Most politicians are white and male, let's get that up-front. Representation in this country right now doesn't demographically align to either the number of women, nor does it hew to racial populations. There are lots of reasons for why our representation doesn't match demographics, including who even attempts to throw their hat in the ring! And if fewer women or POC's do, well, there's part of the problem--but you can't even point that out without addressing real barriers in getting party support, financial backing, and favorable news coverage when there is perceptible bias.
What O'Reilly did though, was, instead of playing the recent Jedi mind-trick of saying "This is not the White Privilege you seek", actually full-on admitted that the cultural establishment in the US is a white one. The whole notion strikes me as quaint--when I see the above, I think of this:
As far as "adducing statistics" goes, I also can't help but think of this. And the basis of voter ID laws. O'Reilly is explicitly saying that the establishment of this country is about white people and needs to stay that way. I don't know how to see that as anything other than saying that democracy shouldn't be representative or small-"d" democratic, but support a certain class (race) of people. Which is all white by O'Reilly, but alt-right, if not neo-Nazi by me.
I do not understand why this is not more called out as absurdly biased. It genuinely is.
1 comment:
Hi Vixen, may I take this opportunity to wish you and your husband and your mom and dad a very joyous Christmas?
I don't care for Bill O'Reilly myself. He is more pugnacious than a Southerner can appreciate.
I remind you that the politicians that we presently have are there because they ran for office and were elected by the people. I also remind you that the last time I looked (could have changed a little) the black population was roughly 12%. As a consequence, even if one were going to bypass the electoral system and simply install people for no other reason than they were black, proportionally it would only be 12% of the politicians. Suffice it to say if someone wants to run there's a chance they could be elected. I'll also mention that there are quite a lot of black politicians elected at the state and local levels. Many big cities are basically dominated by black politicians. They ran, they were elected. And sometimes they do a great job, other times a lousy job, like everyone else.
Your post caused me to reflect on something. You do have a handful of clan-type racists who dislike blacks on the one hand and a handful of Louis Farrakhan-type blacks who dislike whites on the other hand. I would be pleased if they would all just get out, but that is neither here nor there.
The fact is that to the extent people think about how they feel about members of another race is a broad spectrum. There is no ubiquitous white or black; there is a huge spectrum in the middle of which most people fall.
One thing for sure is that from now on people running for president will need to appeal to all Americans. And trying to demonize whites, for example, will simply not result in an electoral victory. As you know a significant portion of Trump voters were poor and working class whites who in the past were Democratic voters. But this time they felt neglected and saw that Democrats were not including them and offered them no solutions.
P.S. You share something in common with Kellyanne Conway, only in reverse. Her mother was Italian and her father was Irish.
Post a Comment