Talk Elections

Today Priorities put out a hard hitting ad on Bain and Romney put out a hard hitting ad on welfare reform. Both hard hitting. Both probably not completely true and probably unfair. Whatever, it's politics.  But why this recurring theme with Dems calling out race baiting on any ad they don't like. It is ridiculus. Just because Obama is black doesn't mean we can't talk about welfare (reform) for an entire election cycle.

Well, campaigning on welfare is basically how the GOP played its southern strategy and stoked racist fears. Welfare and race are inherently intertwined in people's minds. That's why.

The race card is pulled by us Republicans too...for example: "You want to end the war? Israel will die. YOU MUST HATE JEWS!", and of course, "Affirmative Action is apartheid against white people!".

So because of something that may have happened 50 years ago, we cant have a civil and rational debate on the issue now? If a higher proportion of blacks are on welfare as is implied by the democratic response with the race card, it would be an injustice to them to not attempt to make the program better. But i guess that would just be silly, being rational and all.

Yeah, but the issue is often brought up by Republicans not as an effort to start a thoughtful dialogue but as a means to divide white against black, at least in the south. And the hyperbole they seem to use about people on welfare doesn't help the situation either.

In 1976 Ronald Reagan gave a stump speech about a woman on the south side of Chicago (obviously black) who was the ultimate welfare queen.

"She has eighty names, thirty addresses, twelve Social Security cards and is collecting veteran's benefits on four non-existing deceased husbands. And she is collecting Social Security on her cards. She's got Medicaid, getting food stamps, and she is collecting welfare under each of her names. Her tax-free cash income is over $150,000."

This kind of rhetoric only stokes fear in white people about black people on the welfare system. Somebody who is uneducated might think that all people on welfare live like this and game the system, not understanding that she is an extreme exception.

So when a Republican decides to talk like an adult about welfare instead of trying to scare people then I'll change my mind. But in today's GOP the topic is pure race bait.

The Southern Strategy was not meant to stoke racist fears through code words or otherwise.  According to Pat Buchanan, the architect of the Southern strategy, it was an attempt to convince Southern moderates who were pro-civil rights to vote Republican as a protest against the racists and segregationists in the Democratic Party:
 http://www.wnd.com/2002/12/16477/

A few Republicans like Ed Gurney and Jesse Helms may have pandered to racists, but the vast majority did not.  Furthermore, it would have made no sense for Nixon to do that in the '68 campaign because of Wallace's independent candidacy.  As Theodore White wrote in his 1968 campaign edition of The Making of the President, Nixon automatically conceded racist voters to George Wallace (p. 424, quoted in Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party's Buried Past).  But anyway, back to the main point: I think the reason that Democrats use the race card so effectively is because they have done such a good job of hiding their party's shameful, 150+ year history or racism (including support for slavery, lynching, Jim Crow laws, the Ku Klux Klan, and segregation) from the public and smear Republicans, the party that was founded to end slavery and fight for greater freedom and equality for all races (especially blacks) as racist using phony evidence of racism in the Southern strategy (including an oft-cited but never verified quote from Lee Atwater) and claiming that the segregationist Dems all became Republicans (when, in fact, the only high-profile segregationist to do so was Strom Thurmond.)  Simply put, they know that charges of racism and race-baiting are taken very seriously by the public and that they can get away with it.

Oh, so Pat Buchanan said that? Well it all makes perfect sense then, never mind.

Exactly. People like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson make it seem like society "owes" black people something. That's not true, of course. We don't owe them one single thing.

There are a lot of Irish Catholics on the south side of Chicago too.  He was talking about people who abuse the system, not blacks (as not all blacks are on welfare and not all of them who are abuse it).  If he was trying to pander to racists, it apparently didn't work very well, because after he lost the nomination to Gerald Ford, he endorsed him in the general election, and Ford lost every Southern state except Virginia and Oklahoma.  (Incidentally, Ford did carry Illinois, and he was more of a moderate Republican, but whether Jimmy Carter and the Democrats would have carried the South with Reagan as the GOP nominee is anybody's guess.)

So you think he should have ignored gross examples of incompetence and waste like this? I'm sorry, but welfare reform is much needed, and was even more so back then.


Yeah but to be brutally honest, the Democrats have nothing in common anymore with their 19th century counterparts.

People who treat blacks like victims who can't succeed on their own are the ones who are really acting like racists.  That's how Democrats initially started winning the black vote in the 1930s, and they're still doing it.  One of FDR's slogans used to advertise the New Deal to blacks during his presidency was, "let Jesus lead me and welfare feed me."  Since then Democrats have played this to their advantage another way by suggesting that Republicans who call for welfare reform and cracking down on fraud in the system are using racist "dog whistles" and "code words."

When Newt Gingrich campaigned against Barack Obama as "the food stamp President" just a few months ago, it was totally untainted by any racial implication, right.

That is only slightly more credible than John Edwards explaining away his support for Rielle Hunter and flies in the face of all evidence as to how the Southern strategy actually worked.

I'm not saying they do.  But doesn't the history matter?  And it wasn't just 19th century Democrats; segregationist Democrat Fritz Hollings of South Carolina was serving in the Senate as recently as 2004.  In 1993, he made a comment about black potentates from Africa at the Law of the Sea conference getting "a good square meal in Geneva" instead of eating each other, suggesting that cannibalism was normal for them.  He has also referred to Mexicans as "wetbacks" and to a fellow Senator who was Jewish as "the Senator from B'nai B'rith."  Democrat Robert Byrd of West Virginia, a former Kleagle in the Ku Klux Klan who filibustered against the 1964 Civil Rights Act, was serving in the Senate as recently as the time of his death in 2010.  In a 2001 interview on Fox News Sunday, he repeatedly used the term "white nig**r."  Al Gore Sr., a former Democratic Senator from Tennessee and the father of former Vice President (and the Democrats' 2000 presidential nominee) Al Gore, was also a strong segregationist who helped lead the filibuster of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  None of them (or any other high-profile segregationist Democrat except Strom Thurmond) ever became Republicans.

Right, because society doesn't owe black people a single thing. It's not like we horribly oppressed them for hundreds of years.

Define 'we'. I've never disenfranchised a black person and do not know of a single person who has. I certainly wasn't alive during the Civil War and Civil Rights eras. I don't feel as though I owe any particular community because of what people who share my skin color did to said community well before my years. Again who is 'we' that horribly oppressed the black community for hundreds of years? Perhaps you should take it up with them.

This is why it's called the dog whistle. When politicians make these kinds of charges, they never explicitly single out black people, so if they're accused of racism, they can defend themselves by saying they never mentioned race. Yet many people understand the context clues and it gets the message across to the right people. It's a brilliant strategy, really.

In 1980, Reagan also gave a high profile speech in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where 3 civil rights workers were killed, and talked about states' rights (another dog whistle term). That year he won every state in the deep south except Georgia. So yeah, Reagan knew exactly what he was doing.

Let us examine that claim for a moment. By 'we', do you mean, certain white people. I'm afraid I don't buy the view that all white people should feel shame and guilt for what happened to black people, as we didn't do it collectively, it was the actions of certain people in society. Whilst I believe what happened was wrong in America, I don't personally feel any guilt for their treatment.

Care to provide a cite for your claim?  All I have been able to find is that it was indeed a Depression-era slogan, but one coined by blacks themselves in thanks for no longer literally starving.  I came across nothing to indicate it was a party-invented slogan, let alone one used by FDR himself.

That's what the evidence suggests.
Of course, it's not as if the "50 years ago" event that begun to slowly emerge 55 years ago could potentially be deemed to have ended before the 80s.

The current party system owes a huge debt to times of opener majority group racism and of now-ended legalized apartheid. Racist sentiments among the majority group, including Democratic voters, are still ridiculously pervasive but also semi-sorta-tabooized (a lot less than "semi", really. But partly tabooized), and are unspeakable in the political arena because that's necessary for this desperate fiction that you've moved on when you haven't.

What, then, do you expect?

People will never move on and forget about the predjudices of the past if the corpse of those predjudices is constantly being dug up and publically displayed. Proclaiming that every white person should feel personally guilty about what happened to 'x' minority only engenders resentment and fosters extremism. There'd be no Pauline Hanson, David Duke etc if the left stopped rubbing this pervasive guilt in peoples faces.

Oh yes because poor David Duke is a victim and is only reacting to the horrible attacks of the left.

There are no corpses of prejudices in America, though there are corpses of past worse states of affairs.

And it's not abut "guilt." It's about responsibility. White privilege is real.

If "welfare reform" implies its effective abolition, then call it that.

So far, President Obama hasn't advocated making welfare more generous or easier to get. Maybe no black person could get away with it.

I didn't mean it like that with David Duke. What I mean't was far-right groups would garner far less support if the left didn't go no so about injustices that happened 50 years ago.

So if White privilege is real, what do you propose to do about it. Intense redistribution of wealth from whites to blacks.

Very true.  Anyone who denies that oppression based on race is not alive and well is deluded, and anyone who denies that most americans are not racist is even more so.

This thread is white privilege at its worst. TANF needs reform? How? The program is as toothless as its ever been, having largely failed in its role to protect against economic disasters like the one in 2008. I could see if we were talking about an increase in benefits, but of course we are talking about a scaling back of the program.

This is what frustrates me the most. People who have never even lived at the cusp of poverty (like Romney) are demagoguing this issue, trying to push forward a negative stereotype when the reality of programs like TANF is very different. Romney was given everything by his father, but he's going to judge others who are less fortunate than him?

We did in many ways, but that doesn't mean that we owe them anything.  It is much more important to realize that blacks have overcome their oppression of the past (even if there is still more that needs to be done) and are people who can succeed on their own rather than just "victims".

No actually he 'worked for a living'. A concept many on welfare should try. Are you suggesting that anyone who is not on welfare (and therefore pays the taxes for it) should have no say in how the system is run.

Terms like "states' rights" and "welfare queen" may have been code words at one point, but probably not in 1980.  By then, racism was no longer widely accepted by society (as evidenced by the firing of Howard Cosell from ESPN three years later after he infamously called a black football player a "little monkey.")  Even now, you could reform welfare and give states all the rights you want, but slavery and segregation are never coming back, and rightly so.  It's also worth mentioning that most of the closest Reagan states in 1980 were in the South.  To assume that all Southerners are racist (either at that time or now) simply because of the actions of their ancestors is wrong.  Also, Reagan initially supported the Civil Rights Act of 1964, stating he thought "it should be enforced at gunpoint if necessary." (A Call to America, p. 304)  He also was the president who made Martin Luther King Jr. Day a national holiday.  (He may have initially opposed it, but so did Dr. King's family.) 
Oh, and about states' rights: it was never a legitimate argument for segregation in the first place because the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment states that Congress may pass any legislation necessary to ensure equal protection under the law.

If the jobs are available -- and if the welfare recipients are the sorts of people that one wants on the job. In a really-nasty recession such might be almost as pointless as telling a destitute person to make wise investments in capital markets.

Then what is the point of our subsidising their existence on welfare.

You're such a dishonest hack that the words to condemn you fittingly are ones that we are not supposed to use on this forum.

By the way Oldies, any luck in finding that cite I asked for?  Given how you've done with how "states' rights" and "welfare queen" were interpreted in Reagan's day I'm leery of accepting anything you say about history without references.  You've shown a tendency to misremember history to fit your own ideology.

He may have worked for a living, but he was handed a career by the virtue of his Dad's connections and money, which put him in numerous private schools and through Harvard.

I think you are wrong to assume that the majority welfare recipients don't work for a living. Most of them do. However, many work in low-wage jobs without benefits. Many also have criminal records due to police profiling, which makes it harder for them to find a job that pays a living wage. Thus begins a cycle of poverty and reliance on (weak) governmental programs like TANF and Food Stamps.

The majority of welfare recipients did not have the advantage of the informal and formal networks and money that Mr. Romney was PRIVILEGED to have the day he was born.

So you really think that there was no strategic reasons for the way Reagan campaigned? I don't believe that Reagan was racist, but he knew what he had to do. Yes, in that election, states in the south were the closest, so they were the most important for Reagan and Carter to win. His speech in Mississippi was a means to tap into white resentment over the civil rights movement that was still lingering in the region.

It's pretty disingenuous to believe that racism was wiped out only 15 years after the Civil Rights Act was passed. Legislation changes laws, not the way people think and feel. And if you live in the south, it becomes crystal clear that resentment between white and black still exists.

Yeah well there's nought you can do about someone being priviledged. Also, why do you sympathize with them, if they have criminal records?

These government programs trap the weak in poverty, as they provide an excuse for them not to find work.

Two reasons.  Most petty drug crimes shouldn't be crimes at all.  Second, for similar offenses poor kids are much more likely to be incarcerated than the privileged.  Had Mitt been poor and had the misfortune of having an officer of the law observed his haircut assault on another kid, he'd likely have been put in the back of a patrol car, arrested, and spent some time in jail even if he never did get convicted.  Instead, even if a authority figure at the private school his CEO father put him in did observe it, probably the worst that would have happened to him would have been a literal slap on wrist (if the school used corporal punishment) and an injunction to go forth and sin no more.

Don't realy see where's there's much that can be done about the second, but I do have hopes we can get rid of the vast prison industry that exists because we mistakenly treat the mere voluntary consumption of something as a crime.

It is ridiculous nonsense to claim that someone like Romney ever 'worked' in any sense that bears any similarity to the toils of the masses.  Sure, he hung around a big fancy office and had people rushing in to kiss his bottom and shower him with money, but this was just an enjoyable game occasioned by privilege.

And there is something we can do about privilege - we can institute conficatory tax tax rates.  Heck at some points in history these privileged enemies of the rest of us have actually be eliminated in the fashion they so richly deserve.

As for your bizarre statement of bigotry against those who have criminal convictions, why wouldn't we have sympathy for such people?  After all the real criminals are Romey and his class, not the poors thrown into prison to maintain the slave-camp of capitalism.

Who is "we"?  I owe black people (nor any other people) nothing

Perhaps we owe them the respect to not tie a whole race to welfare abuse.  You can certainly talk about welfare reform from both sides of the issue without playing the race card. However, much of the rhetoric on the right for decades was thinly veiled winks to racist thought.

Is someone claiming the new Romney ad is racist? 

It does?  I know one native Southerner who lives in my hometown (not in the South) and she is not racist from what I've seen.  I have relatives who live in the South who are also by no appearances racist.  Granted, they're not natives, but it's still worth mentioning.  To assume that all Southerners are a bunch of racist, brown-shirt, cross-burning Klansmen in white sheets and pointy hats is wrong, bigoted, and untrue.  I think most of them had probably moved on from racial issues by the time Reagan made those statements.  The demographics had changed and younger generations of voters who were less racist started voting, and this is precisely one of the factors that helped Reagan in the South in 1980, as well as his strength with religious conservatives.

Have you ever heard of the words "useless eaters"?

The point is that the civilized state treats, at the very least, the continued incarnated existence of its citizens, and if feasible as a matter of public policy their wellbeing, as intrinsically valuable, rather than valuable out of some sort of utilitarian cost-benefit analysis. It should be accepted as a general principle that 'subsidizing [its citizens'] existence' is the basic goal of most government policy relative to the area over which that government exerts its authority, the questions then becoming how this ought to be done and in what ways said existence ought to be subsidized (e.g. in a positive sense through welfare, which isn't inherently more or less valuable based upon the personal characteristics of the recipient in this analysis, versus in a negative sense through merely insuring that fellow-citizens won't randomly stab them in their sleep or at least that their next of kin can have legal recourse if this happens).

I assume your talking about Nazism. You misunderstand me. I support helping the deserving poor and disadvantaged through charity. I myself have given money to charity regularly. I don't support on the other hand this idea of the government redistributing the hard earned wealth of the tax payer to the poor, usually the undeserving. The state should get out of this vicious cycle of subsidies to the poor and unemployed, which provide them with no incentive to work, earn and save. Not only that, it would ease the tax burden on the hard working backbone of society, the employed.

Are you suggesting that we'd see 100% employment if welfare was eliminated? We know this isn't the case, because unemployment existed before welfare programs were created(and indeed exists today in third/second world countries without welfare programs.)

As to subsidies and incentives, the various tax credits targeted at the working poor actually increase their incentive to work, increase their earning and enable greater savings.
Objectively wrong:http://www.gallup.com/poll/149390/Record-High-Approve-Black-White-Marriages.aspx

In 1980 ~60% of Americans did not support the legality of interracial marriage. It was no doubt an even higher percentage in the South.

Nazism, yes. That was in part a reference to the Nazi practice of murdering the handicapped. But it wasn't only Nazism. Communism did it, too. Solzhenitsyn tells us that the Commies of the early Soviet Union frequently gave orders to 'destroy parasites upon the working class', and local Commies interpreted that to mean not only the elimination of the old ruling elite but where such people could not be found they often killed the crippled and mentally-impaired. At the extreme, even beyond the madness of the Soviet Union and the Third Reich was "Democratic Kampuchea", which executed anyone who failed to fit into its insane demand that people be nothing but obedient robots. 

Murder is murder whether it is through shooting or starvation. Civility depends upon the recognition of the value of humanity even if people frustrate political, personal, or economic objectives. A system  that allows people to die because they lack the means or character to 'contribute' to society violates one of the most basic moral laws that has ever existed.

Charity is not enough. An economic system that ensures that people who do the work are compelled to live at the brink of hunger allows for no charity except for the charitable contributions of people who profiteer off the system. Economic elites in contemporary America are as vile and selfish as those anywhere. 

Yes, but racism wasn't widely accepted by society anymore by that time.  Where's your evidence that the percentage was higher in the South?  And besides, just because someone doesn't believe in interracial marriage doesn't mean he/she is racist.  In fact, some people would say that the South is now less racist than the rest of the country.  "Oh, well, the racism just went underground."  Yes, and I'm a pink marshmallow Venusian.  Come on, you guys, do you really have to get into the crazy consipracy theories like that?

....ummmm...and pray tell what other reasons would there be for people to "not believe" (whatever that means) in interracial marriage?

Yes.  Many good, well-meaning people have been against it because of false perceptions of health risks to the children of interracial marriages.

Make it stop make it stop make it stop

And you claim these perceptions of "health risks" have nothing to do with racism or - at the very least prejudice?

What does that mean.

People who take advantage of the no-holes-barred style of capitalism to screw others and get rich, aka most of the corporate class.

I see no problem with this :)

Yeah, a corporatist stooge like you wouldn't because you don't care what lives are extinguished or damaged on your path to riches. You aren't right-wing, you're a corporate opportunist, just like Mitt Romney.

go join the libertarian party already.  after your recent conversion is their any Republicans issue/value you have that libertarian don't have.

And why don't you go move to Israel already? It's the same type of argument...

This is fixed.

But honestly, alluding to the remarks flung around, lets just have some standards and civility in posting.

Listen, you can spin your position as much as you want, but you're still a vulture capitalist who cares only about himself and about no one else. It is because of people like you and Mitt Romney that this country has been going downhill since the 60s.

Nah

Your country is going down the toilet because its unable to get its fiscal house in order. People on the left such as yourself simply cannot see that there must be massive reductions in public spending in order to achieve this, in combination with far less drastic tax rises. The politics of the United States is broken, and in serious need of repair.

Anyway, be glad your country hasn't gone downhill to the extent the country I was born in has (not New Zealand).

Yeah, maybe if we cut military spending to 1960s levels that would work (I'm for this BTW), though to say we would be reducing public services in this country is laughable. There are no public services in this country.

What the hell are you talking about? There is no evidence of any health risks to mixed race children, indeed it would imply a healthier population if there is mixing of genes from parts of the world far away from each other. Anyone who thinks it has health risks is a racist. But maybe they are nice about it, who knows.

Aren't we all of mixed race?  The health risks from interracial coupling. Oh dear. Where do folks pick that sort of crap up?  I mean, it's ludicrous on its face. Heck, about 80% of the Mexican population is a mix of White and Asian, and they seem to be in excellent health. And even if you thought that, just why would one actually want to put it in writing?  That would be like putting in writing some of my more unfortunate trysts. No, just no.

Apart from Medicare, medicaid, pensions, welfare etc. Its these commitments that have ballooned to ridiculous proportions. Military spending could be cut, but not by much.

Most of those people weren't necessarily racist, but there used to be concerns that interracial marriage presented health risks to the children of those marriages.  That evidence has since been proven false.

I'm sorry to be a pedantic jerk, but the level of quoting past discussions here is making people's comments unreadable.

You ever notice that I almost never do that?  What I say can stand alone anyway. I don't need props. :P

Anyway, what you said. Beet, are you listening?  :)

Oldiesfreak, if a person views different races as so distinct that interbreeding is dangerous, that's racist by definition.  It was only a pervasive racism in society that allowed people to believe in distinct races to the extent of considering them almost different species in spite of the clear as day evidence that characteristics considered racial fall along a continuum.

I know there are many black kids even today that worry that they will get some sorts of diseases if they receive blood transfusions from whites.

Yeah, but Oldiesfreak, they're black, so no matter how ignorant they are they just can't be racist :)

How do you "know"?


No one is saying black people can't be racist...

Yes but the flood of racism expounded by numerous black politicians is barely ever picked up on.

Flood? Sure you aren't just a racist yourself?

I didn't say anything racist. Its just judging from Jesse Jackson Sr., Chuck Rangel, Julius Malema etc.

Ahh the age old defense...

I can keep being racist because black people are racist too! Who wants ice cream???

I didn't say anything racist you fiend! :(

It was more of a general statement

There is no flood of racist comments from black congressman. Sure, it happens from time to time and of course some Blacks are racist, just as is true for any race or ethnicity. But your comment may indicate that you are trying to inflate racist comments from Blacks in order to justify your own racist feelings.

You are free to explain why you feel the need to make up facts about black congressman.

I don't make up factd. Jesse Jackson referred to Jews as Hymies, and Rangel

"Fairness dictates that the sons and daughters of the white middle and upper classes share the burden of war".

Plenty of whites have shared the burdens of these wars

Maxine Waters is a very good example of a racist black congressman if you're looking for one.

No.

It amazes me how long and winded these types of posts become, when all any rational person has to do is simply ignore it. These racists will only learn and adapt when others stop feeding into their debates and arguments. Shun, ignore and make these people feel as small as they are.

Jesse Jackson said that in the 1980s!!! Thanks for proving my point!

Also what Rangel said is true, and note that he said middle class and upper middle class whites need to share the burden more. He said nothing about more working class whites who do share a disproportionate amount of the burden, as do Blacks and Hispanics. He shouldn't have said white there, but that was a classist argument if anything, not a racial one.

I feel that I have more of a right to be a Republican than most Republicans since I don't just have conservative views that I want implemented in the future, I literally want to go back to the old platform we had in the Bob Taft era. That, plus instead of going to Republican clubs and eating rubber chicken in West Palm, I spent my summer helping out the Republican Congressional candidate in his office-something most local Republican activists are too lazy to do. Do not lecture me on how "Republican" I am. As it has been pointed out, your argument is the same if I said "go back to Israel."


That, and my revived Christianity was what turned me away from my former racism and white nationalism. I still hold some of it, sadly, but I am making progress. I just think this-I should love all people the way God does.

Woah there, everyone who can add something to the conservative cause should be welcomed in the Republican Party, libertarians, neocons, social conservatives, deficit hawks, the lot.

That's my point.  Blacks can be racist too but I think it has more to do with just plain ignorance.

True, I don't disagree at all with that. But for me to be told to leave the party by someone who is not even active in the party at all is an insult.

Wow.  That is exactly how I feel sometimes.  I feel like if I come public about some of my views (as a Republican), I will be labeled an RINO or a squish because I believe in the Republican Party as the Party of Lincoln and Reagan, that an electable "moderate" (half a loaf) is better than an unelectable conservative (no bread), that the GOP must not forget its heritage as the Party that was founded to fight to end slavery and for freedom and equality for blacks, and that our message needs to be tailored better based on our audience.  My greatest fear, especially with the rise of the Tea Party movement, is that establishment Republicans like myself who want to return the Party to its former greatness will be ostracized as RINOs and squishes and be told, "You don't belong here, go be a Democrat."  I agree that all conservatives and Republicans can contribute something to the conservative movement, and our party needs to regain its "big tent" status to survive.

Oh are there some racist, racist, racist posts in this thread.

What is with the racists flooding to this board?

Whenever you put southern African whites in the mix, it tends to happen.

Hey, Rhodesian!

(though I do actually now live and work in Cape Town)

Not racist per say. Just an asshole.

Hey, I sympathize with you guys a lot. Mugabe has totally ruined your country. Just know that all people are capable of being racist, but usually racism by the majority is taken more seriously since they could actually do something about it. Again something you must be familiar with....

That is correct, and I am familiar with it. I have just meant in my posts on this thread that, yes redress is needed, but that it can be taken too far, and become counterproductive to the aims it wishes to achieve.

I thank you for your sympathy over my country. It means a lot to me when people say stuff like that.

I abhor racism.  And it is ignorant and bigoted to assume that southern African whites are all (or even mostly) racist.