The fact that there are so many people who think such racist, ignorant things in America is one thing - what baffles me is that these people are taken seriously, given airtime and most of all, given power.
In most other places, such opinions would stay at out on the fringes where they belong, if they are voiced at all. I certainly can’t believe a Finnish TV station saying ANYTHING like this racist rap (or anything else FOX news and others have spewed); there would be a big backlash. Not that our media is completely unbiased and Finns can be sometimes be incredibly racist, but those kind of ideas are for the most part shunned and ridiculed
EDIT// I remember at one point a prominent member of the Christian Democrats party, Päivi Räsänen, talked about giving medical personnel the right to refuse abortion, and she would personally not the let even a rape victim get an abortion. Naturally, most Finns were like, “Umm, yeah, no - you’re embarrassing us”.
“If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil
deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us
and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the
heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his
own heart?”
They have strong roots or at least perceivedly strong roots. A significant part of the national origin myth for the US is the iconic religious outcasts who survived harsh conditions to establish a new home for religious freedom (unless you’re an animist native who was already living on that land, then “fuck you”) on this continent. Of course they would argue (as they have) that religious freedom implies freedom of Protestant Christian religious denominations.
And there is a long history of religious individuals messing with other people’s freedoms because God supposedly told them to, whether it was supporting slavery because the Bible tells slaves to obey their masters or smashing up saloons because alcohol is evil (even though Jesus turned water into wine and Proverbs 31 says that depressed men should be allowed to drink) or denying women the right to vote because God made man the head of the household or denying reproductive healthcare options and sex ed because God wants you to live with your shame and raise your baby in destitution because having unmarried sex for pleasure makes you a whore…
Except when their base audience isn’t as large as they think it is despite the make-up of their Parliament.
Sun News, which sought to be Fox News North is going to be sold or disbanded or bankrupt for telling people what they want to hear. Not enough extremists in Canada (yet) to support it.
I think the worst part of that video was the guy saying we should over militarize the police in response to this. This from the same network that’s been complaining that Obama wants a police state.
Yeah, there is a whole lot of stupid going on there in assuming that bad guys only come in certain colors, or the terrorists only come in certain colors. That’s ridiculou. The US just busted a whole bunch of white, right wing domestic terrorists who were we’re going to attack lots and kill lots of people. I bet Fox didn’t cover it because it doesn’t match their expectation of what a terrorist is.
However, on a tangential issue I’d like to point out that sometimes we can go to a great extent to avoid the obvious. If a specifc suspect has a certain race, especially if it is different than the majority race in an area, it makes sense to note that race or skin tone in the description. That’s not racist - it’s just a relevant, identifying fact.
How many times have you tried point out someone in a crowd where their race or skin tone is the most obvious contrast with other people by some other, less useful descriptor, such as what they are wearing? We don’t do that with gender, so why do I feel I need to do that for race?
See, I’m a good guy, because I’m “white and delightsome” Just as god intended!
actually, come to think of it, I’m not really that delightsome. Just white. Maybe I need to get to the tanning salon so my skin matches the “color of my character.”
/end anti-mormon rant that conveniently is only 99% off topic.
I really don’t get the hate for the anchor. She’s in a discussion where a dude just said that racial profiling was justified, and she’s saying, “you can’t possibly use this event to justify racial profiling, we don’t even know what race the perps are” (which is not the most robust argument against profiling generally – I don’t like that it implicitly validates the premise).
Sweet jesus she sounds to me like the smartest person in the room.
Skeptic, that’s your own discomfort talking. It’s a normal, understandable discomfort, especially if you’re trying not to mention skin tone when you’re describing someone to know them, where it’s often not relevant; but if you’re describing someone to find them visually, it’s completely relevant. It’s a pretty nuanced thing. Sometimes race relates to the person’s life experience and that’s relevant to the description you’re giving.
Race and skin tone shouldn’t just be completely taboo to mention. I don’t think many people who’ve really thought about it believe that.
