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MasterCaneman -> RE: Race And Race Baiting (7/17/2013 3:13:08 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Zonie63
quote:
ORIGINAL: MasterCaneman
We will have racial problems as long as it is convenient for the political forces in this country. They are merely a tool to garner votes and keep a certain subset of the population in control of the rest of the country. It's a convenient way to redirect attention from what's really happening.
This could very well be true, although I think that the racial problems were created from the very beginning. Wealthy whites were faced with a problem of poor, landless whites wanting more land, which the wealthy whites were not willing to share. So, folks like Andrew Jackson came up with the idea that these poor, landless whites should be given land...somewhere. Since they couldn't give away the land already owned by wealthy whites, they had to give away someone else's land and force them off - which is what the Trail of Tears was all about.
Concepts of race and class have been somewhat convoluted in the American experience. One might presume that lower-class blacks and whites would find some ground for common cause, but such is really not the case in America, since both groups are kept somewhat at odds with each other. Likewise, Hispanics are also kept at odds with both blacks and whites.
I agree with that. The colonists didn't cleanse themselves of their class attitudes when they came here: they merely opened them up to a new class of royalty (in a way). Each wave of immigrants were treated to the same hostility and suspicion (No Irish Need Apply ring a bell?). The situation regarding blacks is different, though, as they have had to go through the process a couple of times, in different ways. In any event, racial tension has always proven to be an excellent tool for the body politic to exploit for its own purposes.
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