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Originally Posted by driveway
Racism has nothing to do with a person's thoughts or motivations, racism is about people's words and actions.
It's like being stupid - you don't get to decide you are or are not stupid, people watch what you do and say and then let you know if you're stupid.
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Thoughts and motivations dictacte what people say and do.
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Racism works the same way. No one gets to claim that the continued questioning of Obama's place of birth might not be racist because of the motivations of the people doing it. The ACTION is clearly racist, therefore the people doing it are racists. The action of calling for a ban on Muslim immigration is racist, therefore the person calling for this ban is a racist.
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I really hate to do this because I honestly can't stand that this kind of comes off as defending trump. The action of question the place of birth isn't racist, the motivation can be, but getting racist people riled up so they will support your quest for profit while they waddle in their racist misery is a little different. The same applies for the Muslim ban, he doesn't need to hate Muslims to do it, he can be doing it because he knows that if enough people hate Muslims and he caters to them it will benefit him. Trump may very well believe all these things, but I honestly think more than anything he is manipulating racist people.
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No one ever needs to parse a person's motivations, or hedge when trying to determine if someone is or is not racist. Does the action, or do the words specifically target a disadvantaged racial minority or member thereof? Does it increase their disadvantage? Then that's racism and the person saying or doing it is a racist.
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I disagree, while it is malicious and unfair, in this case though I just look at the patterns to trump's actions, he's doing the bad things to (poor)white people too, he's just doing it in a different way and not singling them out or blaming them for things, likely because that doesn't benefit him enough. The action needs to be racially motivated, with trumps formula he could have attacked any demographic without a race reference and achieved a similar result. It's a divide and conquer mentality.