[choko]

(disclaimer: also not a Trump supporter)

I don't think Trump's opponents assume that his supporters are against all immigration at all. I think his opponents deliberately misinterpret Trumps' message to paint his supporters as ignorant racists. That's not to say that there aren't Trump supporters who are actually racist, but I see little actual evidence that it's the norm.

Throwing the racist card has been a pretty effective tactic for the left over the past 8 years, so I can't blame them for drawing from that well until it's dry, but I do get tired of the rhetoric. It's not helping the divisiveness in the United States.

[somebehemoth]

"Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on..."

How does one misinterpret this message to be racist when it is so blatantly racist in and of itself?

"Throwing the racist card has been a pretty effective tactic for the left over the past 8 years..."

With all of the dark skinned people getting killed by police lately it seems more likely that the US has a huge problem with racism. In that context the notion of a "racist card" makes no sense at all in a logical argument.

[oldmanjay]

Since there isn't even a Muslim race, all these claims of racism just seem to me like desperate heavings from people who hate dictionaries and love manipulating emotions.

Also, your last sentence effectively means "since racism is a thing, all accusations of racism are valid" which is almost offensively wrong.

[somebehemoth]

You are being pedantic. Most Muslim's are non-white. It is implicitly racist to suggest we ban all Muslim's from the US.

My last sentence suggests we have a major problem with race relations in the US. You can twist my words however you want but it doesn't change that fact. The entire concept of a "race card" was manufactured to belittle legitimate claims of racism. Creating a term to discredit legitimate questions of racism is offensively wrong.

[douche]

The racist label is interesting, I don't understand why that's the one that people reflexively reach for, especially when you could more accurately say that he is a bigot.

Bigot is more fun to say, plus it doesn't turn into an -ism when used in the adjective form. Because we have enough -isms.

[JabavuAdams]

This is a very weak argument that I see too frequently. Simply replace the word "racist" with the word "bigoted". It's no better to be a bigot than to be a racist so the complaint still stands.

[choko]

>How does one misinterpret this message to be racist when it is so blatantly racist in and of itself?

While I do agree that banning Muslims from entering the country is a horrible idea, Muslim is a religion (and a choice), not a race. For what it's worth, Mexican is also not a race.

>With all of the dark skinned people getting killed by police lately it seems more likely that the US has a huge problem with racism.

I think it seems this way due to increased media coverage and the impact of social media. Undoubtedly there are some racist officers, but I am skeptical that the problem is as large as some would lead us to believe. As of the last count of which I am aware, 130 black people have been killed by police so far this year. It seems likely that the vast majority of these were justified (according to police procedure, which may be flawed but not inherently racist). Don't get me wrong, it's a huge tragedy whenever any innocent person is killed, but being a skeptic, I need some hard evidence to convince me that the US has a "huge" problem with racism. By hard evidence, I mean stats or studies that have NO other plausible explanation other than racism.

[JabavuAdams]

If this is the way you think about these problems you're ignoring thousands of years of historical evidence. The very nature of institutionalized racism is that it's largely invisible to those not directly affected.

Don't hold the victims to a higher standard of evidence then the perpetrators, when the perpetrators hold all the cards.

[somebehemoth]

I am fully aware of the definition of race. The vast majority of Muslim's are non-white. To ban all Muslim's is to ban hundreds of millions of non-white's from the US. Banning hundreds of millions of non-whites from entering the US sounds pretty racist to me.

In regards to your comments on policing. I guess the black man who was shot today, unarmed, with his hands in the air and fully complying with police orders was just another outlier? How many black people need to be killed by police officers before you would consider race to be an issue? 130? 140? The prevalence of cell phone video has exposed an issue that has been present for a long time in the US.

Whether are not you think there is a "huge" problem with racism in the US, at least there is no doubt that there is a problem. Argue over the size of that problem if you'd like, but realize that openly racist groups have uniformly endorsed Trump for a reason.

edit: deleted reference to "white" officers because I don't think it is relevant.

[choko]

Isn't it also possible that the fact that most Muslims aren't white circumstantial? If not, then why not? Isn't it possible that another explanation is that these people are scared of Muslim terrorists, and they are having a knee-jerk reaction (as humans are prone to do)? Why have so many immediately jumped to race as the only probable explanation with such shaky evidence?

As far as police debate goes, yes, that single person could also be an outlier, considering that there are somewhere around 13 million black Americans. If the police were truly "hunting black people", as the media and BLM would have us believe, I would think the number of black Americans killed by police would be far, far higher. As it stands, the odds of a black person being shot by police is extremely remote.

I would argue that the scope of the problem is very much important, given that racism will probably never truly disappear. Humans are inherently tribalistic. We find ways to divide ourselves by color, social status, political views, and which sports teams we support (sidenote: my dad was nearly killed by a Steelers fan for being a Bengals fan). It seems that it would take a major evolutionary shift for this to change.

As to the final comment, I would argue that Trump isn't fully responsible for the groups that choose to support him. For example, Hillary Clinton has received donations (via the Clinton foundation) from countries such as Algeria, where homosexual acts are punished by large fines and imprisonment. That does not mean Hillary Clinton is anti-gay.

I'll level with you. I think a Trump presidency would be a total disaster. I also think the police are far too quick to resort to violence and lack the training to properly defuse a situation or handle firearms. But I don't think the accusations of racism are entirely fair, and I believe in being fair, even to an enemy.