Support US Labour? You must be a racist!

[spoony]

I remember this past summer when the Olympics protests were happening and people here were denouncing Chinese treatment of Tibet, and slowly but surely some posters--mostly new and never heard from again--began turning this totally reasonable position into "you're all just racists and hate the Chinese!" The purpose was clear: to quash opposition to unfair actions by labeling anyone who spoke out as a bigot.

Now the same thing is happening with our struggle to support US companies and unions. More and more it's popping up: the seedling meme that if you favour US companies over foreign ones, it's NOT because millions of jobs are in peril or anything so trivial, it's because we obviously HATE Asians.

This thread:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x4653294
is the epitome of what I'm talking about. The assumptions, the baseless accusations, the projection of claims of racism (see where I'm called a racist by a guy calling me a cracker? nice), leaves a reader with the impression that all labour activists have been littering DU with anti-Asian rhetoric. I've been in a lot of these threads, and I swear I've not seen any of it. Maybe there was some, quickly deleted by alert mods no doubt, but it's apparent that there is a push to associate all US labour advocates with racism and xenophobia.

But if this whole thing is motivated by hatred of foreigners, why is the GOP--the party of hatred of foreigners--against it? And why are solid progressives for it? And what is the real purpose behind trying to stir shit up against people fighting for American labour?

[last1standing]

1. I have whoever started the thread on ignore.

Probably a good decision from the sound of it. :)

[hughee99]

2. Aw, man...

And I was just starting to get over my "Should I be a racist for supporting Hillary or a sexist for supporting Obama" issues from the primaries. Can't we all just get along... :grouphug:

[Grey]

3. I guess I'm just not bright,

all this time I thought it was about not wanting people of colour to get good paying union jobs and making it to the middle class.
I thought that was why the GOP was having hissy fits about the right to organize. Just goes to show.....

[Omaha Steve]

4. Good point

Welcome to the Labor forum. One the auto issue, Reps are prejudiced against the American workers just because they are union.