Mitt gets booed at the NAACP convention.

[tw]

Originally Posted by piercehawkeye45

A fundamental assumption behind 'race' is that humans are split up into distinct subgroups (white, black, red, yellow, Jews, and gingers) but with human migration, it turns out human phenotype is just a very complicated gray scale.

Racism was never about race. It was always about judging people on first impressions. They looked different, so they must be a different 'race'.

Racism is about hate. One benchmark racist was Nixon who would openly disparage other races sometimes right to their face. He was particularly harsh with Jews and Blacks (which were still called Negros back then). But ironically, his actions were often to use (promote) those same people (ie Kissinger). He was responsible for pushing school integration, affirmative action (the Philadelphia Plan), and other social improvements one would not expect from a racist.

More than a racist, Nixon was driven more by his own legacy. Everything he did was first for Nixon. So yes, a racist would also promote concepts he was opposed to but that would make him look good in history.

So how do we define a racist? We know Nixon did have openly racist biases. But then he also suppressed those biases when necessary for his reputation. So extreme so that we had to invent a term - “expletive deleted“.

His logical actions do not change his emotions. Racism is about emotions. Nixon was good at separating his emotions from logical thinking. Others who cannot will let their emotions inspire their racist actions.