1) Mexican isn't a race - it is a nationality. There are people of all races that are Mexican.
2) Curiels parents were illegal immigrants, and exactly the kind of people that Trump says he would deport.
3) Curiel has mentioned in the past (in a NYT article from the early 2000s, I can find a link if you like) that his Mexican heritage has had an impact in his practice of the law.
4) Curiel isn't a robot. Imagine if he ruled in favor of Trump...how popular would he be at the next family gathering?
5) Was it racist when Justice Sotomayor said that a "wise Latina" could make a better judicial decision than an old white man?
I'm curious which of these points downvoters are disagreeing with. I say this as someone with family members who look very much "Mexican" to most Americans.
I don't like Trump's talk at all, but how would anyone with illegal immigrant parents would have comfortable family gatherings after supporting Trump? Job or not, family is strong.
Point 1: substitute "bigot" for "racist". There's a common but foolish (or self-serving) argument that X can't be racist, because Y isn't a race. A contributing factor is that many people say/write "racist" when they mean "bigot".
The point is that bigotry is no better than racism, so the reader/listener should just substitute the words and see whether the argument still makes sense rather than offering a vacuous counter-argument.
EDIT> French isn't a race, but if I want to round up French people and put them in camps, I'm still a shit-bag.
If that's the case, perhaps we should just use the words that mean the things we want to say, instead of using words that don't mean the things we want to say to say the things we want to say?
It isn't a great start when people leveling criticism at someone don't even understand(or care) about the meanings of the words they say.
Arguing that someone may be biased on the basis of their race is not racism. It's at worst generalizing or ad hominem. This had nothing to do with Curiel being Mexican specifically other than the nature of the circumstances (Trump might have advanced a similar argument about a Muslim judge, for instance).
Progressives going after this specifically was misguided overreach. There's a reasonable basis to assume someone may be biased by their racial heritage. There's so much else Trump has done that is totally egregious that I find it mind-boggling to call him on this specifically. If anything, it gives ammunition to the anti-PC crowd.
I'm not sure what you said discounts the fact that what he said is racism. The post he is replying to is asking for an example and he gave one. Also, how is 5 related to this event?
OP was giving reasons why what Trump said in that case was not racism. I'm guessing 5 is related because it shows a sitting supreme court justice saying that her "race"(if we are defining heritage/ethnicity as race) plays an important role in her judicial decisions.
> I'm guessing 5 is related because it shows a sitting supreme court justice saying that her "race"(if we are defining heritage/ethnicity as race) plays an important role in her judicial decisions
Specifically on issues of race or gender discrimination, she holds out that her background -- largely through life experiences, though she is expressly less eager to completely discount the possibility of an inherent or cultural contribution than a particular other commentator -- provides an advantage in the quality of her decisions, sure.
Extended quote from the 2001 speech in which the "wise Latina" remark appears (it was later repeated, on the same issue, several times in other speeches by Sotomayor.):
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In our private conversations, Judge Cedarbaum has pointed out to me that seminal decisions in race and sex discrimination cases have come from Supreme Courts composed exclusively of white males. I agree that this is significant but I also choose to emphasize that the people who argued those cases before the Supreme Court which changed the legal landscape ultimately were largely people of color and women. I recall that Justice Thurgood Marshall, Judge Connie Baker Motley, the first black woman appointed to the federal bench, and others of the NAACP argued Brown v. Board of Education. Similarly, Justice Ginsburg, with other women attorneys, was instrumental in advocating and convincing the Court that equality of work required equality in terms and conditions of employment.
Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, a possibility I abhor less or discount less than my colleague Judge Cedarbaum, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging. Justice O'Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases. I am not so sure Justice O'Connor is the author of that line since Professor Resnik attributes that line to Supreme Court Justice Coyle. I am also not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, as Professor Martha Minnow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.
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Certainly, I don't think its particularly controversial to say that, with otherwise equivalent general "wisdom" (insofar as that can be quantified and compared, something that Sotomayor correctly points out is not necessarily realistic), a person with deeper relevant life experience on the subject being addressed might do better.
Key quote is "a possibility I abhor less or discount less than my colleague Judge Cedarbaum, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging."
I don't think it's fair to argue that gender/national origin can only make a positive impact on judgement, and not a negative impact as well.
Mexico has a massive border wall on its southern border with Guatemala. Is that racist too?
Not sure exactly what you mean by anti-trade, and how it relates to racism.
Mexican is a nationality, not a race. There are Mexicans of all races, including white(which latinos are classed as, but lets say western european ethnicity too)
Islam is a religion, not a race. There are Muslims of all races, including white.
> Mexico has a massive border wall on its southern border with Guatemala. Is that racist too?
A border wall is (independently of whether it is good policy) not inherently racist.
Using racist rhetoric to sell a border wall is, OTOH, racist.
> Mexican is a nationality, not a race.
I'm not sure its particularly productive to argue that a ancestry-based bigotry is technically distinct from racism because it is based on national origin rather than classical races.
> There are Mexicans of all races, including white(which latinos are classed as, but lets say western european ethnicity too)
Hispanics/Latinos aren't necessarily White; in theory, Hispanic origin "ethnicity" is orthogonal to "race". OTOH, the way it is usually broken out into statistics reflects the fact that "Hispanic" is the only "ethnicity" used along US "race" categories specifically because it reflects a new basis of quasi-racial exclusion in the US which became important after the classical racial categories were established, which is why the categories broken out are, almost without exception, "White (non-Hispanic)", "Black", "Asian/Pacific Islander", "Native American/Alaskan Native", and "Hispanic" -- while on forms that you fill out its treated as an orthogonal category to race, its really in the common thinking exactly another racial category.
Racism is an overused and abused epithet by both sides. Often, tribalist prejudice crosses across racism, nationalism, ethnocentrism, and religious chauvinism. To avoid these semantic games, let's just call it for what it is at the core: bigotry.
If you want to argue that security cordons and fences are not a "wall", then fine. There is no wall on the southern border of Mexico. Just a security cordon and fences.
Sorry, you are confusing nationalism with racism. For example, there is nothing racist about border security (the wall). In fact without significant border security, a nation ceases to exist.
Major nations, in the modern era of national and supra-national states, tend to either have their own state or dominate a supranational state, and so tend to have border security (which is necessary for an effective state, though less important to a nation.)
Of course, several centuries in to the era of the nation-state as a dominant form, lots of people confuse states and nations.
Re suits: As far as I know, he was never found guilty in any of those law suits. "Settling" is not an admission of guilt. It could just as easily be the cost/benefit of fighting the lawsuit is not worth it. The government has deep pockets after all.
Re central park 5: Yes, that was a huge blunder(as was that entire case for that matter). Is there any indication it was based on their race, and not the savagery of the crime they were accused of?
Re birther: What does that have to do with race? "American" isn't a race.
Like I said, a generous suspicion. I can also suspect that had McCain been elected he would not have been dogged with insinuations about his citizenship, forced to proffer his birth certificate, referred to as a "Panamanian" by his detractors, etc. etc. for practically the duration of his first term.
NOTE: I think arguments about whether Donald Trump is a racist are a red herring. Obviously not all of Trump's supporters are racist, and any claim that they are is ridiculous and counterproductive. I don't really care if Donald Trump is a racist or not. I have issues with his policies, which is what I think people should be talking about.
Anyway, you asked for examples of situations where Trump has encouraged racial division, so I'm going to try to present some examples without any name-calling or hyperbole.
In addition to Gonzalo Curiel, he's made a few other remarks to which some people have taken offense.
The republican party is mostly pro-legal immigration. The official party stance is that legal immigration is good for business and increases the supply of labor. Trump distinguished himself early on in the primary by supporting a border wall between the US and Mexico. To explain his position, he stated that "Mexico is not sending us their best people." He went on to say that many people illegally crossing the border are rapists and murderers. Undoubtedly some people who illegally cross the border have committed such offenses, but it seems unlikely that a significant portion of the 11 million illegal immigrants currently in the US are rapists and murderers.
Trump has also voiced support for deporting all 11 million illegal immigrants in the US. This is much more hard-line than most other recent republican presidential candidates. The amount of money and resources that would be required to locate, round up, and deport 11 million people would likely be very high. Furthermore, many of these illegal immigrants have given birth to children since they got here, which makes their children legal US citizens. Trump has yet to clarify how he is going to deal with these split-citizenship families.
At another point, Trump supported a temporary ban on all Muslims entering the country. He initially said that we would ask people if they were Muslim, and if they said yes, we wouldn't let them into the country. He has since changed his plan to only involve stricter checks on people who are emigrating from war-torn areas.
I'm not entirely sure if this is due to Trump doing something to alienate African American voters, or if Hillary is just extremely popular with them (her husband was the president who signed Affirmative Action and a handful of other anti-discrimination bills). Regardless of the cause, Trump has very low approval among African American voters. According to an NBC News/Wallstreet Journal poll last week, Donald Trump is polling at literally 0% with African American voters in both Ohio and Pennsylvania, which are critical swing states.
There's also the issue of Barack Obama's birthplace. Donald Trump was one of the most famous proponents of the idea that President Obama was born in Kenya, and was therefore not a US citizen, and not eligible to be president. He demanded that Obama provide his birth certificate, which was eventually made public. Trump then argued that this was a short form version, and he didn't believe it was authentic. Trump has also stated that he does not believe President Obama graduated from Columbia University. Trump has distanced himself from these positions lately. He hasn't apologized or said that he no longer believes these things, but he doesn't talk about them and refuses to answer questions about it.