[zzzeek]

> if you really believe the 40% number or anything like it, you're giving yourself a false worldview.

> The majority of people aren't racist nor do they have a problem with government helping them out.

40% is ....not a majority

the current POTUS has a 37% approval rating and this is considered to be historically low, due to wars, corruption, etc.

but even with all of that corruption and failure, 37% of surveyed adults, *still approve*. This includes his frequent, deeply racist tirades on Twitter. They approve!

[troosevelt]

But it's not even approaching 40%, nor did I tie the two together. If you think the 33% of people who voted from Trump did it because they are racist you are wrong. Some did, a lot that wasn't their primary concern. It's viewing pepole wrong to think that.

What's the point of being that pedantic, Mike?

[zzzeek]

have you talked to Trump voters? I have talked to many, many, in my family, in my neighborhood, everywhere.

If there is one view that ties them all together, it's racism (and misogyny). Loud and clear.

If any president of any party posted a tweet like [1] or [2], I would never ever answer "I approve of the job theyre doing" in a poll.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/23/us/politics/trump-china-i...

[2] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/news-wrap-trumps-racist-so...

[troosevelt]

Yes, I've talked to Trump voters and I know people who aren't especially strong Trump supporters that voted for him because the economy was shit. Their reasoning wasn't racism. There is a huge chunk where that is their reasoning, sure.

Once again, if you think it's 40% of 33%, you're wrong. Not everybody who voted for Trump is a racist, it's just not how people work.

[jjkaczor]

If you vote/support someone who runs on a racist platform - you are getting that as part of the "package deal":

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2016/11/10/the-cinemax-theory-of...

[troosevelt]

Voters don't pay attention to or they justify their votes. That doesn't mean they are inherently racist, it means they don't care enough about politics or they care about other issues to the point where they either aren't aware of it or they excuse it away. People pay attention to or remember a lot less about politics than that blog posts suggests.

The majority of people are seeing a variety of headlines from news sources they may not trust (for good reason and bad) and remember a few events over the year, some have such a strong attachment to party that that's the defining thing above all that they're voting for. They're being propagandized and lied to as part of a political campiagn. That they are making the I'd argue wrong choice does not mean they are racist or even intend to be. That racism isn't the defining thing for the majority of them.

It goes back to the original claim, I still think it's obvious that most people aren't voting for a guy because racism. That's inverting how people operate, which is seeing their own needs as the center of the world. If you're unemployed and hurting for money and you are racist, what is your primary motivation for voting? It's probably to get you a job because that's the fastest path to improving your life. But that's presupposing a lot of people are racist, and living around Trump voters, or knowing Trump voters that are minorities, something else is happening other than racism.

I don't think individuals care more about other people than they do themselves. Some people are that spiteful but the majority of people are not because they cannot afford to be.

I don't mean to over argue this but I think it's important that we understand people as they understand themselves.

[jjkaczor]

Well - the fact that they don't pay attention (or lack critical thinking skills and a baseline reasonable education) is a large part of the problem.

But - with a person like POTUS - and those he surrounds himself with, they will throw every possible promise to get the votes - but, each of those issues are only part of their overall agenda and platform. When they got called-out on controversial issues, they outright lied about knowing about things like "Project 2025" during the last election cycle.

Choosing to live in ignorance - or abstaining from voting is accepting that agenda and platform, regardless.

[Ray20]

I don't follow American politics very closely, but in the last election it was not Trump who came out with a racist platform, but his opponent.

[zzzeek]

tribalism is totally how people work when they lack culture, education and critical thinking skills!

here's some basic reading on this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-group_favoritism

[troosevelt]

Sure, but the original claim was this:

> 40% of the people in the US would rather starve to death themselves than live in a world where people they hate for their skin color get anything without toiling for it.

Do we truly believe that's 40% of people in the US? 33% of US voters even voted for him, so you're saying it's pretty much all of them and another 7%. I just don't see it, it's rhetoric and it's not helpful because if your goal is to win over the people that need to be won over, you can't call them racists when they really aren't.

It's a misshaped worldview formed in bubbles. People don't work that way because you're literally assuming that their hate for somebody else overrides their own well-being. Their actions might end up with that result, but I've interacted with enough people from all over the spectrum to know that imagining that many people have that much hate is just wrong. People care about themselves first and foremost, it's a necessity.

If people had jobs, a lot of of this division would disappear but the govt for years has treated low income workers as people that don't matter and can just be displaced without any answers. It's whey the Democratic party which was traditionally the working class party has struggled against Trumpism, because he pretends to care.

[zzzeek]

(back from my two hour Hacker News ban - "make sure all the tempban knobs are turned to the max for that zzzeek guy"

look this is the thing with racism - racism to the degree "races" are fit (randomly, or forcibly) into different ethnic / cultural / etc categories (e.g. "in-groups" and "out groups") is largely, due to the in-group/out-group differential, a natural tendency in humans that has to be actively worked against (hence the term "anti-racism"). Nobody who has grown up in modern society with extreme separation of "races" / cultures into disparate groups can really say "oh I'm not a racist" amongst people who study this at an anthropoligical, sociological, or evolutionary level, biases towards those in societally placed in "out groups" have to be critically challenged on a regular basis.

This is why it's not enough to be some MAGA who says, "oh Im not a racist! i just agree with trump's policy", they of course have no idea how their words and actions are linked to racism because they've never looked at it (and by my experience with Trump voters, they angrily, adamantly refuse to even look at contrarian evidence to their belief systems if you try to show them, much less have the critical thinking skills to actually understand them). They are marinating in distrust and contempt of "the other" (if you know me in RL I'll introduce you to people who wont listen to a single fact you give them if it was not on FOX news).

> People care about themselves first and foremost, it's a necessity.

they care about their in-group. Countries like those in Scandanavia have developed very deep social welfare systems largely because of their history (now being challenged by immigration) of being culturally homogeneous meant that everyone trusted each other implicitly and had no issue with their government dollars being used to help their neighbors [1] (this is a really interesting article btw). A diverse society has a steeper hill to climb in establishing social trust between different cultural / ethnic groups.

[1] https://trendsresearch.org/insight/the-paradox-of-right-wing...

[eudamoniac]

A president could literally shout Korean slurs all day long (I'm Korean) and get a Nazi symbol tattooed on his forehead, and if he continued to do a good job of policymaking I would approve in that poll, though hate the guy. This is what you are not understanding about Trump voters. We really don't care if Trump is racist at all. But that's not because we are racist ourselves. That's just not relevant to the political platform. If he starts passing racist policies, that's bad, but otherwise we don't give a shit.

Leftists, on the other hand, are very highly concerned with the moral purity of their candidates, even above their political efficacy. I don't understand it myself.

[zzzeek]

> If he starts passing racist policies, that's bad, but otherwise we don't give a shit.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/may/03/pentagon-pet...

> Since Trump returned to office in January last year, Pete Hegseth, the rumbustious defense secretary who has made it his mission to remake a military ethos he denounced as “woke”, has fired or forcibly retired 24 generals and senior commanders, with no performance-related reason given.

> About 60% have been Black or female, an approach seemingly driven by the administration’s proclaimed onslaught against “DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] hires”.

so..it's not "racist" when it's "oh all those Black men and women are obviously DEI hires", is that the logic?

[eudamoniac]

60% of any cohort being "black or female" sounds like the population average or below. 50% of people are female, and more than 10% in the USA are black. A random selection of citizens would likely turn up as 60%+ black or female.

I'm not saying this firing wasn't statistically suspect, since I don't know the demographics of that cohort, but I'm guessing based on this misleading phrasing and the lack of information about the cohort that it wasn't.

[zzzeek]

> I don't know the demographics of that cohort

here it is:

https://www.cfr.org/backgrounders/demographics-us-military

this is upper military leadership. Black individuals account for 6.5%-9% of general officers/admirals, senior female leaders (colonels, generals, and admirals) represent less than 5% of all senior military leadership.

> 60% of any cohort being "black or female" sounds like the population average or below.

doing the math this means a Black or female senior military leader has 8.5-11 times higher chance of being fired by Pete Hegseth compared to a white male counterpart