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I'm Jewish Colombian among other things. I'm a mutt. I can pass as white. Where my dad came from (Scary Gary) you voted Republican because up until about the 1

I'm Jewish Colombian among other things. I'm a mutt. I can pass as white. Where my dad came from (Scary Gary) you voted Republican because up until about the 1960s, they were the party that cared about immigrants and wanted them to succeed. So, when he moved to a similarly Republican state in the 80s, he remained a Republican. The Republican is not a werewolf boogeyman around here. I made the mistake once of saying that I was a "closet Republican" on HN and I got downvoted so fast that I lost all self-confidence for about a year. I went to a student Democrats meeting on my local campus. Now I know college political groups are a unique demographic and I get why these people (these people, yikes) feel this way, and those that I talked to were completely rational; like I could be and was one of them. But when we were asked at the beginning of the meeting why people were Democrats, the very first person responded that they were a Democrat because they were not a racist. The tactlessness, the arrogance, the naivety, and immaturity were so concentrated in a single sentence that I wish I could have left. But I stayed and learned even if that tribalism is toxic and wins no friends nor understanding nor ultimately progress.

js2 5y ago
The Republican party has cynically been using race for fifty years to split the working class vote. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy So for someone to say they aren't Republican because they aren't racist is hyperbolic, but it isn't wrong. What is Scary Gary?
- gustavo-fring 5y ago
  Yes and the first Jews and African-Americans that gained positions in government gained them as Republicans. Prior to the Southern strategy, the democratic party was the party of Jim Crow and lynchings and backwards ass race hatred. But they, like people, changed. It really says nothing about the potential of the parties today. If you are so ideological that you can't see that calling people you just met racists is a bad strategy, I don't know what to tell you. Want to play a game of prisoner's dilemma? Scary Gary == Gary, Indiana, a burb of Chicago. It met the same crisis as a lot of Rust Belt areas and if you watch a youtube vid of it today, you'll see why it's scary. The Jackson family was from there, left for the same reasons (well...).
  - js2 5y ago
    Except that the GOP is still cynically appealing to racism. The parties in their modern form began after their realignment with the civil rights movement. They haven't fundamentally changed since the sixties. Yes, I agree it doesn't persuade anyone to call them names. I don't excuse that behavior. But again, it isn't wrong to say that the GOP uses racism to this day to win votes.
    - gustavo-fring 5y ago
      Yes, political parties use racism and the language of demagogues to win votes. We learned that 2000 years ago. The trick is getting that there's no "party" attribute that determines that. Do you believe that the Democratic party doesn't use racist rhetoric? I don't even want to make this an us vs them whataboutism.
      - Traster 5y ago
        I think the thing you need to content with is the fact that when someone says the Republican party uses racism to win votes what they're doing is linking you to a wiki page with long and detailed documentation of the specifics of what they're doing and how. Now, in response to that you sort of just wave around and claim all parties use racism. But that's not actually true is it, there is no similar concerted strategy on the Democratic side to stir up racism to drive votes- and this is born out in the numbers where one party has a very out of the norm demographic appeal.
        gustavo-fring 5y ago
        Nobody linked to that here, they made a lot of vague assertions. But you could, yes, and I'm sure that wiki page would be much easier to source than with the Democrats, because there are more people (many more) using overt racism in the Republican party today. That's still not an actual response to what I posted, it is what we all know to be whataboutism. Nobody wins by playing the "they do it, too, but better" card. It just makes the losing party look incompetent and a little evil.
- qtt 5y ago
  If you read that Wikipedia page, under the Scholarly debates section, the existence of a "Southern Strategy" at all is debated. Nixon never claimed to have a Southern Strategy - he was focused on a national strategy that included the South. Notably, in his 1972 election, he carried 49 states - indicating that he did indeed have an inclusive national strategy. The more likely explanation to contemporary GOP success is that Nixon (& others) were very effective appealing to suburban demographics (where the top issue was the economy). It took decades after for the South to gradually become a GOP stronghold, and it is very debatable which specific policies were the cause of that. People point to figures like Strom Thurmond as evidence of a Southern Strategy, but there were several Democrats who did things like filibuster the civil rights act & endorse segregation. Prominent Democrats such as Robert Byrd & Richard Russell Jr. were fighting Nixon's party at the time. It's safe to say that at the very least, the existence of a "southern strategy" is not something that can be accepted at face value.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - jolux 5y ago
    You should look at the political career of Lee Atwater if you haven’t, he was a Republican political consultant who was uncharacteristically candid about his methodology. At the very least, he thought Southern Strategy-style tactics were politically successful, and he may have been mistaken, but I think it’s hard to argue they didn’t exist.
    - gustavo-fring 5y ago
      He's famous for spreading racist rumors about McCain (he had adopted a darker-skinned girl) during the 2000 primaries. There's a documentary about him. Boogeyman? Something like that.
      - gustavo-fring 5y ago
        ...that was actually Karl Rove, his protege.
Poiesis 5y ago
I don't exactly how old your anecdote is, but I think it's pretty well established that Donald Trump is a racist, as are many of the people he chooses to work with. When Trump was president, there was little if any pushback to his racism in the Republican Party, and they chose instead to "close ranks" and support him. Under those circumstances, I can understand why people would say they're a Democrat because they're not racist. To my eyes, it seems like governing requires many decisions with no clear answers and with many tradeoffs. It is not always clear (to me, at least) whether a traditionally conservative or liberal approach will be the best for a particular issue. So I've lamented recent politics that have really not given me much of a choice. However much I want to have a choice of people with multiple smart approaches, I just can't in good conscience support people who remain in a party that is defined by their support for people like that.
- gustavo-fring 5y ago
  This happened in 2014 when this same group believed that they could win the governership of a conservative state with an abortion-supporter. I'm not making a judgment on that position, I'm just saying that it completely misunderstands the culture of a state, to a scary, scary degree, part of why they don't win. Trump is and was a fraud, liar, and fool. But even Crazy Ted Cruz opposed him. The Bushes were obviously appalled by him. He won due to Twitter and new political dynamics. We face a repeat of him if we keep electing ignorant and arrogant celebrities that can't take responsibility. Trump's opponent in 2016 lost due to arrogance, Weiner being a predator, and a repeated series of unforced errors. Their own history is full of recorded lies and power grabs and being late to the party like supporting gay marriage. Their husband was the last president before Trump that was impeached for lying about sexual impropriety yet called it a vast right wing conspiracy (yikes). Well, ahead of the game there. We can choose to pay attention to this or not, but I'll tell you what I'm sick of being promised things by liars that know exactly (or worse, don't) what the are doing.
  - jolux 5y ago
    You turned this into a political flame war for no reason at all. The head of this thread doesn’t say anything about Republicans or Democrats. People didn’t leave because Ryan Singer was acting Republican, they left because he was acting racist. No reason to conflate the two if you believe they’re unrelated.
dang 5y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27045887 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27045887.
- gustavo-fring 5y ago
  Why was this moved? I'm interested in what norm this was contrary to.
  - dang 5y ago
    It was just that the thread went completely off topic.

js2 5y ago

The Republican party has cynically been using race for fifty years to split the working class vote. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy So for someone to say they aren't Republican because they aren't racist is hyperbolic, but it isn't wrong. What is Scary Gary?

gustavo-fring 5y ago
Yes and the first Jews and African-Americans that gained positions in government gained them as Republicans. Prior to the Southern strategy, the democratic party was the party of Jim Crow and lynchings and backwards ass race hatred. But they, like people, changed. It really says nothing about the potential of the parties today. If you are so ideological that you can't see that calling people you just met racists is a bad strategy, I don't know what to tell you. Want to play a game of prisoner's dilemma? Scary Gary == Gary, Indiana, a burb of Chicago. It met the same crisis as a lot of Rust Belt areas and if you watch a youtube vid of it today, you'll see why it's scary. The Jackson family was from there, left for the same reasons (well...).
- js2 5y ago
  Except that the GOP is still cynically appealing to racism. The parties in their modern form began after their realignment with the civil rights movement. They haven't fundamentally changed since the sixties. Yes, I agree it doesn't persuade anyone to call them names. I don't excuse that behavior. But again, it isn't wrong to say that the GOP uses racism to this day to win votes.
  - gustavo-fring 5y ago
    Yes, political parties use racism and the language of demagogues to win votes. We learned that 2000 years ago. The trick is getting that there's no "party" attribute that determines that. Do you believe that the Democratic party doesn't use racist rhetoric? I don't even want to make this an us vs them whataboutism.
    - Traster 5y ago
      I think the thing you need to content with is the fact that when someone says the Republican party uses racism to win votes what they're doing is linking you to a wiki page with long and detailed documentation of the specifics of what they're doing and how. Now, in response to that you sort of just wave around and claim all parties use racism. But that's not actually true is it, there is no similar concerted strategy on the Democratic side to stir up racism to drive votes- and this is born out in the numbers where one party has a very out of the norm demographic appeal.
      - gustavo-fring 5y ago
        Nobody linked to that here, they made a lot of vague assertions. But you could, yes, and I'm sure that wiki page would be much easier to source than with the Democrats, because there are more people (many more) using overt racism in the Republican party today. That's still not an actual response to what I posted, it is what we all know to be whataboutism. Nobody wins by playing the "they do it, too, but better" card. It just makes the losing party look incompetent and a little evil.
qtt 5y ago
If you read that Wikipedia page, under the Scholarly debates section, the existence of a "Southern Strategy" at all is debated. Nixon never claimed to have a Southern Strategy - he was focused on a national strategy that included the South. Notably, in his 1972 election, he carried 49 states - indicating that he did indeed have an inclusive national strategy. The more likely explanation to contemporary GOP success is that Nixon (& others) were very effective appealing to suburban demographics (where the top issue was the economy). It took decades after for the South to gradually become a GOP stronghold, and it is very debatable which specific policies were the cause of that. People point to figures like Strom Thurmond as evidence of a Southern Strategy, but there were several Democrats who did things like filibuster the civil rights act & endorse segregation. Prominent Democrats such as Robert Byrd & Richard Russell Jr. were fighting Nixon's party at the time. It's safe to say that at the very least, the existence of a "southern strategy" is not something that can be accepted at face value.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- jolux 5y ago
  You should look at the political career of Lee Atwater if you haven’t, he was a Republican political consultant who was uncharacteristically candid about his methodology. At the very least, he thought Southern Strategy-style tactics were politically successful, and he may have been mistaken, but I think it’s hard to argue they didn’t exist.
  - gustavo-fring 5y ago
    He's famous for spreading racist rumors about McCain (he had adopted a darker-skinned girl) during the 2000 primaries. There's a documentary about him. Boogeyman? Something like that.
    - gustavo-fring 5y ago
      ...that was actually Karl Rove, his protege.

Poiesis 5y ago

I don't exactly how old your anecdote is, but I think it's pretty well established that Donald Trump is a racist, as are many of the people he chooses to work with. When Trump was president, there was little if any pushback to his racism in the Republican Party, and they chose instead to "close ranks" and support him. Under those circumstances, I can understand why people would say they're a Democrat because they're not racist. To my eyes, it seems like governing requires many decisions with no clear answers and with many tradeoffs. It is not always clear (to me, at least) whether a traditionally conservative or liberal approach will be the best for a particular issue. So I've lamented recent politics that have really not given me much of a choice. However much I want to have a choice of people with multiple smart approaches, I just can't in good conscience support people who remain in a party that is defined by their support for people like that.

gustavo-fring 5y ago
This happened in 2014 when this same group believed that they could win the governership of a conservative state with an abortion-supporter. I'm not making a judgment on that position, I'm just saying that it completely misunderstands the culture of a state, to a scary, scary degree, part of why they don't win. Trump is and was a fraud, liar, and fool. But even Crazy Ted Cruz opposed him. The Bushes were obviously appalled by him. He won due to Twitter and new political dynamics. We face a repeat of him if we keep electing ignorant and arrogant celebrities that can't take responsibility. Trump's opponent in 2016 lost due to arrogance, Weiner being a predator, and a repeated series of unforced errors. Their own history is full of recorded lies and power grabs and being late to the party like supporting gay marriage. Their husband was the last president before Trump that was impeached for lying about sexual impropriety yet called it a vast right wing conspiracy (yikes). Well, ahead of the game there. We can choose to pay attention to this or not, but I'll tell you what I'm sick of being promised things by liars that know exactly (or worse, don't) what the are doing.
- jolux 5y ago
  You turned this into a political flame war for no reason at all. The head of this thread doesn’t say anything about Republicans or Democrats. People didn’t leave because Ryan Singer was acting Republican, they left because he was acting racist. No reason to conflate the two if you believe they’re unrelated.

dang 5y ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27045887 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27045887.

gustavo-fring 5y ago
Why was this moved? I'm interested in what norm this was contrary to.
- dang 5y ago
  It was just that the thread went completely off topic.