“If the purges [of potential voters], challenges and ballot rejections were random, it wouldn’t matter. It’s anything but random. For example, an audit by the State of Washington found that a Black voter was 400% more likely than a white voter to have their mail-in ballot rejected. Rejection of Black in-person votes, according to a US Civil Rights Commission study in Florida, ran 14.3% or one in seven ballots cast.”
"[…] Democracy can win* despite the 2.3% suppression headwind.
And that’s our job as Americans: to end the purges, the vigilante challenges, the ballot rejections and the attitude that this is all somehow OK."
It’s always “funny” when people act like systemic racism is some reformable problem rather than a major foundation of the entire system.
So do nothing?
What would you suggest people do about this now that America is a fascist dictatorship?
This conversation is so frustrating to witness. Particularly because I remember you were such a strong proponent of Harris though the election cycle, which suggest you have political sense enough to care and know things are bad, but now that the cards are different your plan is to disconnect and feel hopeless? If you truly believe that America is a fascist dictatorship, and realize that we have the largest military in the world, don’t you feel moral imperative to at least try? If the solution you were striving for didn’t work, why is your next move give up rather than look to something like black radical thought, which has for much longer being explaining how the solutions to these problems don’t come with ballots.
I literally asked what is suggested people do.
Am I supposed to come up with the answer myself? Because I’m extremely stupid, so that isn’t going to happen. I wish people would realize that.
I feel like this is an obtuse description. There are better ways to ask what should be done that do not read as defeatist if you’re genuine.
No one is expecting you to come up with solutions, that’s why I recommended black radical thought, as these are folks that have been on the front line of fighting and experiencing America’s decent into fascism.
Well I’m sorry I didn’t ask what should be done the right way, but I still have no idea what to be done.
Please tell me how I am supposed to ask what people suggest other than asking them what they suggest.
For fuck’s sake, all I want is an answer. You sure as hell aren’t giving me one.
I can see you’re upset, but genuinely, I think it leads to a better community on lemmy in general to approach with good faith. The point overall being, if you are asking in earnest, and are hoping for answers about what possible way forward we have, I would hope that you recognize that there are better ways to communicate that. I’m sorry it’s upsetting that certain langue is interpreted differently, even if the core is the same, but it’s the reality.
Given that reality, being upfront about your worries and feelings of helplessness is valid and helps to connect rather than dismiss. With that, expressing the lack of knowledge as a personal aspect, rather than framing the exhausting of options you’re aware of as the end of all options, would help show that you are looking for whatever is next.
As for ‘an answer’, it’s not something I can easily give because these are complex issues. The reality is it can’t be distilled down to “Get out and vote” because the problems extend beyond that, and any real answer that match that simplicity would along the lines of “organize” but I assume like me, you’d find that sort of broad advice hollow.
I can’t say what you should do because it depends on your local politics, what you’re able to commit, where your politics sit, and ultimately what you think your place would be in whatever is done. With that I recommend black radical thought because I find it best encompasses the tools needed to learn for the reasons I mentioned. Along side learning, I think reaching out to local political groups for work that can be done would be a great way to see what options and opportunists marginalized folks are making for themselves.
In short, if you fear for the well-being of, black/brown, indigenous, immigrant, queer, or everyone else that will suffer under the coming wave of fascism, do as Mr Rogers says and look for the helpers, and if you can, help them.
Okay, well clearly absolutely nothing I say will ever convince you that I was asking a question I legitimately wanted an answer to, so I guess you’re right. I’m here in bad faith.
Doesn’t matter, everything I say is either stupid, wrong or both anyway, even if I just ask a question, so I might as well just agree with you.
Either way, you’ll eventually end up realizing I’m not worth your or anyone else’s time eventually.
The system of humanity.
It is not natural to be racist.
It’s actually very natural to form in/out groups. The issue is getting the species as a whole to overcome it.
In/out groups are natural, but the establishment of those groups on ‘racial’ lines is totally constructed. The concept of race itself doesn’t hold up to scrutiny, it’s a fixation on specific phenotypic traits.
Notice how racial bias is fixated on skin color while other phenotypic differences are largely ignored; people with different colored eyes or hair, different nose shapes, different hair textures, etc. 400 years ago skin tone was similarly trivial, but that changed with the rise of chattel slavery.
The core tenet of tribalism is “They aren’t like us.” That might be based on skin color, hair type, clothing, smell (from different diets), behavior. Modern racism (from the last couple hundred years) likely has some elements of more traditional tribalism with relaxed standards so the people a few hundred miles away can start to wrap their heads around the idea that Irish, for instance, are more or less the same as British.
I do hope people can get to the idea that anyone from a given point on this planet (so far) is just a person and not an outsider, but it looks like we have a way to go.
That’s just not accurate. Its historically been cultural, not phenotypes.
Prisoners of war, which were different skin colors, tended to be accepted into the group once they adapted the captor’s customs.
For the last 200 years, a significant amount of slavery has been limited to certain phenotypes. I agree that prior to that, it was less prevalent. That doesn’t mean we don’t have a historical model of slavery based on phenotype, it’s just more recent history.
It means it’s an abberation.
On the other hand, the Irish were enslaved by the British centuries before any Africans were. And it’s not because they had no contact. Everyone in Europe who had any power and influence was aware of Mansa Musa, and there were plenty of Sub-Saharan Africans in Iberia and other parts of the Caliphate in Europe.
Being black was just not the liability it eventually became. Being nearby but in a different country was a much bigger one.
This is what I was trying to say but didn’t have the foresight to elaborate and that seems to have earned me some downvotes lol
Very natural to be afraid of things you don’t know/can’t control
Racism is a product of people exploiting that
In-group out-group bias is very unfortunately ingrained into our brains.