If you were going to argue that POC shouldn't switch from HRC to Bernie...what would be your case?
(note: this is addressed to those trying to hold the POC vote for HRC as it begins to slip away...not POC themselves, who deserve full respect for whatever choices they make).
Other than schmoozing and getting interviewed in magazines that run ads for fade cream, what actual significant achievements for AA voters can you point to from HRC?
What actual concern did she ever show about institutional racism before 2015, when she finally made a few speeches about it?
When did she actually stop supporting "law and order"
I don't need to remind anyone what that is always a code phrase for, do I?)?
What incidents can you point to where she ever took any actual political risks in standing with POC? Showed any actual courage on the anti-racism front?
POC voters deserve every Democratic candidate's loyalty and UNINTERRUPTED solidarity, because that is the only way to show respect for that or any other community a candidate seeks support from. How would you spin all the years when she clearly did interrupt her solidarity with POC on the actual issues?
What case would you make that she deserves continued POC support more than anybody else?
= new reply since forum marked as read
Response to Ken Burch (Original post)
It's killing me!!!!
I wanna change mine to Christian Atheist.
it's real.
Response to guillaumeb (Reply #5)
Response to guillaumeb (Reply #11)
Response to guillaumeb (Reply #19)
Response to guillaumeb (Reply #22)
Response to Ken Burch (Reply #9)
Are you saying India is more bigoted now than it was in the 1980s?
And like a lot of historical scholarship, it's very controversial but the fight is actually about the present rather than the past (sound familiar to a black American? 
)
The Caste System™ in the sense that people generally mean seems to have been codified under the Gupta empire in the 400s of the current era. (If you've ever seen the batshit crazy Phantom time hypothesis conspiracy theory, my favorite absurdity of it is that it makes the Gupta empire never have existed.) Of course it came from antecedents before that, but it was roughly equivalent to the feudal systems that were simultaneously developing in China and Europe as the Han and Roman empires broke down and took international trade with them. It was largely a reaction to Jainism and Buddhism gaining ground among non-Brahmins and refusing to grant what had been traditional -- but not yet codified -- Brahminic privileges. In this sense, you could view Hinduism itself becoming a "religion" in the modern sense in response to the universalist creeds of Buddhism and Jainism (and later, of course, the much more universalist Islam), rather than Buddhism and Jainism being "reformations" (to use the European term) of an existing Hindu "religion". (And while we're here, "Hindu" literally means "living near the Indus river", a body of water now entirely within Pakistan -- yes, this irritates Pakistanis.)
Southern India and Southeast Asia had had Brahminic influence for centuries (that's actually why it's called "Indo-China", apparently), but had also adopted Buddhism quite early. So the caste "system" in the sense of a legalized code of privileges and requirements was initially a northern institution, and it remained (and remains) strongest north of the Deccan, in the Gangetic plains.
Islam, as I mentioned above, is probably the most absolutist of universalist religions, and its incursion into and conquest of the subcontinent provided an even more effective foil against which Hinduism and the caste system could define themselves. (Interestingly, India is the only place Islamic armies conquered without serious attempts to convert the population to Islam before or after.)
The caste system was then used by European colonial powers (the British more than the French or Portuguese) as part of the classic divide-and-rule tactic, but in fairness they didn't need much help: by the 1700s the caste system was so inextricably linked with Hinduism and "Indianness" that even Nestorian Christians, Muslims, Jews, Jains, Buddhists, and Sikhs had adapted their communal identities and economies into the caste framework. (Caste was much, much more than just ethnic discrimination: it was an entire economic and political system. There were castes whose economic role was to make a specific kind of basket that a different caste's role was to use to dry fish.)
Well-meaning British liberals were horrified by some of the aspects of the caste system, and in the end saw "freeing our benighted colored cousins" from its influence as one of the many laudable outcomes of Empire. "The Story of Little Black Sambo" is from this period, and is actually about a South Indian boy, and is actually for the time a fairly left-wing story about how even a poor Indian could, by adopting western attitudes and technology, achieve happiness.
Anyways. Fast forward to Partition and Independence in '47. The part of Greater India that became Pakistan had not been as caste-centric because Islam had had a much greater influence (Bangladesh, however, was both tribe- and caste-centric, which reminds me that I'm ignoring the simultaneous tribal rather than castal systems, which would be yet another dissertation). Bharat (that's the Hindi word for "India" in the sense of the Republic) was left with Bharat proper (the Ganges plain), the Deccan ("the South"
, and the northwest and northeast (mountains and jungles, respectively). The caste system was much stronger around the Ganges than in the South, but it was still noticeable in the South as well. So, when crafting the Constitution, The Caste System™ was declared illegal, and victory was declared over centuries of oppression.
OK, well, even back then people weren't that stupid. For 60 years now, part of the implementation of outlawing caste has been, ironically, the most comprehensive definition and enrollment of castes in Indian history. Literally the first time that every single Indian person in India was officially and legally designated as being in a particular caste was after the 1950 census; even at the height of the Gupta empire that never happened. (c.f. the "who's black?" question whenever reparations is brought up.)
This enrollment had to happen because it was immediately recognized that affirmative action would be necessary to actually dig the caste system up by its roots. So, quotas were set aside for "scheduled" (i.e. "low" castes and tribes. If you remember the broohaha about that Indian diplomat in NYC underpaying her maid, people read caste exactly the wrong way into that: the diplomat was of significantly "lower" caste than the maid, who is Catholic and of mixed Portuguese descent (the diplomat has since been convicted of -- I shit you not -- illegally buying a condo in Mumbai that was supposed to be set aside for war widows. You can't make this shit up.).
Anyways. Sorry for the history-spew, but your question was interesting and cut to the heart of the OP's rather... odd... assertion. On a personal note, my wife actually technically lost her caste when she married me, though since she hasn't legally changed her name yet nobody can tell that immediately (caste is in many cases identifiable by last name). And as a final point to anyone reading: asking a person of Indian origin his or her caste is kind of strikingly rude, like looking at someone with my ambiguous skin tone and saying "so what are you, really?" (I sometimes say accurately "octaroon" just to then watch them surreptitiously look it up.)
Source? 
in my phrasing.
I was trying to say, in that last sentence, that the anti-racist movement is NOT "social conservatism" I've rewritten the sentence you quoted, since, in its original form, it somehow accidentally conveyed to you the exact opposite of what I intended to convey).
I want more working-class whites JOIN the anti-racist movement. I want racism dead yesterday. But it isn't as simple as saying "don't be racist". That does need to be said, but just saying that never works.
A big part of talking about "the E J words" words that infuriate you for some reason) is to break the false consciousness that lures working-class whites onto the self-destructive path of blaming POC rather than corporate power for the problems in their lives. It's in the service of crushing white supremacist delusions. There is no way that doing that leads to the fight against racism being back-burnered. If anything, it pushes the anti-racist fight to the front of the line.
To be on the left in this country is to be as committed to fighting racism as you are to fighting greed and stopping war.
just those "isms" promulgated by the Religious right and exclude racism.
But, anyway, ... Do you agree that working -class whites should fight against heterosexism and anti-choice movements and movements to force prayer in public schools?
"a distraction to working class whites"
