Does voting no on every white person make it any less racist? She's threatening to vote yes or no due to someone's race.
I think its more along the lines of "Manchin isn't the only Senator they have to listen to." She's looking for at the very least a simple commitment that AAPI nominees be considered. I mean as a country the US was racist and discriminatory against Italians at one point in our history and look at how milquetoast Dr. Fauci is. Unless we forcefully diversify rural areas, the only exposure they have to someone who doesn't look like them in a unequivocal way is a high ranking Federal Official spitting facts. Look at all the fluff pieces Fauci has in all the media coverage about how he was a young man from Brooklyn who worked at a Pharmacy. How often do non white people get the opportunity to have their stories told in a narrative with such warmth?
A practical way to fix that is to have the people at the top committed to thinking outside the box on nominees not just in their political leanings but in their personal backgrounds to combat how those same communities on the whole are being othered in society. Thanks to Republican fuckery on the Senate assembling, Biden is still in the middle of assembling his Federal staff/Dept Heads so he has an opportunity to meet this particular moment and Senator Duckworth (understandably) being upset with the WH due to an aide trying to imply "Well we met our quota" or with "Well sucks what happened with Tanden but we have Harris so I think we're still good" or however they happened to be dismissive to Duckworth, yea I get where she's coming from.
Growing up in school most of my friends were from the AAPI community, citizens and immigrants both, I was really close friends with one of them in particular cuz we both enjoyed RPGs, ended up getting their citizenship in time for the '08 election. I remember he confided in me that he didn't feel welcome beforehand and that other AAPI peeps mentioned feeling the same way and he didn't understand what they meant until after getting his citizenship. One of my life's regrets was that all I could do was hear him out, I was dealing with my own stuff (came out 2 years earlier so not only navigating friendships with a bunch of straights but a family life that was in a word: oof) and I didn't even think to ask if there was anything I could do. I doubt there was anything I could do to tackle the effects of systemic racism at the age of 18 but it's a regret I'll take to my grave. It did teach me the importance of being pro-active in how we embrace one another in a social and civil way or else we omit the people and the lives they live from the fabric of this nation.
Ever since that day I knew that we as a society would have a reckoning with how we "Other-ize" each other and given the recent rise in anti Asian sentiment the AAPI community has to contend with to say nothing of the racist history our nation wrote with laws like the Chinese Exclusion Act or the evil we inflicted upon our own when we enacted a policy of Internment camps for Japanese Americans and the seizure of their property and businesses, the racism and evil that the Black American community has always had to contend with but especially now with the BLM movement calling attention to that racism and that evil, to what we as a country have to contend with, with not only the last 2 afore-mentioned issues but with constructing a humane southern border, how we welcome immigrants, how we care for our vets and how we regulate firearms and treat the least among us. All of these and more like climate change, are issues of life and death and we should start treating them with the proper care and attention and action that life and death issues are owed.
That last part might sound like some dumb sophistry but we've seen recently how many people have died because they were denied their basic humanity, to say nothing of the untold who died in the years we weren't (as a nation) looking, nor the years where we did look on and still did nothing.
This honestly really sounds like mental health issue. Absolutely tragic.
Reading that excerpt reminded me how I was made fun of for my cleft pallet (forgive the clinical term I've only ever spoke about it at length with Doctors in the early to mid 90's), and later in high school being made fun of because of a passing resemblance I had with one of the 9/11 terror suspects while we were doing team stretches in a circle at track/field practice. I believe what spurred that on was a TIME magazine or something with one of their mug shots/photo on file. EDIT: handling different drafts of this post I forgot to add here: the details about the shooter is eerie as hell for me given some of the events of my life.
No legit if you're still id'ing as a republican after trump presidency
then what are you doing wringing your hands about Eric Greitens
what's a sexpest to add onto the big yard of portapotty politicans and MTG
All the republicans have to do is do some confusing shit and gerrymander the shit out of urban areas and get more votes for him
Im from rural missouri
sticking it to the libs/black people is a thing here
Sadly the one regard Republicans are all talk is with regard to the veneer of being socially acceptable. They seem to be very action-based when it comes to the heinous shit/vision they have for America unfortunately and that's a big understatement on the use of the word ufortunately.
Apologies for the TED talk, just felt like I had something worthwhile to share, somewhat of a rarity for a idiot savant like me.