Racism USA

 In an earlier comment, William Connolley wrote that he thought the US was "wealthist but not racist."  I want to assure him that he is quite wrong.  The history of racism in the US started with slavery but continued with Jim Crow.  The cardinal principle of Jim Crow was denying blacks the right to vote.  This policy was ensured by law and violence, with widespread lynching being the go to sanction.  The passage of the voting rights act during the 1960's was the first solid hole in this policy, and it turned the South from solidly Democratic to solidly Republican.

Ever since, the Republican Party has depended on racist support for it core voters.  The scumbags of the Republican Supreme court gutted the Voting Rights Act, and ever since the Republican Party has made a career of suppressing the black vote.  Techniques today are a bit more subtle than in the hay day of the KKK - burdensome voter registration rules, placing voting sites far from predominantly Black neighborhoods, ensuring that such voting sites will result in hours long waits to vote, poorly motivated challenges to Black voters, and so on.

As we have seen, Trump, Trump TV (Fox) and leading Republican politicians have made a practice of praising and enabling neo-Nazis and other racist organizations.  In addition they routinely demonize Hispanics and Asians.

Finally, US police forces routinely target non-whites, and especially Blacks, with tactics from harassment and brutalization up to and including murder.  Thanks again to the so-called Supreme Court and its doctrine of "qualified immunity," police are almost never held accountable for abuses - onc might say never, before ubiquitous cell phone cameras.  Donald Trump and William Barr have turned federal police into quasi-fascist instruments of oppression against peaceful and completely legal protestors.

Today's Republican party is a snake pit of racism, consisting almost entirely of racists and their enablers.

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