[zerb]

Certainly. 2016 is evidence of what happens when you don't listen to people you disagree with. Lower class whites are disproportionally-likely to have "deplorable" views. Yet even as we as a society move to bring education to more and more people, still this demographic has become the last remaining group of people that it's "OK" to hate. So they've reacted.

Disclaimers: Obviously, not everyone who's a lower-income white person is racist. Nor do I support racist views -- just saying that ignoring people will not help effect change. MLK was a genius and great person.

[meri_dian]

I believe it's important to put racism and hate in their contexts. Often times people are racist or discriminatory because they fear, either for their own way of life being eroded or because they don't understand the "other".

This does not mean those attitudes are good. Far from it. But we must try to empathize with all people. Which is much easier to do when, as MLK advocated, we love all people.

[zerb]

Oh, that's another great point. There are different kinds of racism.

There's a great video from the 80s called "The Color of Fear" which has a bunch of randomly-chosen people of various ethnicities put into a room, who slowly start to talk about more and more uncomfortable subjects.

There's fear. There's lack of empathy for problems which don't affect you personally. There's even outright hate. These are different problems with different solutions.

[nitwit005]

The reason people were surprised is because they did listen to the voters.

Look at all the conservative religious voters voted for Trump, despite him being nothing like what they describe as an ideal candidate, and often believing he's been unfaithful to his wife or lying about his religious beliefs.

People often don't know what they want, or have reasons to lie about it. Talking to people about what they want is often ineffective.

[zerb]

I can think of more than one religion that's pro-life _and_ advocates for refugees, the poor, strong marriages. Individual people always have their own flaws.

My problem with voters is that they're not willing to take enough risks. The "Throwing away your vote" meme was election tampering just as much as the Russian Facebook ads.

[mc32]

It's also worth noting that not one race has a monopoly on racism. Racism exists amongst many groups. Older Koreans hold some pretty odious views about Japanese. Newer generations don't hold the same views, normally, but some do. Same in the US, if you walk through or work in low income neighborhoods you'll hear racist point of views pretty often as well as anti lgbt comments. But often it's only the lower class whites who get called out.

Another observation is that we've created an environment where we condone hate on some people, even by progressives.

Basically the rule is, it's not okay to hate, unless its directed against the outgroup of society.

[drewbuschhorn]

Are sure you don't just hear about lower class white racism more because they're more numerous than older Korean(-Americans)? That seems like mostly a scaling issue to me.

It's sort of like how people say "well, some African Americans are racists too." Well, yeah but 90% of CEOs are white, so if they're racist against you, you're in more trouble on average than if the other 10% discriminate against you.

[oceanghost]

This is the problem with the big tent. My primary concern in the 2016 election was media propaganda. I voted for Trump in California, where it would never, ever, matter, as a protest vote. That makes me a deplorable racist? :)