Almost everyone practices bigotry…ALMOST EVERYONE
From the closet Klansters in the white community…
…to the homophobia, misogyny, anti-Asian, anti-Semitism in the black community (black churches were one of the biggest voices against marriage-equality helping to keep the LGBT community as second class citizens)
…to my Central American acquaintance from Ecuador who got angry at me for mistakenly calling him Puerto Rican, as if it was an insult
…to my ex girlfriend and others from Russia who claimed Ukrainians are inferior (yet ethnically identical and that was ten years ago before their current war)
Ever listen to Koreans and Japanese talk about each other? I have…it’s ugly.
If it’s not religion, it’s class. If not class, it’s race. If not race, it’s sexual orientation. If not sex, it’s politics. It’s called BIGOTRY…and every single group practices it.
There is no question…every single community on earth has low self-esteem issues and needs others to look down on. Our problem isn’t racism, it’s bigotry and class inequality and every single group practices it regardless who has “institutional” power…which is another excuse for “your side is worse” or to not talk about one parent homes…another cause of poverty. Poverty increases interaction with police and the ratio of police brutality statistics, coincides exactly with the poverty rate.
People keep saying we need to have a talk about racism. No we don’t. We need to talk about BIGOTRY that every single group practices but would rather deflect on others. It will take another CENTURY of enlightenment to end bigotry...if that is even possible, but we can fix inequality…especially income inequality today. To focus on racism instead of the things we can actually change helps absolutely no one.
And it does divide. How? Ask the 80% of polled respondents who say the police are doing just fine at their jobs. Ask the 80% of progressive voters who were not motivated by the events in Ferguson and stayed home last election…as those events DID motivate the GOP voter, giving them their largest majority in seventy years.
Every Republican elected means another governor installing judges dismissing police killings as “justifiable”. Every Republican elected means another corporate Congressman feeding the prison-industrial complex with stricter laws to keep the jails full with non-violent criminals to keep the profits going.
Every Republican elected means more top down economy trickle-down scammery that perpetuates the inequality divide putting more minorities into poverty and therefore into more altercations with police. The last time progressives let their message get hijacked by small self-interest groups and ignored the majority voter, it galvanized the conservative coalition and gave us Nixon.
Only Nixon’s criminal behavior allowed Jimmy Carter to get elected…but that conservative regrouping then gave us Reagan. How did that work out for those same minorities?
The statistics we have show clearly that no race is safe. If twice as many whites are killed as blacks with zero to 1% even getting an indictment, then EVERYONE should be fearing the police. That’s how you divide the opposition and win elections. Progressive leaders ignoring the evidence and statistics or trying to be chic in their language instead of the truth that ALL LIVES MATTER are doing no service to anyone…especially minorities.