Incumbent GOP senator Mark Kirk turns to racism

I agree, and I think what he did is much worse than just an unconscious racist bias. He was intentionally trying to spread racism for personal advancement.

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Continue to read through the thread if you like, but take it easy on the name calling. There’s enough of that going around this election cycle.

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I’m not excusing the “impoliteness” but how many decades have we made excuses for coddling racism within America, let alone not-subtle-enough-to-be-a-dog-whistle appeals to racism and “real Americans” by conservative politicians?

It’s bad enough that the legacy of the Southern Strategy burns within America, but people need to stop making excuses.

Nobody is doing anyone any favors, least not themselves by infantalizing those with malicious intent, no matter how common these people are in society.

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Sorry, her middle name. The story was a dead giveaway, either way.

I’m late to the game, but the women on my father’s side of the family are ALL active DAR members. My grandmother was a chapter head for years. There’s a lot of work to get in if you don’t already have members in your family; birth and death and marriage certificates and a lot of genealogy work. You can’t just say you’re descended from so-and-so that was at Yorktown, you have to get documentation to back it up.

If I wanted to get on my local chapter’s active rolls, I could provide the member numbers of at least 4 women I’m related to, but I’d still have to provide proof that I’m descended from my grandmother!

So claiming to be a DAR isn’t something you just do. You have the documents to back it up. His scoffing at the idea she had ancestors in the Revolution is not only racist, but stupid because she can prove it.

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Please do not re-up this asshat.

Totally agree what he said was racist and probably calculated to be so, but just to complicate things:

“In a dramatic and celebrated act of conscience, Eleanor Roosevelt resigned from the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) when it barred the world-renowned singer Marian Anderson, an African American, from performing at its Constitution Hall in Washington, DC.”

https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/american_originals/eleanor.html

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Yeah. When I was a kid, the DAR tended to run politically to the right of Goldwater. A half-Asian Democratic senatorial candidate being a proud member tends to suggest that might not be the case anymore.

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Dude has three "K"s in his name.

Just sayin’.

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Looks like it:

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This is one of those cases where I kind of wish the Like icon was a thumbs-up rather than a heart - more of a “good on ya” sort of change.

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I just find it interesting that a half-Asian Democratic senatorial candidate is now a proud member of a formerly racist institution, seems pretty American to me.

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From what I’ve seen over the years, this kind of evolution is actually a pretty rare occurrence. Has the John Birch Society followed suit, for instance? That’s approximately where the DAR resided back in the day.

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I can not imagine the Birchers ever accepting modernity so.

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I don’t think DAR was intended as a specifically racist organisation, it seems to have been slowly co-opted by the UDC:

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I noticed Richard Gere and Dick van Dyck can each trace their way back to 6 different Mayflower passengers.

http://mayflowerhistory.com/famous-descendants/

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Nor I. I suspect it’s the fact that the DAR’s membership comes from descendants of people involved in the Revolution that made the evolution possible.

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Maybe, I admit generational dynasty stuff kinda squicks me out.

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Yeah. Parts of my family probably take me back to United Empire Loyalists, but meh…

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So what do they do mainly?

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