Racism in the good 'ole USA?

[Karl]

It is claimed by many of the talking heads that a huge step has been taken in the fight against racism...but when one considers the type of efficient campaign Obama ran and the lousy campaign his opponents ran...the type citizen disaffection with The war in Irag, the economy, the touch times and the thirst for change...

...with the high numbers of blacks who voted for Obama (some say 90+%) and the huge numbers of whites who voted against him (some say 57%)...has a huge step really been taken?

[Karl]

From slavery to Obama

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

A 75-year-old black woman who lived through race segregation in America's south cried as she left a polling station in Virginia. A young white girl in another part of the country called a cable network station and in a voice filled with anxiety asked the anchor on election day: "How is Obama doing? I cannot eat and I cannot sleep." These two events in a way symbolised the change that was about to take place in the United States. A few hours later, Senator Barack Obama became the first African American to be elected president of the USA, creating history.

Complete Story ...

[Hortical]

Karl, even Kerry 4 years ago did not receive a majority of the white votes nationally. Just because some chose to vote for McCain, we can not say race was the primary reason. Obviously it was a reason for some folks.
Obama received 44% of the the white vote, and coupled with the black & hispanic vote, he received 52% of the nationwide vote.

Obama did receive an overwhelming majority of the white votes in the northeast & western states.

[Willi]

43% and that was higher than Kerry and Clinton got!

[Exile]

Some sociologists have defined racism as a system of group privilege. In Portraits of White Racism David Wellman (1993) has defined racism as "culturally sanctioned beliefs, which, regardless of intentions involved, defend the advantages whites have because of the subordinated position of racial minorities,” (Wellman 1993: x). Sociologists Noel Cazenave and Darlene Alvarez Maddern define racism as “...a highly organized system of 'race'-based group privilege that operates at every level of society and is held together by a sophisticated ideology of color/'race' supremacy. Racist systems include, but cannot be reduced to, racial bigotry,” (Cazenave and Maddern 1999: 42). Sociologist and former American Sociological Association president Joe Feagin argues that the United States can be characterized as a "total racist society" because racism is used to organize every social institution (Feagin 2000, p. 16).
More recently, Feagin has articulated a comprehensive theory of racial oppression in the U.S. in his book Systemic Racism: A Theory of Oppression (Routledge, 2006). Feagin examines how major institutions have been built upon racial oppression which was not an accident of history, but was created intentionally by white Americans. In Feagin's view, white Americans labored hard to create a system of racial oppression in the 17th century and have worked diligently to maintain the system ever since. While Feagin acknowledges that changes have occurred in this racist system over the centuries, he contends that key and fundamental elements have been reproduced over nearly four centuries, and that U.S. institutions today reflect the racialized hierarchy created in the 17th century. Today, as in the past, racial oppression is not just a surface-level feature of this society, but rather pervades, permeates, and interconnects all major social groups, networks, and institutions across the society. Feagin's definition stands in sharp contrast to psychological definitions that assume racism is an "attitude" or an irrational form of bigotry that exists apart from the organization of social structure.

[edit] Racial discrimination


An anti-discrimination poster in a Hong Kong subway station, January 2005


Racial discrimination is treating people differently through a process of social division into categories not necessarily related to race. Racial segregation policies may officialize it, but it is also often exerted without being legalized. Researchers, including Dean Karlan and Marianne Bertrand, at the MIT and the University of Chicago found in a 2003 study that there was widespread discrimination in the workplace against job applicants whose names were merely perceived as "sounding black". These applicants were 50% less likely than candidates perceived as having "white-sounding names" to receive callbacks for interviews. The researchers view these results as strong evidence of unconscious biases rooted in the United States' long history of discrimination (i.e. Jim Crow laws, etc.)[4]

[edit] Institutional

Further information: Institutional racism, State racism, Affirmative action, Racial profiling, and Racism by country Institutional racism (also known as structural racism, state racism or systemic racism) is racial discrimination by governments, corporations, educational institutions or other large organizations with the power to influence the lives of many individuals. Stokely Carmichael is credited for coining the phrase institutional racism in the late 1960s. He defined the term as "the collective failure of an organization to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture or ethnic origin".[5]
Maulana Karenga argued that racism constituted the destruction of culture, language, religion and human possibility, and that the effects of racism were "the morally monstrous destruction of human possibility involved redefining African humanity to the world, poisoning past, present and future relations with others who only know us through this stereotyping and thus damaging the truly human relations among peoples."[6]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism

[Mosiah]

Thank you, Exile. But Barack's election has put a stop to all of that!

Yuh tink a never notice how yuh sneak Stokely Carmichael into it?

[Exile]

We have a loong way to go...
Heh, heh....

[Karl]

Karl, even Kerry 4 years ago did not receive a majority of the white votes nationally. Just because some chose to vote for McCain, we can not say race was the primary reason. Obviously it was a reason for some folks.
Obama received 44% of the the white vote, and coupled with the black & hispanic vote, he received 52% of the nationwide vote.

Obama did receive an overwhelming majority of the white votes in the northeast & western states.

...among the reasons I put the article up...was asking for an examination of how we voted and our take on ourselves as racist!

Well?
I hope you remember I clearly laid it out that I voted for Obama because he was black! Racist?

Yet...I certainly do not consider myself racist in the nprmal definition/'emotional feel' of the term!