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I'm sure most white European countries have the same basic level of racism that the US does, both establishment and among the populace. The more immigration by people of color, the more racism.
This is also the dilemma of the white liberal (usually in a higher income bracket and more educated) in the US. It is a fact that if you're working class you're more likely to have minorities in your neighborhood and in your workplace. In fact, when schools in Charlotte, NC were desegregated under court order in the early 70s, some neighborhood schools would have been naturally integrated, but they became part of the busing plan, too. Well off whites are the ones who leave the neighborhood when it becomes integrated; they're also more likely to climb the ladder in their workplace. If you can't see this, you're not paying attention.
It's been my life experience that affluent whites (even if liberal) do not move into lesser neighborhoods, with the exception of "gentrifying" cheap real estate. Case in point: I lived in a neighborhood in Charlotte called Midwood in the 60s, decaying, formerly middle class and close to downtown, but even at that time, becoming racially mixed. In the early 80s, wonderful old houses, Craftsman style and others, were being snapped up for well under $100K; they now sell for around half a million...and most only got cosmetic improvements. Sadly, there was no such rescue for surrounding neighborhoods which continued to decline and remained largely minority.
Okay, okay! Obama doesn't solve race relations in this country, in fact, his winning is more of a reflection of how vile, criminal, stupid, barbaric, disgusting, hopeless, incompetent Bush was than that Americans were willing to open their minds to being ruled by a Black man. I think it may be another 100 years before we will elect a Black man on his own merits as a fellow human being. But ... while we weren't so open minded on accepting a Black man as our leader, we certainly were clear that we wanted to have a human being running this nation rather than something that crawled out from under a rock, something slimy, but violently insane, criminal, ...
The old transition model of changing leaders doesn't apply. If fails utterly to express the reality of what will happen when Obama takes office, January 20, 2009. Obama has no intention of being a reformer, he is a rather conservative moderate, just barely left of center where center would have been thought dangerously far right wing by Nixon. Given that, this is a massive, massive transformation like replacing Ghenis Khan, Attila the Hun, Godzilla with Lincoln, Jefferson or Jeb Bartlett.
Exactly. The rest of the world was waiting to see if the USA was going to continue down the path of a rogue state, to be hated and feared for the ruthless inhumane actions ordered by the government, or if America was going to turn back to the path of sanity and enlightenment and rejoin the civilized world where law and reason are revered.
The 'Conservatives' have nothing but hatred for civilization. The ones I know dream of mass murder and rule by a dictator, where they are rewarded when they gleefully slaughter us liberals and our children. Conservativism has been proven a failure and disaster.
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you point about Nixon is entirely correct! Since Reagan, the USA has been dragged at least 5 points to the right. Nixon would be a wild-eyed Jacobin, a 'hard left' extremist.
My uncle, as liberal as you can get in many ways, loves to shock his 'conservative' co-workers. When they 'accuse' him of being a leftist, he replies that he's actually a Republican (wait for it...) An EISENHOWER Republican!!!
After the party was over, my $300 two-way radio was missing. I leaped right to the obvious conclusion and blamed the strangers at the party. These German women were disgusted at my 'racism', the automatic way I blamed the 'blacks'. I was pissed off at losing an expensive radio, and I turned on them. None of my friends stole it, and I told them that I didn't think that they stole it, which means that the only people left to have taken the radio were the strangers that no one knew. That they were not white was immaterial.
My arguments fell on deaf ears. My suspicion of the most obvious suspects merely confirmed their prejudice: that all Americans are racist.
Half of America is racist.
Both have extremely bigoted regions and subcultures and probably a similar overall level of racism.