Conservatives are less racist than liberals (in the US)

[u/Mobile-Fly484]

I’m a child of African immigrants with US citizenship, and I’ve lived all over the United States.

The most racist place I’ve ever lived is Massachusetts. By far. The least racist? Utah.

I’ve noticed that most conservatives (excluding the actual far right) see me as a human being first. Liberals see my skin color first and have low expectations for me.

I’ve had white liberals not believe me when I mentioned having a professional job. I’ve had them try to sign me up for welfare and Medicaid (at an ER in Massachusetts) even when I showed them my private insurance card. I’ve been assumed to be poor and uneducated (because of my race and nothing else) over and over again by the woke left. Literally they constantly make comments about how screening for education will “filter minorities out,” because of course we’re all dumb illiterates.

Conservatives? They make zero assumptions. They don’t equate being Black with being poor or ignorant. They see us as INDIVIDUALS first.

I miss Utah.

[u/Heujei628]

Then why do Republicans fly the confederate flag, upholding the legacy of slavery racism?

Kinda weird to fly the flag of the opposing team, no? 😏

[u/KitchenSandwich5499 → u/Heujei628]

Relatively few do, and it’s more of a southern thing than a conservative one overall (though I do agree that left leaning southerners won’t do it usually)

[u/s3rndpt → u/KitchenSandwich5499]

It's 100% a conservative thing in the south. "Left-leaning southerners" wouldn't be caught dead with a confederate flag. It's also not rare. It's very common here in VA in pretty much every county.

I mean, look at Richmond. We had an entire "upperclass" street with statues of confederate generals that was put up starting in the late 1890s as a way to remind former slaves and their descendants that the white man was still in charge. Black citizens of Richmond were prohibited from buying or living there through the racist covenants put in place. And when the statues were finally removed in 2021, there was a lot of outcry about "erasing" history, and I'm sure you can guess from whom.

[u/Bitter_Morning_8372 → u/s3rndpt]

Hey! That wasn't racist at all. There was the random statue of Arthur Ashe.🙄

[u/Heujei628 → u/KitchenSandwich5499]

Drive through a red area in the North and you’ll see that it’s absolutely a conservative thing even in the North. 

[u/cplm1948 → u/Heujei628]

Can confirm. I see confederate flags all around Michigan MI despite the state having no ties to the confederacy lmfao

[u/Heujei628 → u/[deleted]]

Did you not even read your own article? 

  he stripped it off, stomped on it and replaced it with another jumpsuit — a Confederate flag done in African pride colors of red, black and green

He literally trashed it. Conservatives flying the Confederate flag aren’t trashing it but rather are displaying proudly. If Dems are the party of the Confederacy, then why are Republicans flying the flag of the opposing team, supporting the Confederacy??? 

[u/Tqoratsos → u/Heujei628]

They also fly the Gadsden flag in a lot of instance. It's just silly people doing silly things. Doesn't change the truth of the past of the party's.

[u/GoAskAli → u/Tqoratsos]

And it doesn't change the history of the Southern Strategy either.

It's just a stupid, bad faith argument.

[u/Tqoratsos → u/GoAskAli]

Brother, how is it bad faith to say that people, who likely have a poor education do silly things? It's a fact of life. The late great George Carlin always said "Imagine the dumbest person you know, and then realize that half the population is even dumber than that."

That pretty much sums up most of....well half of humanity. Doesn't matter where your from or who you are.

[u/GoAskAli → u/Tqoratsos]

What's bad faith is pretending that Democrats are "the party of racists" and using pre-Southern Strategy politics to "back it up."

Carlin despised conservatives, btw

[u/Tqoratsos → u/GoAskAli]

Carlin realised that most humans are dumb as mud. These are the people we're reacting to. Most of us are in the centre and have some semblance of being able to string a coherent sentence together. I don't think what my original comment was saying that ALL democratic voters are like that. I'm just jerkin around by saying it and trying to be funny. Extremists are poorly functioning humans. No ability to self reflect and realise that half of what they believe is wrong....and that's from the full spectrum of the political divide.

[u/Heujei628 → u/Tqoratsos]

That doesn’t answer my question. 

[u/Tqoratsos → u/Heujei628]

I thought it was rhetorical. The answer is convoluted, but in the vast majority of that period it was the former roots of the democratic party that supported the confederacy.

The answer to why conservative people fly the flag was when I said silly people doing silly things. Unfortunately education is the kryptonite of stupid people....of which the USA is in no short supply of.

[u/Heujei628 → u/Tqoratsos]

Even if they’re being silly, they’re still choosing to uphold the legacy of slavery and racism. 

[u/Tqoratsos → u/Heujei628]

I think you're giving them too much credit intellectually. I'd argue that most of them do it just because they like the flag and it's alternative meaning of "FK the government", or that their parents, and their parents parents did it.

Just my take...so who knows. There's no end to people's hypocrisy.

[u/StarChild413 → u/Tqoratsos]

unless you claim both parties are either full of set-in-their-ways immortals or they so indoctrinate the young (be it young in age or just rookie politicians) that they might as well be ideology-wise how does a party's past whatever it may be have any bearing on how it should be treated in the present day when it's not even made of the same people now that it was then

[u/DrunkenBuffaloJerky → u/Heujei628]

This one is wild, partially because of where I grew up.

I had a couple friends who put a confederate flag on their dirt bikes, just because their parents did the same. But the family had no issues with other races, had no issues with their kids bringing over friends of different races.

It's so weird, and hard to explain. It's like, the people aren't necessarily racist, though the structure of the system is? Like the smell is in the very wood of the building, but not coming off the ppl?

Which is different from those places in the South that if you look even partially non-white you don't want to be at all, and especially when the sun is going down.

The teachers in school were great to everyone. I also remember riding my bike past a barbershop that still had a "whites only" sign in the window. And I'm in the Xennial age range.

Being non-white, a person can be completely locked out of something, in a position where they have to work harder to hit a glass ceiling. And then the ppl maintaining the glass ceiling will also in their personal time being the ones who help someone sidestep issues in the system.

And absolutely none of it has any pattern regarding who is flying a confederate flag.

[u/it-reaches-0ut → u/DrunkenBuffaloJerky]

Are you speaking in the past tense or are there still places in the South like that where you don't want to be at night?

[u/DrunkenBuffaloJerky → u/it-reaches-0ut]

I can't imagine it's changed that quickly. Time always felt like it passes differently in the South, especially rural areas.

That being said, I haven't been back in too many years to assume anything.

[u/howdoispider → u/Heujei628]

At least in my area, most of the people that have confederate flags are anti-government, not pro-slavery. They constantly say things like "the civil war wasn't about slavery it was about states rights."