It is not racist to oppose giving illegal immigrants free health care. However, it is racist to assume that 80% of the people with brown skin at a hospital emergency room are an inferior class of people — illegal immigrants. Magovern has no knowledge of the immigration status of these people, he just looks at them and deems them inferior.
What is even more shocking is that this issue was not capitalized on by the other candidate. Why not? Probably because Condon knows that calling out Magovern on that position would cut against the Republican base. Simply put, it is fashionable in the Republican party to assume that 80% of people with brown skin speaking Spanish are inferior, illegal immigrants.
The debate organizer said “It’s a great time to be a Republican”. Why? Because overt racism like this is now in vogue?
Does Magovern? If it turns out to be 80% then is he simply being correct?
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p>Where did he say anyone with brown skin is an illegal?
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p>When did Republicans say “we assume 80% of people with brown skin are illegals”? Speaking for my self since unlike you I can’t read minds… I want illegals out of our country and really don’t care what color their skin is. And for the record I don’t want “any” illegal to remain here whether they are from Ireland, England, Ukraine, Mexico, Chile, Canada, Mars… any where.
You know perfectly well that Magovern made that figure up out of whole cloth. The fact that he said “I dare say” is a clear indication that he is not stating it as a fact. No mind reading is required.
you know that the vast majority of brown-skinned people are Puerto Ricans. Last time I checked, Puerto Ricans are migrants–i.e., Americans that leave their American home for another American home.
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p>I’ve spent a lot of time in the ER at Holyoke Hospital and Baystate Medical Center. There are plenty of white folks at both there.
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p>In short, Magovern isn’t just a racist, he’s a factually incorrect racist.
Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens by birth. It is not possible for any of them to be “illegal aliens,” because none of them are aliens.
Tip your hat and let’s have a moment of remembrance….
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p>For any Hispanics voting GOP.
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p>Today’s GOP candidates are using Hispanics as scapegoats for unemployment, while doing nothing to solve the unemployment crisis of Hispanics, Anglos, Blacks, and Asians.
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p>Democrats had better pay heed.
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p>NOW is the time to reach out to Hispanics, and get them to support Democrats, who are NOT using them as a scapegoat and who are OPPOSED to laws like the Arizona law, making harassing Hispanics easier.
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p>As time goes on, the Hispanic vote will get more and more Democratic. Just watch.
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p>Also, separately, at a protest of the New York City mosque, the mob beat up EGYPTIAN CHRISTIANS. The fools didn’t know that there are Egyptian Christians (Copts) (the Egyptian Coptic Church is headed by Pope Shenouda III). And many of these fools think that Puerto Ricans are immigrants when they are not.
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I thought I was a racist just because I think Obama is a dullard who is screwing up the country almost beyond repair.
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p>Or if not that, at least because I think the ground zero mosque is a really bad idea.
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p>Now the bar of racism is at judging illegal status based on how people appear and possibly speak? Are we GOP’ers off the hook for disliking Obama or what!?
If you don’t like Obama, you’re racist. If you don’t like a woman, you’re sexist. If you don’t like a male, you’re a homophobe. If you don’t like a disabled person, that ok! They shouldn’t be alive! They don’t vote anyways. Way to shit on our most vulnerable population folks. Do you feel superior now?
I’m sane.
You’re a Social Darwinist. Just funnin’ ya Stormy. Sometimes I CAN be obnoxious. You ARE one of the more fair minded BMG’ers.
“thinking Bush was a dullard who screwed up the country almost beyond repair.” Course I’m white., but still…
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p>It’s only when you relate race to Obama’s performance that you approach racism. If he’s just another stupid Democrat, from your perspective, you’re not racist.
You’ve inserted the term “inferior”, and by so doing have implied that it was part of the original quote, or at least the opinion of the person being quoted. His assertion about the percentage of people who are illegal immigrants in the emergency room is statement which can be proved or disproved. Adding your implication causes the statement to become an opinion which then becomes simply your useless spin.
however, in my experience, “those people” is almost always used to suggest “those (inferior) people,” intentional or not. Not always, and context matters, but “those people” is a major red flag.
when he speaks of “those people” he is describing the whole of the population in the emergency room, not just the 80% subset who he feels are illegal immigrants.
Of course he didn’t explicitly say “inferior”, but it is crystal clear that this is what he meant. He was portraying the group of people in a very negative light — as service-sucking lawbreakers who don’t deserve to be in this country and who shouldn’t have the same rights as the rest of us — i.e. as inferior to citizens.
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p>Again, it’s not racist to believe that illegal aliens shouldn’t get free medical services, but the main point is that without any facts at all, he assumed that a group of people which he simply visually identified were illegal immigrants. Kind of like believing that 80% of a group of Blacks are drug dealers — when you do the math it may or may not be true, but to assume this up front is pure racism.
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p>Displaying racism these days isn’t about lynching and separate drinking fountains. Racism these days is about subtly convincing others that a particular group of people is different in a bad way — i.e. inferior, often using alluding common stereotypes and codewords.
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p>Magovern did precisely that — he stated that the vast majority of people in local hospital emergency rooms were illegal aliens. He did not specifically reference Hispanics, he instead used the common stereotype that I have heard spoken plenty of times when there are none of “them” around. In doing this, he advanced the belief that Hispanics are likely to be illegal aliens, and are therefore inferior (and I suppose, unworthy of his representation).
Let me give a few examples of similar statements which may show how this works:
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p>”I dare say that 80% of the Italians are in the mafia”.
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p>”I dare say that 80% of the Irish are drunks”.
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p>”I dare say that 80% of the Blacks are drug dealers”.
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p>”I dare say that 80% of the Polish are stupid”.
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p>”I dare say that 80% of the Hispanics are illegals”.
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p>Inferior is never stated — but isn’t the message plain as day?
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p>Now substitute the ethnic group in those sentences for a group that is stereotypically believed to be strongly associated with that ethnic group. For example:
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p>”I dare say that 80% of the baggy-pants crowd are drug dealers”.
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p>”I dare say that 80% of the cleaning crew are illegals”.
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p>(I’m not that up on stereotypes, those were the best examples I could come up with).
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p>See how it works? That’s the new coded racism. And the defense is always either “I didn’t say that, you assumed it”, or “facts don’t lie, at least some of them are”.
He seems more upset about their immigration status than their race. Many feel that way, especially the legally immigrated Dominicans and Cape Verdians with whom I work.
If the people in that room were white, he wouldn’t have wondered about their immigration for a nanosecond. The trigger is the color of their skin, not their immigration status. He made a judgment on the basis of their skin color that they are likely undocumented, and that is clearly a bigoted conclusion–as has been pointed out to you innumerable times here.
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p>Or like assuming 100% of conservatives are racist?
You’re right — I’m doing the same thing when I imply that Republicans are happy since overt racism is now permissible.
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p>The difference is that you can choose to not be a conservative, and that you can hide your conservatism by keeping your mouth shut. Hispanics can’t choose their skin color.
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p>I haven’t yet heard one conservative repudiate this comment either, so maybe my implication isn’t that far off.
Overt racism is NOT permissable, any more than covert racism is.
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p>It must be that ‘keeping the mouth shut’ thing that licenses the crystal ball police.
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p>BTW – is it true that you can hide your gayness the same way? So are gay people less entitled to rights than people who cannot hide their condition like Billix in his wheelchair?
covert racism is and has been abetted by the Republican Party for 50 years. You’re as familiar with the Southern strategy as well as any of us, I’m sure.
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p>From Willie Horton and voter caging to false attacks on ACORN to Glenn Beck’s Restoring Honor Day on the anniversary of MLK’s “I Have a Dream” Speech, the GOP and its surrogates have a vested interested in white racism.
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p>I’m not accusing you of racism because, unless I’ve missed something, I’ve never seen any evidence of it. But it’s a different story for some of your knuckle-dragging brethren.
I’m not going to drag up teh old Robert Byrd thing, but to condemn an individual based on what you think he might have meant instead of what he said is like me saying I know in my heart southern Democrats are racist.
but you’re right, my statement/reasoning was sloppy. Magovern’s comment was stupid and racist; Magovern could have misspoken, which is something we don’t give politicians enough credit for. I don’t know what he was thinking, though when the mind’s censor is off…
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p>As far as campaign strategy goes, if Canadians were illegally immigrating, I don’t know that we’d be having this discussion. It’s a tangled web.
and causing the same impact on our lives, our healthcare, our education budgets, our jobs, violent crime, bringing in diseases, allowing any other nation to illegally enter the US through their borders and causing Americans to publish most things in English and French-Canadian then ya maybe we would be down on preventing them from coming here and making remarks about hockey playing beer drinking canucks in our ER… eh?
The word has been drained of all meaning thanks to nonsense such as exhibited throughout this thread. You could call them “socialists” as their equivalents-in-nitwittery on your side of the aisle do.
why would a diary about this particular racist conservative be relevant?
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p>The sad fact is, a lot of conservatives are racist. The other sad fact is that a lot of liberals are racist. The difference: the current Democratic party takes strides to reduce the effects of -ism within public policy, whereas the current Republican party does not, and in fact seems to try to exacerbate them with intolerance. Republican candidate after candidate seems to be working hard to make the GOP the party of white (sub: men/wealthy/Christian) with obnoxious comment after obnoxious comment. Fox News and the Tea Baggers only amplify the narrative.
that bothers me about the party. But I’m also bothered when such unattractive attributes as racism are attributed to people who’ve not been shown to be one by people who use implication to do so.
But I think that the white-hats here have diluted the meaning of the term in their hunt for obnoxious comments to denounce.
Assholes like you are the real racists.
Are you reverting to nonsensical, elementary school comebacks.
Racists are just anti-anti-racists? Turn everything upside down and you are the leftist.
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p>I guess throwing in the world a**hole makes it true, but judging by your comment rating it bounced back and stuck to you.
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p>It’s people like you that make the GOP’s job just that much harder.
I’m right.
and indicative of bad thought processes on Magovern’s part. Even so, the charge of racism should not be carelessly leveled; that robs it of some of its power.
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p>In the case at hand, immigration status is not race. There are undocumented Irish aliens, for instance.
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p>The talk about “illegal aliens” certainly is based on and intended to appeal to bigotry, and also intended to create a bogeyman on which current problems can be blamed. I think it’s more productive to address the false idea that immigrants have a negative impact on the economy than it is to attack a particular candidate using the term “racist.”
I know Bob. I like Bob. Bob is a friend of mine.
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p>Despite this, I ran against both Bob Magovern and Rosemary Sandlin (another very good and dear friend) in 2006 as the Green-Rainbow Party candidate. One major reason I ran: I felt the campaign had need of an out-of-the-closet candidate to counter what I deemed hurtful and incendiary rhetoric regarding equal marriage rights from both of the more right-wing candidates (Bob, of course, and Joe Schebel). Both Bob and Joe were featured on Brian Camenker’s radio show
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p>However much I like Bob personally, his politics I consider quite frightening. I never posted or published the letter that I penned to Bob urging him to please distance himself from Brian, and feel that I should have. Only but this past 12 July, Bob was slated at a MassResistance seminar with Mr. Camenker. Since I was unable to demonstrate outside this event, I do not know whether Bob did in fact attend – but I fear that this is likely. This isn’t good for the district.
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p>I do NOT believe Bob a ‘racist’, but I do definitely believe he has exercised poor judgment in appealing to people I contend to be political extremists. That’s just not right.