How Not To Sound Racist: The most awkward CPAC panel ever

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from Alexandra Petri at the WaPo:


NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — No part of this story is a joke.

The tea-party sponsored a panel called “Trump The Race Card: Are You Sick And Tired Of Being Called A Racist When You Know You’re Not One?”

The short answer was provided by this panel, which was run by KCarl Smith, an African American father and grandfather who started the ConservativeMESSENGER in 2009 and who has appeared on the “700 Club” and the “Huckabee Show.” He is a dynamic speaker. The following are highlights from the panel, which I suspect is on video somewhere already, because it is hard to convey in words alone.

Do you want to know how to trump the race card and talk to your family members without fear of being called a racist? he asked. Tell them you are a “Frederick Douglass Republican.”

It is that simple. Also, he has two books available that you should buy. Let him explain . . .


read the rest of the exchanges (this is painful)/watch clip: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/compost/wp/2013/03/15/how-not-to-sound-racist-the-most-awkward-cpac-panel-ever/?print=1

[Xipe Totec]

1. Hard to beleive it's not The Onion. nt

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3. I had to read it through a few times

. . . then I noticed the 'true story' tag at the top of the piece.

Sorry to say that I've witnessed more than a few discussions like that one where bad history and warped anecdotes make for a whole lot of loud stupid.

[cali]

2. what upset me most about this was not the overtly racist asswipe but

the audience's treatment of a young black woman.

[Xipe Totec]

4. “WE DIDN’T COME FOR YOU!” a middle-aged white woman is shouting.

“WE’RE COMING TO HEAR THEM. YOU’RE DOMINATING.”

This said to the only black woman in the audience...

Unfuckingbeleivable.

[cali]

6. Horrifying but all too fucking believable

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7. good point, cali

I think the forum was less about understanding the issues surrounding race and the young woman's concerns and viewpoint, than it was a workshop for conservatives to brush past criticisms of their party's inherent bigotry. Pushing her off and putting her down was just a reasonable part of that, in their eyes. It probably seemed to them like safe ground to do so.

[Skidmore]

10. My take away was that they are seeking a rhetorical

solution, a marketing strategy, for literally whitewashing the same old bigotry. These people appear not to be just unwilling, but incapable of, comprehending the moral issues surrounding their beliefs and that people will not come to them when they simply put a shine on the same old dungball.

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5. Unbelievable

Thank God, with the country's changing demographics, that party is on it's way out. Romney advised self-deportation during the election campaign, now it seems the repugs are actively practicing self-extinction.

Every Democrat running in 2014 and 2016 should make ads from that video.

The guy who seemed to think he was a learned scholar of history was out and out calling for segregation, and saying it to a black man, to his face. And they wonder why they can't get minority voters.

Go get 'em, repugs, that'll surely get you lots of African American, Latino American and Asian American votes (NOT!).

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8. thing is

. . .this is going to be an eternal challenge for successive generations into the future. We can see how knowledge and history gets warped by time and other more insidious motivations and efforts. Then, there's the seemingly irresistible urge for younger generations to try and cast off the burdens of their predecessors' shameful or exploitative pasts with revisionary reasoning and rationalizations for their own impulses to separate or divide for comfort, guile, or profit.

It's a multi-generational challenge.

[dballance]

9. When Your Party Has to Sponsor A Session on How Not to be Called Racist

You have already lost the battle. Of course they brought out a black man to host the session. How else could they give it the least bit of credibility?

A Frederick Douglass Republican? Does he realize most people won't have the foggiest clue who Douglass was?

Perhaps if the republican party wants to stop being seen as racist it should start by not being so overtly hateful, partisan and obstructionist to the african-american who currently occupies the White House.