After paying attention to american politics for a long time, here is my conclusion:

[Smith_3]

Racism is at the heart of nearly everything that is wrong with american politics and american society.

The average american voter will go to far lenghts in terms of voting against his/her own interest, as long as it is ensured that brown people will be screwed over harder then them. By brown people I mean Africans, Mexicans, Muslims or any other group with dark skin.

It is like an unspoken deal: "You don't ask us how we get rich, in return we make sure the n***ers get screwed over."

All this speak about how the markets must remain free play right into that. As long as socialism means that a black person might get a free ride, the average american will be against it. That is all it takes.

[TCJ70]

1. Could you flesh this out a little more?

What from your observations brings you to sum up american politics in one sentence?

[Smith_3]

7. Well the thing is, I don't see much more besides that.

Of course, lack of education is a problem, which again leads to more racism.
Poverty is a problem which also leads to more racism, which gets people to vote for more poverty.
It is just that one thing that is so obviously fostered by the ruling elites, to keep the working or poor classes divided.

My observations were done on people who I know to be republican voters.

Women's rights are an issue too.

[Jackpine Radical]

10. Here, in your own words, is the key to the problem:

"It is just that one thing that is so obviously fostered by the ruling elites, to keep the working or poor classes divided."

American racism, like the weird-assed fundamentalism and batshit jingoism we also seem to glory in, is just another tool used by the few to divide and rule the many.

[TCJ70]

11. I think racism is largely on the way out.

It's a process, and it'll take awhile, but that's what I see of it anyway. We've got a ways to go, but we're getting there.

[leftofcool]

2. Is this another one of those

"If you don't like Obama, you're a racist" posts?

[Smith_3]

9. No.

You are free not to like Obama, of course. He was not my first choice of candidates either. ;)

[ensho]

3. agree - what color man fills the private owned prisons?

nt

[Tuesday Afternoon]

4. :/

:(

[griffi94]

5. i think you may be on to something

but even when you can take race out of the equation, there will always be something that can be used as lever to pull.
it's not just brown people, it's also liberals, eggheads, people with less money, people with more money, and so on and so forth.
bush got votes from the people who he screwed the hardest just because "gore was worse" and after that "kerry was a boston liberal"

in the end they won't vote for who they like the best, but rather who they hate the least.

[Breeze54]

6. I disagree. $$$$$$ is the motivator. Ignorance about politics is the deception.

People in minorities hold many political offices today.

The M$M spinning for the RW has a lot to do with how voters vote, IMHO.
They aren't getting all the facts through their TV's and radio's.

Is there prejudice still in the USA?
Yes, just like a lot of countries also still have it too.

[stillcool]

8. Divide and Conquer...

the bedrock of American politics. Which is why we the people are shut out of the political process. It works so well. Look at Iraq.

[mzteris]

12. since before we were "America"

". . . Only one fear was greater than the fear of black rebellion in the new American colonies. That was the fear that discontented whites would join black slaves to overthrow the existing order. In the early years of slavery, especially, before racism as a way of thinking was firmly ingrained, while white indentured servants were often treated as badly as black slaves, there was a possibility of cooperation.

SNIP

. . . And so, measures were taken. About the same time that slave codes, involving discipline and punishment, were passed by the Virginia Assembly, Virginia's ruling class, having proclaimed that all white men were superior to black, went on to offer their social (but white) inferiors a number of benefits previously denied them. In 1705 a law was passed requiring masters to provide white servants whose indenture time was up with ten bushels of corn, thirty shillings, and a gun, while women servants were to get 15 bushels of corn and forty shillings. Also, the newly freed servants were to get 50 acres of land.

Morgan concludes: "Once the small planter felt less exploited by taxation and began to prosper a little, he became less turbulent, less dangerous, more respectable. He could begin to see his big neighbor not as an extortionist but as a powerful protector of their common interests."

We see now a complex web of historical threads to ensnare blacks for slavery in America: the desperation of starving settlers, the special helplessness of the displaced African, the powerful incentive of profit for slave trader and planter, the temptation of superior status for poor whites, the elaborate controls against escape and rebellion, the legal and social punishment of black and white collaboration. . . .



http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinncolorline.html

[flashl]

13. Your observation tracks with studies on white voter flight

Whites Take Flight on Election Day

April 14, 2006

{W}hite Republicans nationally are 25 percentage points more likely on average to vote for the Democratic senatorial candidate when the GOP hopeful is black, says economist Ebonya Washington of Yale University in a forthcoming article in the Quarterly Journal of Economics. White independents are similarly inclined to vote for the white Democrat when there's a black Republican running, according to her study of congressional and gubernatorial voting patterns between 1982 and 2000, including five Senate races in which the Republican nominee was black.
...
{R}acially motivated crossover voting is not just a Republican phenomenon. Democrats also desert their party when its candidate is black, Washington found. In House races, white Democrats are 38 percentage points less likely to vote Democratic if their candidate is black.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

14. Racism has been long fostered in this society

by those in power as a way to manage and control the masses. You saw this in the antebellum South, where poor whites weren't given things like free public schools (which they had in the North), but who were told it was ok because their skin would forever make them superior to blacks.
Marijuana was made illegal in the '30s so that Dow Chemical would benefit from the withdrawal of hemp as a competitor for their nylon. Also it gave the government another tool with which to repress the people--and it was done, in part, by saying brown people were the primary users of marijuana, and unless it was controlled, they would go nuts and rape white women.

Educate those who are willing to remove the blinders of racism. Show them that racism is a tool for the those in power to use to dupe them.