters away from his candidacy...and that really is a shame!