From: Larry
In that way, "Is America a racist country?" is the political equivalent of being asked in court when you stopped beating your wife.
The most important problem with "Is America a racist country?" is that the question itself is based on a malicious and grossly incorrect set of assumptions. Racism is not an opinion. It is a fact. Moreover, the fact that America is a racist society, and that racism and white supremacy negatively impact the life chances of Black and brown people, is one of the most overdetermined and repeated findings of social scientists and other experts.
One can reasonably discuss the dimensions and varieties of racism in America, and how it contours and structures American society to the benefit of white people and the disadvantage of black and brown people. One can also reasonably discuss questions of data and discover new insights from history. One can have a productive discussion about whether and how America can be redeemed from its racist origins.
But the fact and reality of racism and other systems of privilege is that such systems of power give unearned advantages to those individuals and groups defined as being "white," as compared to nonwhites. That is a settled question.
Who is the audience for the public ritual of asking and answering this question?
Today's Republican Party is a white supremacist organization. When Tim Scott, Donald Trump, Lindsey Graham, Ron DeSantis and other prominent Jim Crow Republicans and Trumpists offer their thoughts about racism in America, they are speaking almost exclusively to racially resentful or outright racist white people — because those people are the foundation of the contemporary Republican Party and the Trump movement.
How not to talk about American racism: Tim Scott lures Democrats into a trap | Salon.com
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