"A Senator Just Unapologetically Declared the U.S. a White Homeland"

gtyellowjacket said:
I just can't see white supremacy in there or at least it wasn't the intent of the speech. He was celebrating some American accomplishments while minimizing the conquest and genocide of the natives (an event that a large number of black Americans participated in as well BTW). But that is not the same as a speech saying, either overtly or disguised, whites are great and everyone else needs to be forcefully subjugated or removed from the USA.

Liberals need to stop assigning racism or hate to every comment a white Republican male makes. It plays well with the base but most people aren't seeing some kind of veiled conspiracy of racism. The liberals end up sounding little better than conspiracy nuts.
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OK gt. Let's play a little game here.

Schmitt said of the people who voted for Trump: "They were the Americans whose factories were gutted in the name of “free trade,” whose sons were sent to die in wars that served no American interest, whose neighborhoods were transformed beyond recognition by immigration." Can you describe how Americans' neighborhoods were "transformed beyond recognition by immigration" (implicitly in some negative way) without reference to race?

Schmitt said of American pioneers: "They believed they were forging a nation—a homeland for themselves and their descendants. They fought, they bled, they struggled, they died for us. They built this country for us." Who is the "us" Schmitt refers to twice in that passage? Is there any way to understand this passage other than to say that only the original American settlers and their descendants are rightful Americans?

Schmitt said at one point: "We Americans are the sons and daughters of the Christian pilgrims that poured out from Europe’s shores to baptize a new world in their ancient faith. Our ancestors were driven here by destiny, possessed by urgent and fiery conviction, by burning belief, devoted to their cause and their God." If this paragraph could not be accurately described as "Christian nationalism" then the term has no meaning. Can you fairly say, again, that the pronouns "we" and "our" refer to any Americans other than Christians?

This was one extended passage from his speech:

In the French Revolution, the radicals abolished the old calendar and began the clock back over at Year One. The radicals of our time want to do the same.

It’s why they’re obsessed with controlling speech. They want to rewrite our language itself.

When they tear down our statues and monuments, mock our history, and insult our traditions, they’re attacking our future as well as our past. By changing the stories we tell about ourselves, they believe they can build a new America—with the new myths of a new people.
But America does not belong to them. It belongs to us. It’s our home. It’s a heritage entrusted to us by our ancestors. It is a way of life that is ours, and only ours, and if we disappear, then America, too, will cease to exist.

Who do the pronouns "they" and "them" and "our," "ours" and "us" refer to there? Who is Schmitt saying America belongs to, and does not belong to?

Earlier in his speech Schmitt said: For decades, many of those in power—not just here, but across the West—have been locked in a cultural war with their own nations. We see that in many of the countries of Europe today, where the immigration crisis threatens to transform the ancient fabric of those nations—and all who object are menaced by an increasingly totalitarian censorship state. What is the "ancient fabric" of Europe that is threatened by an "immigration crisis"?

Schmitt called America "A strong, sovereign nation—not just an idea, but a home, belonging to a people, bound together by a common past and a shared destiny." Who is the "people" Schmitt is referring to and what is their "common past"?


In sum, does someone really have to say explicitly "America is a white, Christian nation" for you to acknowledge what their message is?
 
gtyellowjacket said:
Liberals need to stop assigning racism or hate to every comment a white Republican male makes. It plays well with the base but most people aren't seeing some kind of veiled conspiracy of racism. The liberals end up sounding little better than conspiracy nuts.
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No, most people do see the racism in this speech. Many don’t care or agree with it. Others, like you, willfully deny the obvious because it’s important for you to be a contrarian, no matter how ridiculous.
 
rodoheel said:
OK gt. Let's play a little game here.

Schmitt said of the people who voted for Trump: "They were the Americans whose factories were gutted in the name of “free trade,” whose sons were sent to die in wars that served no American interest, whose neighborhoods were transformed beyond recognition by immigration." Can you describe how Americans' neighborhoods were "transformed beyond recognition by immigration" (implicitly in some negative way) without reference to race?

Schmitt said of American pioneers: "They believed they were forging a nation—a homeland for themselves and their descendants. They fought, they bled, they struggled, they died for us. They built this country for us." Who is the "us" Schmitt refers to twice in that passage? Is there any way to understand this passage other than to say that only the original American settlers and their descendants are rightful Americans?

Schmitt said at one point: "We Americans are the sons and daughters of the Christian pilgrims that poured out from Europe’s shores to baptize a new world in their ancient faith. Our ancestors were driven here by destiny, possessed by urgent and fiery conviction, by burning belief, devoted to their cause and their God." If this paragraph could not be accurately described as "Christian nationalism" then the term has no meaning. Can you fairly say, again, that the pronouns "we" and "our" refer to any Americans other than Christians?

This was one extended passage from his speech:

In the French Revolution, the radicals abolished the old calendar and began the clock back over at Year One. The radicals of our time want to do the same.

It’s why they’re obsessed with controlling speech. They want to rewrite our language itself.

When they tear down our statues and monuments, mock our history, and insult our traditions, they’re attacking our future as well as our past. By changing the stories we tell about ourselves, they believe they can build a new America—with the new myths of a new people.
But America does not belong to them. It belongs to us. It’s our home. It’s a heritage entrusted to us by our ancestors. It is a way of life that is ours, and only ours, and if we disappear, then America, too, will cease to exist.

Who do the pronouns "they" and "them" and "our," "ours" and "us" refer to there? Who is Schmitt saying America belongs to, and does not belong to?

Earlier in his speech Schmitt said: For decades, many of those in power—not just here, but across the West—have been locked in a cultural war with their own nations. We see that in many of the countries of Europe today, where the immigration crisis threatens to transform the ancient fabric of those nations—and all who object are menaced by an increasingly totalitarian censorship state. What is the "ancient fabric" of Europe that is threatened by an "immigration crisis"?

Schmitt called America "A strong, sovereign nation—not just an idea, but a home, belonging to a people, bound together by a common past and a shared destiny." Who is the "people" Schmitt is referring to and what is their "common past"?


In sum, does someone really have to say explicitly "America is a white, Christian nation" for you to acknowledge what their message is?
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well done.

per usual, while GT is furiously arguing that it's only rain, right wing extremists are actually pissing all over everything.
 
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rodoheel said:
OK gt. Let's play a little game here.

Schmitt said of the people who voted for Trump: "They were the Americans whose factories were gutted in the name of “free trade,” whose sons were sent to die in wars that served no American interest, whose neighborhoods were transformed beyond recognition by immigration." Can you describe how Americans' neighborhoods were "transformed beyond recognition by immigration" (implicitly in some negative way) without reference to race?

Schmitt said of American pioneers: "They believed they were forging a nation—a homeland for themselves and their descendants. They fought, they bled, they struggled, they died for us. They built this country for us." Who is the "us" Schmitt refers to twice in that passage? Is there any way to understand this passage other than to say that only the original American settlers and their descendants are rightful Americans?

Schmitt said at one point: "We Americans are the sons and daughters of the Christian pilgrims that poured out from Europe’s shores to baptize a new world in their ancient faith. Our ancestors were driven here by destiny, possessed by urgent and fiery conviction, by burning belief, devoted to their cause and their God." If this paragraph could not be accurately described as "Christian nationalism" then the term has no meaning. Can you fairly say, again, that the pronouns "we" and "our" refer to any Americans other than Christians?

This was one extended passage from his speech:

In the French Revolution, the radicals abolished the old calendar and began the clock back over at Year One. The radicals of our time want to do the same.

It’s why they’re obsessed with controlling speech. They want to rewrite our language itself.

When they tear down our statues and monuments, mock our history, and insult our traditions, they’re attacking our future as well as our past. By changing the stories we tell about ourselves, they believe they can build a new America—with the new myths of a new people.
But America does not belong to them. It belongs to us. It’s our home. It’s a heritage entrusted to us by our ancestors. It is a way of life that is ours, and only ours, and if we disappear, then America, too, will cease to exist.

Who do the pronouns "they" and "them" and "our," "ours" and "us" refer to there? Who is Schmitt saying America belongs to, and does not belong to?

Earlier in his speech Schmitt said: For decades, many of those in power—not just here, but across the West—have been locked in a cultural war with their own nations. We see that in many of the countries of Europe today, where the immigration crisis threatens to transform the ancient fabric of those nations—and all who object are menaced by an increasingly totalitarian censorship state. What is the "ancient fabric" of Europe that is threatened by an "immigration crisis"?

Schmitt called America "A strong, sovereign nation—not just an idea, but a home, belonging to a people, bound together by a common past and a shared destiny." Who is the "people" Schmitt is referring to and what is their "common past"?


In sum, does someone really have to say explicitly "America is a white, Christian nation" for you to acknowledge what their message is?
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I was going to go point by point since you took the time to write it out but it seemed like most of my responses took the form of "its really more of a nativist argument than a racist argument." I'm sure there are plenty of people of all races that don't like the new guys coming in. That's a sentiment that is pretty common throughout American history, and not a particularly pretty sentiment, but its not necessarily a racist sentiment.

As to the question regarding what the pronouns refer to, he is referring to liberals that are focused on cultural issues.
 
gtyellowjacket said:
I was going to go point by point since you took the time to write it out but it seemed like most of my responses took the form of "its really more of a nativist argument than a racist argument." I'm sure there are plenty of people of all races that don't like the new guys coming in. That's a sentiment that is pretty common throughout American history, and not a particularly pretty sentiment, but its not necessarily a racist sentiment.

As to the question regarding what the pronouns refer to, he is referring to liberals that are focused on cultural issues.
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OK. Leaving aside what I think is, especially in the present time, a largely pedantic distinction between "nativism" and "white nationalism," does nativism alone work for the very first example I listed - "Can you describe how Americans' neighborhoods were "transformed beyond recognition by immigration" (implicitly in some negative way) without reference to race?" What sort of "transformation" do you suppose Schmitt is saying has occurred in people's neighborhoods that has resulted from immigration?

At the very least, one would have to be very foolish to not understand that Schmitt's speech is intended to appeal to white nationalists and signal to white nationalists that Schmitt is one of them. Do you not find it telling that in a speech that discusses numerous aspects of American history from the American Revolution through modern times, there is not one example he gives of Americans' supposed "common heritage" that refers to the millions of people who were brought here and lived as slaves (and their descendants) - many of whom who came to this country long before Schmitt's own ancestors came from Germany? For example, when Schmitt says that "we Americans are the sons and daughters of the Christian pilgrims that poured out from Europe’s shores to baptize a new world in their ancient faith" - probably the most concerning line in the whole speech for multiple reasons - he is quite tellingly focusing on the people who came to this country from Europe alone, and not those who came here from other places, as being "we Americans." Do you honestly think black Americans could read something like that and say "oh, he's talking about us being real native Americans just the same as the German settlers who settled in the midwest"? Are, say, George Washington Carver's contributions to agriculture, the Navajo code talkers' contributions to the WWII war effort, or the labor of the Chinese immigrants who built much of the railroad through the "frontier" he frequently references part of Eric Schmitt's great American tradition and history? If so, I wonder how he somehow managed to draft a speech that failed to mention anyone other than the descendants of European Christians as the tamers of the American frontier and the engineers of "Manifest Destiny."

As to the last line of your post - you are basically acknowledging that Schmitt is saying Christian conservatives like him are true Americans, and their political opponents are not. Whether or not you find that to be "racist" you should find it an extremely disturbing thing for a sitting Senator to say - that people who are his political opponents literally do not belong in the country. And if we all agree, as we should, that Schmitt's piece is very disturbing, does it really matter whether or not we agree it's explicitly a "white nationalist" speech?
 
rodoheel said:
OK. Leaving aside what I think is, especially in the present time, a largely pedantic distinction between "nativism" and "white nationalism," does nativism alone work for the very first example I listed - "Can you describe how Americans' neighborhoods were "transformed beyond recognition by immigration" (implicitly in some negative way) without reference to race?" What sort of "transformation" do you suppose Schmitt is saying has occurred in people's neighborhoods that has resulted from immigration?

At the very least, one would have to be very foolish to not understand that Schmitt's speech is intended to appeal to white nationalists and signal to white nationalists that Schmitt is one of them. Do you not find it telling that in a speech that discusses numerous aspects of American history from the American Revolution through modern times, there is not one example he gives of Americans' supposed "common heritage" that refers to the millions of people who were brought here and lived as slaves (and their descendants) - many of whom who came to this country long before Schmitt's own ancestors came from Germany? For example, when Schmitt says that "we Americans are the sons and daughters of the Christian pilgrims that poured out from Europe’s shores to baptize a new world in their ancient faith" - probably the most concerning line in the whole speech for multiple reasons - he is quite tellingly focusing on the people who came to this country from Europe alone, and not those who came here from other places, as being "we Americans." Do you honestly think black Americans could read something like that and say "oh, he's talking about us being real native Americans just the same as the German settlers who settled in the midwest"? Are, say, George Washington Carver's contributions to agriculture, the Navajo code talkers' contributions to the WWII war effort, or the labor of the Chinese immigrants who built much of the railroad through the "frontier" he frequently references part of Eric Schmitt's great American tradition and history? If so, I wonder how he somehow managed to draft a speech that failed to mention anyone other than the descendants of European Christians as the tamers of the American frontier and the engineers of "Manifest Destiny."

As to the last line of your post - you are basically acknowledging that Schmitt is saying Christian conservatives like him are true Americans, and their political opponents are not. Whether or not you find that to be "racist" you should find it an extremely disturbing thing for a sitting Senator to say - that people who are his political opponents literally do not belong in the country. And if we all agree, as we should, that Schmitt's piece is very disturbing, does it really matter whether or not we agree it's explicitly a "white nationalist" speech?
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I think there are plenty of Mexican neighborhoods upset that their neighborhoods were transformed by those lazy central Americans. Which is one of the reason why you saw Trump winning a very large share of hispanics. I guess you could say the same about some black neighborhoods. That's why describing it as a white supremacy speech just rings hollow. I'm sure it mostly appeals to white people but its not exclusive the way a real white supremacist organization would be.

I don't find it telling that a Senator that made a speech about celebrating American accomplishments would choose not to mention a pretty terrible time.

I agree with you that the European line is the most disturbing line of the speech and is pretty close to a white (and Hispanic) supremacy line. But at least its factually accurate for 75% of the population.

I don't like that a senator says that Christian conservatives like him are the only true Americans but it definitely doesn't surprise me. Its been that way for forty years.
 
There is indeed a good deal of historical animosities streaming back and forth between Central Americans and Mexicans...AND between Central Americans for that matter as well as between different demographic groups within each country. Regionalism plays a role but so too does ethnicity, even linguistics.

All of that said, @rodoheel destroyed it above. It appears that @gtyellowjacket is being deliberately obtuse in his defense of Schmitt's remarks. It is kind of a waste of time but just the same a good reminder of the games that Rightists play.
 
gtyellowjacket said:
I think there are plenty of Mexican neighborhoods upset that their neighborhoods were transformed by those lazy central Americans. Which is one of the reason why you saw Trump winning a very large share of hispanics. I guess you could say the same about some black neighborhoods. That's why describing it as a white supremacy speech just rings hollow. I'm sure it mostly appeals to white people but its not exclusive the way a real white supremacist organization would be.

I don't find it telling that a Senator that made a speech about celebrating American accomplishments would choose not to mention a pretty terrible time.

I agree with you that the European line is the most disturbing line of the speech and is pretty close to a white (and Hispanic) supremacy line. But at least its factually accurate for 75% of the population.

I don't like that a senator says that Christian conservatives like him are the only true Americans but it definitely doesn't surprise me. Its been that way for forty years.
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Well just so we're clear on terminology we're talking about "white nationalism" not "white supremacy" (the Slate article was about the former, not the latter). I agree the two concepts are closely related but if you're going to be pedantic about terminology you could at least fairly focus on the concept the Slate article actually discussed.

As for the specific things you said - I think there's no way you possibly believe that Schmitt's speech was directed at "Mexican neighborhoods upset that their neighborhoods were transformed by those lazy central Americans" (without even getting into the fact that what you are implicitly acknowledging that the speech would appeal to...racists.) And my point about black Americans was not to say that the speech should have explicitly discussed slavery, but that a speech that was intended to appeal to native Americans of all races - as opposed to just the descendants of "European Christians" - could have easily been drafted in a way that referenced and incorporated the accomplishments of native-born Americans of all races (and religions) rather than simply the European Christians whom Schmitt gives total credit for settling America and taming the frontier. You can play stupid if you want and pretend like that's just a coincidence, and not an intentional choice, but you'll have to forgive the rest of us for not being that credulous.

And by the way - it is not "factually accurate" that 75% of Americans are the descendants of European Christians. You seem to be assuming that every single person in the country who is classified as "White" or "Hispanic or Latino" is the descendant of European Christians, which is pretty evidently not true; many of those people come from families who were never white, never Christian, or both.
 
rodoheel said:
Well just so we're clear on terminology we're talking about "white nationalism" not "white supremacy" (the Slate article was about the former, not the latter). I agree the two concepts are closely related but if you're going to be pedantic about terminology you could at least fairly focus on the concept the Slate article actually discussed.

As for the specific things you said - I think there's no way you possibly believe that Schmitt's speech was directed at "Mexican neighborhoods upset that their neighborhoods were transformed by those lazy central Americans" (without even getting into the fact that what you are implicitly acknowledging that the speech would appeal to...racists.) And my point about black Americans was not to say that the speech should have explicitly discussed slavery, but that a speech that was intended to appeal to native Americans of all races - as opposed to just the descendants of "European Christians" - could have easily been drafted in a way that referenced and incorporated the accomplishments of native-born Americans of all races (and religions) rather than simply the European Christians whom Schmitt gives total credit for settling America and taming the frontier. You can play stupid if you want and pretend like that's just a coincidence, and not an intentional choice, but you'll have to forgive the rest of us for not being that credulous.

And by the way - it is not "factually accurate" that 75% of Americans are the descendants of European Christians. You seem to be assuming that every single person in the country who is classified as "White" or "Hispanic or Latino" is the descendant of European Christians, which is pretty evidently not true; many of those people come from families who were never white, never Christian, or both.
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I was replying to DonBosco's question which specifically asked about white Supremacy. If its an issue of semantics, take it up with him, but I think its small beer. The terms are fairly interchangeable in this context. The tag for the slate article is white supremacy and not white nationalism even though the editorial references white nationalism.

Got to be in the ballpark of 75%. If its 70%, does that really change the point.
 
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Bobfripp said:
Is there a difference in motivation between Mexicans and central Americans? I did not know that.
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There's definitely some hostility between the groups.

I think Trumpism definitely appeals to some hispanics who think, "Oh, we're not *those* kinds of latinos." Their mistake is thinking that Trump or MAGA or any of those knuckleheads know or care about the distinction they're trying to make.
 
gtyellowjacket said:
I was replying to DonBosco's question which specifically asked about white Supremacy. If its an issue of semantics, take it up with him, but I think its small beer. The terms are fairly interchangeable in this context. The tag for the slate article is white supremacy and not white nationalism even though the editorial references white nationalism.

Got to be in the ballpark of 75%. If its 70%, does that really change the point.
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Ok. Not gonna respond to the rest of it huh?
 
Its been a couple decades....But I remember talking to a guy ultimately over the Landscaping/Grounds crew at NCCU . I ( a white boy ) said "I noticed all your guys are Afam-no Latinos " He said "yea this is NCCU , this is Durham, these are Our jobs' He was a bright AfAm Enginer.........
 
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