Comment Re:This is just faulty math (Score 1) 1260
I'm not a mathematician, I said that early on. However I am well versed in behavioral linguistics.
How can you multiply pi by anything at all? After all, not only does it have an infinite number of digits, we don't even know what they all are!
Well, we don't. We take it to a particular digit then round off because a computer would endlessly calculate it.
How can you multiply 1/3 by anything at all? 1/3 =
Again, we round it at some point based on the level of accuracy we require.
How can you multiply 1 by anything at all? After all, 1 = 1.000000... which is an infinite number of 0s.
Bad example. Infinite
How can you multiply pi by anything at all? After all, not only does it have an infinite number of digits, we don't even know what they all are!
How can you multiply 1/3 by anything at all? 1/3 =
People are not labeling the tea party racist because it's made of 98% white people. They are labeling it racist because of the overtly racist signs and comments captured in the media coverage of the tea party events. This may be not be fair representation of the group, but that's the way it is. My wife views the tea party as racist. We disagree, but the idea that that makes her a racist is laughable to me.
I think you're getting the order mixed up. (or maybe I am) But I saw/heard the label before I saw the media start looking for examples (IE, the gun-toting racist hicks comments while the black man carrying the weapon was edited out of the photos) Their very involvement against the health-care bill was called racist, they were called racist because of their supposed anti black-man-for-president attitude before Obama was even elected.
With all due respect to your wife (and I mean that), if she's never been to a rally herself, then her assumption that the tea-party is racist is based on one or two things (or both,): that it's racist because it's primarily white, and/or that it's racist because friends/media told her so and gave carefully chosen examples/pictures to prove it. Her assumptions are based on the same type of racist myth-perpetuation that makes all Italians into mobsters and all Mexicans into violent cartel members. I can only hope she researches more into it.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not a huge tea-party supporter - I'm pro gay-rights, non-christian, and pro-choice. But I do support some of what they stand for (just as I support things the Ds and Rs stand for) I also defend these parties from unfair characterizations and I think that this is one of those instances - and a particularly evil and malicious one at that.
I only know three, but every "tea partier" I personally know is an older white person who harbors what I would call..."ethnic animosity".
I don't think you're going to find an older person - white OR black - that doesn't harbor racial animosity on some level. In fact it has been said by many different people that we all harbor at least some prejudice against those that are different from us. The point is that just because there's a large group of predominately white people, it doesn't mean that group is racist.
Hell, even my Dad who is a dyed-in-the-wool progressive and participated in civil rights marches in the 1960's has expressed sentiments that can come across as "racist". It's doesn't mean he's racist. He's just an old white dude who suffers from the same fears as other older white people.
Absolutely. Another factor is experience and empathy - My father grew up and has lived in a 99% non-black area near the Canadian border in the midwest. His experience is different so he can't relate. I cringe when I hear some of the stuff he says, but its ignorance and he'll likely never be able to understand some things about white privilege. (But he can tell you all about the silly arguments and problems between the German, Swede, Finnish, and Norwegian cultures he grew up around)
But again, a group of mostly white people is not racist because it's a group of mostly white people, and though you call it a generalization, I stand by my first statement that people who claim otherwise are racist themselves.
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