Yeah, I know — that’s absurd. But people are actually throwing around this idea that racism is part of leftist ideology, usually while babbling some ahistorical nonsense about how the modern Democratic party is somehow still the party of segregation, despite the whole southern strategy political move that scooped up all the racists and drafted them into the Republican party. Anyway, David Neiwert debunks the whole “KKK are lefties” baloney with a hefty dose of history and politics.
Moreover, the Klan in every incarnation — its original, its second, and its current, has been a creature of right-wing politics. Consider its current program:
— Anti-Semitism
— Racial separation
— The quashing of civil rights for minorities
— The destruction of federal government power
— Anti-homosexual
— Anti-abortion
— Anti-immigration
Hearing conservatives trying to claim that white supremacists are liberals fills me with the same discombobulating dizziness that hearing religious zealots declaring that atheism is a religion does. Dudes, do you even listen to the words coming out of your mouth?
Are they the same scum who used to say “the Nazis were homosexuals” and “Hitler was a jew”?
Probably. It’s easier to tell the lie than it is to refute it, especially when so many are willing to believe without question, and will not fact check anything they’re told.
Liberals are bad. The KKK is bad. Therefore, the KKK is liberal.
It’s certainly true that progressivism and the new deal coalition were as full of white supremacy as the rest of american political culture at that time in history. White american progressives have to remember that pointing to the 50’s as a golden age is harmful even if you’re pointing to unions and social programs rather than ‘family values.’ It’s ludicrous to call the KKK left-wing, but Oliver Wendell Holmes can be called progressive, and he signed off on decades of American eugenics.
Jonah Goldberg’s monstrous “Liberal Fascism” book continues to cause brain damage among the unsuspecting curious and wilfully ignorant.
You know those Democrats? That party that elected the first black president? They’re the party of the Klan I tell you!
Conservatives HATE being called racists, it’s their biggest trigger and they construct entire ghostly empires of alternative history in order to rationalize their innocence. That said, I think conservatives get labeled as racist way too often by liberals and certain glib pundits; I don’t think most American conservatives actually hold coherent racist beliefs or ideology. What they hate is the Other, and if the Other is black today they’ll say racist things, if they’re gay today they’ll say homophobic things, and if the Other is a liberated woman today they’ll say misogyinst things. This is how they have racist and misogynist affect but will still vote for Ben Carson and Sarah Palin.
Also, I would find it easier to condemn Republicans as racists if I thought half of them had the IQ necessary to actually hold racialist beliefs — racists by European or David Duke standards are usually showy intellectuals. It is sort of a backhanded compliment though: I don’t think Republicans are racist, because most racists I’m aware of in human history read books.
Related, there has been a trend for awhile now for some of the most odious people, and/or those who spout odious “ideas” / “polices”, to claim they are and/or Dr King would approve of the “idea” / “policy”. Almost needless to say, this claim is, in the words of Terry Pratchett (paraphrasing), “so far-fetched it can see the curvature of the universe”.
Well, they are against cultural appropriation.
Beyond the obvious possibilities of lying or total ignorance, there is the remote possibility that one or more of these pundits can actually fold space.
http://pictoraltheology.blogspot.com/2016/03/jeffrey-lord-turns-out-to-be-guild.html
If conservatives now believe the KKK is bad (bad enough to call it “liberal”!), at least they’re making progress.
But many of them don’t think the Klan is bad, they just think liberals are hypocrites. Liberal hypocrisy about racism is always a bigger problem than actual racism.
Not to mention the fact that the KKK members themselves routinely back Republican candidates, including their current frontrunner.
I’m not racist, you’re the racist!!
I’m fascinated by this idea i’ve seen around that liberals are the real racists because they talk about race… clearly if we completely ignored all these “racial” problems, the problems would just go away…for white people.
Empathy impairment is like the plague…
@11
Gotta love when professional-idiot-that-plays-smart-people-on-TV Ben Stein called Obama the most racist president in history by criticizing the republicans history with regards to race.
The first black president is apparently more racist than, you know, the slave owning ones.
Listen? They’re to busy circle jerking to listen!
You know what, screw Godwin’s Law. I think this fits:
“Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it.”
— You know who
This assumes that racism is best understood as a coherent, explicit ideology.
kiptw @7
Conservatives have moved so far right that the KKK looks liberal is progress? What part of the political spectrum remains to the right of the KKK? Demanding death camps for anyone whose ultimate ancestor did not spontaneously pop into existence in der Fatherland? None of that out-of-Africa nonsense allowed, regardless of the evidence.
It’s not that True Conservatives ™ don’t agree with the KKK, they are just afraid to say so in public. Look at the laundry list above. Straight out of the Republican Party platform, explicit and implied. (Note though that pro-Israel does not equal anti-anti-semitic.)
Sigma #4
Huh. I didn’t know that all of these people who consistently vote for, are inspired by, and parrot blatantly obvious racist politicians and groups weren’t actually racist. I had no idea that I was too quick to describe as racists people who were only racist against me because my skin is the color of some “other”, and not just, I don’t know, whatever real racism is based on. Here, all these years I thought being a racist was enough to make somebody a racist, but how wrong I was. They need to read books and have a coherent and intellectual brand of racism to be real racists, or whatever.
Learn something new every day.
mary matalin (looking more like dorian gray’s picture every day) whose ample salary depends on her not understanding long lists of things, has had enough of your sh*t:
so as long as i don’t think that i’m an ass, i’m not an ass, ok? or does mary matalin need to choke a b*tch?
aarrgghh #18
Yeah, so, I read the comments there and, probably most of them, already took care of the whole “hey there’s a woman let’s disparage her looks” enough for me.
So I didn’t really need you to bring that part of it over here.
i’m actually an equal-opportunity looks disparager.
Not to mention the fact that the KKK members themselves routinely back Republicans.
@tkreacher
Well but here’s the problem- most of these people have a long list of black people they like. If you make exceptions for certain black people you’re not actually much of a racist. You could say maybe they hate the poors, but then again most of these people are themselves really poor, so that’s not it either.
When you call someone a racist you’re, at a minimum, making the presumption that they’re capable of holding some kind of consistent belief about human nature, as opposed to simply just getting pissed off about whatever Fox News is talking about at that moment, and that if Fox or Ted Cruz or Ben Carson tells them to like blacks today, they’re not just going to suddenly start saying nice things about blacks. If you’re head is so empty your political leaders can turn your racism on and off like a switch, for this guy but not that guy, you’re not really a racist.
Racism requires you to actually hate blacks, and pigs don’t know how to hate. US Conservative attitudes about race are best understood in the context of authoritarian personality types. Blacks aren’t hated because they’re black; certain blacks are hated because authoritarians scapegoat them as enemies of social order.
sigaba #22
“Some of my best friends are black.”
No, if fucking doesn’t.
it*
“I grew up with many black friends. My wife is black. I started a foundation to help poor, starving black children. My children are half-black. I feel great compassion for, and love black people. I just happen to know that blacks are inferior mentally to their white counterparts, and so, to help them, we should send them to separate schools and teach them manual trade rather than difficult academic disciplines. It is for their benefit. We must help them, you see.” – Says a guy who isn’t racist, according to sigaba.
Actually, all that is required is that you don’t give a shit if blacks aren’t treated with the same privilege you have. It may be considered “benign racism”, since you aren’t spitting in their faces, but it is racism nonetheless.
You can call these people racist to their face but they’ll never understand what you mean. There’s a difference between George Lincoln Rockwell on the one hand and Donald Trump on the other. If you paint them with the same brush it just obscures more than it explains.
If you want to actually fix the problem in our society you actually have to figure out what people believe and why they act. And not just label them with the cruelest thought-terminating cliche you can think of at the moment.
That there are differences between the way two racists act doesn’t change the fact that they’re both racists. That’s why subgroups and categories exist.
You could definitely argue that they’re different kinds of racist – although I would argue that said kinds are not remotely distinct from each other – but both Donald Trump and Rockwell are definitely racists.
Sigaba,
Thank you for instructing me on how to end something when you don’t even know what it is, or how it can manifest itself. I’ll file your sage advice under “duly noted”.
Do you have any further advice on how I should respond to racists who marginalize, disrespect, attempt to silence (this one sound familiar at all?), or erase the existence of people like me? Or vote for people who push policies aimed at doing the above to people like me?
I mean, I haven’t thought about any of this stuff before, so it’s nice that you’ve come to bequeath your platitudes at me. I mean, without you I’d just be knee-jerk shooting off the cruelest thought-terminating cliches I could think of at the moment, like some hysterical animal. I’d be running around describing racist people as racists and not understanding that racists aren’t racists if they don’t hate me in some particular way. What a fool I’ve been.
Thank god you’re here.
Actually that guy’s totally racist, he believes blacks are inferior — but how many Republicans are you going to find that will actually say that?
What’s more problematic is when people use “colorblind” argumentation to try to lock in white privilege. Is that racist or is it merely rationalization of the status quo? It USED to be common for people to hate Italians and Slavs, and only western Europeans were “white.” But these distinctions totally disappeared when Italians became part of the American ethnic status-quo.
Racist in both cases. DUH.
Anytime somebody is not treated as your equal is discrimination. You need to understand that concept at the gut level.
I am reminded of those people who admit that they would get someone drunk or use just a little force to have sex with someone but they’re totally not rapists?
No, racism doesn’t require any such thing. Racism is not limited to white people. The idea that melanin affects your value as a person is the basis of racism, just as women as a class are less valued than men is the basis of sexism.
Science has proven that there is no such thing as human races. There is only one race, with a variety of skin tones, yet racism is clearly alive and well. Believing that the world is a gender binary is empirically false to begin with, so any people who do not identify as cis hetero male are subject to sexism+gender discrimination.
All of these ideas are deeply embedded in our cultures, because our cultures are inherently racist and sexist and homophobic. They really do elevate the beliefs and ideas of white males over all others. Nobody is immune from cognitive bias. We are all racist and sexist and have all sorts of hang-ups about sex and gender. It’s merely a matter of degree.
I guess with Trump I’d wonder how you could figure out anything he believed, he seems to be utterly without convictions. I guess you could call him an “objective” racist, in the same way Lenin might call a kulak an “objective enemy”. That’s exactly the kind of analysis I’m trying to avoid.
Saying the shit he says and inciting people to act on the prejudices he seems to hold is more than enough to qualify him as a racist, no matter what his actual thoughts on the matter are.
It doesn’t matter what Trump believes. All of his actions clearly demonstrate that he is a snake oil salesman who cares only about wealth and male dominance. His penis and every toxic male privilege that comes with his penis are quite literally the entirety of his philosophy.
@Vivec- As I said, I don’t think US conservatives hold coherently racist beliefs, so setting aside the question of his beliefs is sortof discursive. I don’t think anybody really disagrees with me, the only thing you and others have really said is that racism doesn’t actually have much to do with people’s beliefs or ideals, which I’d disagree with.
If we’re just going to discount intentions and beliefs and nail everyone on their effects and impacts, you and I might as well report to jail tomorrow for the sweatshops that made our clothes and our smartphones, and failing that, the several hundred thousand Iraqis that have been killed by our country over the past 20 years so that we may pay 20 cents less for a gallon of gas. We built that.
Exactly. It’s all about reifying an authoritarian dominance trope, and if doing that means saying racist things today, he’ll do it, but if it means doing the exact opposite tomorrow, he’ll just as surely do the opposite tomorrow. Racism is the tail on the dog.
Yes, I agree, we’re all guilty of racist things. We live in a racist system, and I don’t think it’d be to unfair to say that everyone that benefits from that system is taking part in racism in some degree.
What I’m not saying is that the racism one takes part in simply by existing in a racist system is of the same degree as the actions and overt racism that Trump spews, nor that they are necessarily deserving of the same punishment/treatment.
@sigaba
I’m not perfect but I’ve gotten a heck of a lot better at spotting the common behaviors to various forms of bigotry (and I’ll gladly take any pointers or clarifications from others). The fear driven bigotry, the irrational, illogical, intolerance of others is the core of it and that unpacks into irrational and illogical prejudice and discrimination. There are rational forms of both prejudice and discrimination such as focusing on people of African descent in sickly cell anemia research and similar, but they are exceptions that I think helps one see the rule.
Example?
Prejudice and discrimination come in overt and covert forms, and can be conscious and unconscious. It also comes in different intensities, and people can be bigoted towards some groups and not others. It’s not surprising that some Rs will support a female person or a black person who satisfies them in other areas.
Of course I screwed up the blockquotes.
Hey, progress! I didn’t see anti-Catholic on that list.
Brony I agree completely, which is why I’m talking about racism and not “prejudice and discrimination.” I’m talking about racism strictly as an overt and conscious belief. If you want me to add qualification to my original statement, I’ll just say: I don’t think many Republicans or US conservatives hold overt, conscious racist beliefs. Basically nobody in the US is proud to admit they hate other races, that’s my point.
Even Trump can’t publicly state that he hates Mexicans, he has to phrase everything in the form of an appeal against “illegals” (“but we’ll let in the good ones”), and he’s proud to say he thinks he’ll “win all the Hispanics.” It doesn’t make any kind of internal sense, you can describe it as racist but I don’t think that actually explains anything, and if we proceed from the assumption that his appeals are covert racism, or that that’s the principle problem with them, we’re probably going to propose the wrong solutions.
I mean it’s one thing when he says the Mexicans are all rapists, but he also says all the Syrian refugees are ISIS terrorists, and that John Kerry is a loser, and that, notwithstanding their rapey-ness, the Mexican government is smarter than Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. The Othering is totally equal-opportunity and is the fundamental phenomena here.
@
Why are you limiting it to overt and conscious racism? This is not a rhetorical question.
I ask this because you are providing an example of a kind of person I see show up to threads like this on a regular basis. The way that you bring up what you are concerned about minimizes the subject in a de facto manner. I’m not saying that you can’t talk about the potential problems associated with dealing with overt conscious vs. covert unconscious racists, but it needs to be done in a way that does not functionally hinder efforts to combat racism.
Simply saying in a qualitative characterization that you think that liberals call people racist too often when the people here want racism called out MORE often is fighting words, and I’m telling you that calmly because I can. It’s a signal to noise issues. You are running counter to the signal. Find a better way. Because what I see out of you so far encourages me to do call it our more, not less. Because the culture was able to convince you that it would be ok to criticize criticism of racism based off what a mere impression. Can you even point to a source that compares how damaging overt racism is to covert racism? Conscious to unconscious? Do you even know if it matters? in a way that has the same strength as that of someone who experiences it?
Sure, if you want to claim that US conservatives are a particular kind of racist and not other kinds of racist, I can definitely agree with that.
There is a difference between the kind of racism Trump does and the kind of racism someone like Rockwell does, and there’s a difference between both of them and the kind of racism someone like you or I does by virtue of benefiting from a racist system.
The previous was meant for sigaba.
@sigaba
Additionally if you are a member of a dominant social group like me you will be more sensitive to things like this (on average) so we have that bias to think about. It makes sense that a historically dominant group will feel these things more strongly so I have to be honest, I enforce a stronger level of “not giving a fuck” in myself deliberately. I need more than what you have offered so far.
http://www.psmag.com/politics-and-law/sure-whites-are-privileged–but-not-me-personally
Also keep in mind that the unconscious stuff is a part of this. Layers of racism at multiple levels creating a system of problems.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kim-farbota/black-crime-rates-your-st_b_8078586.html
It’s just as insulting to see that stuff minimized. Like I said, it’s ok to be concerned about handing the overt conscious vs. covert unconscious racists. But try to learn how to do it.
sigaba
Multiple people have quite strongly disagreed with your misunderstanding of racism, and still you yammer on cluelessly. We all disagree with you, and furthermore, you are once again explaining things you are a dolt about to people here who have been discussing these issues for years .
You understand the dominance display of Trump, but you fail to see that it is a naked assertion of white male dominance, because white male dudes being rewarded for being a rabid authoritarian gorilla* IS the pathological behavior that is normalized in our racist sexist culture. Trump is a salesman. he knows that peoples emotions are the way to manipulate them, and he, like all narcissistic sociopaths, is exceedingly good at manipulating peoples emotions for his own gain. It’s just a game to him.
*actual gorillas generally limit themselves to noise and plant destruction for good reasons, and are pretty much quiet calm primates otherwise. I would sooner vote for an actual gorilla for President over Trump.
Because I’m trying to pick at the question of how people’s racist attitudes relate to their idealism, what do they want, as distinguished from what they’re eventually gonna get.
Somebody might have some casually racist attitude about undocumented immigrants, or they might have some unexamined prejudice against “welfare cheats” or somesuch. But does such a person want to live in a world where blacks or Latinos are a permanent underclass? Or where they hold permanent and unassailable privilege over all blacks? I don’t think so, Trump certainly doesn’t argue for such things, hardcore conservatives, despite their deep prejudices against other people, inveigh mightily against things they characterize as racial privilege– their arguments are wrongheaded and blind, but it remains, they don’t demand racial supremacy as a positive ideal, not any more. Racists are radicals, they want to smash the status quo and replace it with a racist society; our conservative activists fight for our status quo, if we can change the status quo, and we make racial tolerance and equality the status quo, conservatives will fight for that too. Racism and race ideology are not intrinsic to US conservatism.
If we accept that the “Trump Phenomenon” is a genuine cultural problem, which I think we all agree it is, where is the fault? Is it that people want fundamentally bad things? Or do they want the right things, but are ignorant how how to attain them, or are denied access to the means to attain them? I think it’s more the latter, definitely in the case of Trump voters, and if it were more the former, if people really did proudly demand racial supremacy, it would require radically different solutions.
I mean do you really believe that Donald Trump is using George L. Rockwell as a role-model? It is not a rhetorical question. I could by the same turn suggest that Margaret Sanger role-modeled herself on Comte de Gobineau. It makes no sense and it’s about as bad as someone saying the KKK was the “militant wing of the Democrats.”
“Dear Muslima, your argument is without merit, because racism is a million times worse than liberal prejudices against conservatives.”
Tethys you give him way too much credit.
As far as I’m concerned, “Liberal prejudice towards conservatives” lies somewhere between “not an issue” and “a good thing we should encourage.”
Real talk, fuck conservatives.
Scintillating. And fuck their votes, too, while we’re at it :/
Yes. I don’t really give a shit about courting conservative assholes. I’d much rather focus on shifting the moderate left as far left as possible and getting liberals to actually vote.
If I’m gonna hate them, and I definitely don’t like them, I’d rather hate them for what they actually are, and not on account of lies I’ve told myself to feed my own insecurities (also known as “prejudices.”)
Sigaba, please shut up and go away with your stupid conclusions. We aren’t choosing up sides, nobody asked you to hate. People are herd animals, and an alarming percentage of them will elect and follow the leader right into concentration camps and world wars.
Trump has cast Mexico as the Jews in his personal racist vision of America. The fact that he is going to be the R candidate for president is a measure of how well the R party has implemented its plan to make america their own petty serfdom. It’s taken twenty years, but Trump personifies the values of the R party perfectly. It would be hilarious if it wasn’t so terrifying.
No. (Also, don’t dehumanize actual people (by calling them pigs), as horrible as they are – because their weaknesses can just as easily be our own weaknesses, and turning them into something Other actually discourages us from looking more closely at our own weaknesses, because ‘we’re not like that’.)
sigaba in short: “If you define racism as [such-and-such], Republicans aren’t actually racist.”
You have a lot of learning to do, sigaba. A LOT. Most racism today isn’t an overt or conscious thing but a product of the system as such. It doesn’t take truly hateful police officers to arrest black people just that much more for simply doing ordinary things – and yet, this is a racist way for them to do their jobs. It’s not the violence or overtness that makes racism, but the effect of discrimination it has on people of a certain colour.
For example, I can still do or say racist things quite accidentally without meaning to – what makes me more of a racist is if I don’t apologize for these things, or don’t strive to change these things (or not say them) once I have learned that they are racist in effect or in fact. If I go on to spread these racist ideas, knowing they are harmful and hurtful and discriminatory. And I think many Republicans, while not willing to say overtly racist things out loud in public (because of all the strictures placed on Free Speech, right) do actually support such views as outlined above (that black people are inferior), and are willing to spread them around (or, at the very least, not denounce them publicly). And that makes them kiiiiind oooooffff racist…
tkreacher
I would like to offer some gesture of support here, but I’m entirely unsure as to what would be appropriate, so I’d like to apologize on behalf of white people: sorry for being such idiots about race and racism.
sigaba actually said that?
Whew. I’m wondering about their planet of origin right now, because – phew! – that’s really, really something.
“Liberal prejudice against conservatives”. I like that! I like that. Because for so many years, conservatives have been such shining examples of a stable and inclusive society, I just have such prejudice against them (as a liberal myself, of course) that I can’t see all the benefits they bring. To USAmerica, of course, since I’m really just a bystander and probably can’t see the goodness of the conservatives because I’m not USAmerican (and these European conservatives are a whole different well-intentioned brand of conservatives, it’s totally not the same thing, they’re not actually conservative because they don’t hold any overt or conscious conservative views, they just happen to also be homophobic, misogynist, racist (there’s the word again!), etc.).
No one is “hating them according to lies”. Maybe your version of the term racism allows people to say and do racist stuff without being ~actually racist~, but I vehemently disagree with your version.
I’m racist, you’re racist, trump is racist, and rockwell is racist, all to varying degrees and in different ways. See “concequences of living in a system partially founded on racial oppression.”
@sigaba
Perhaps that’s true, but you are also telling us that liberals are labeling conservatives as racists too often. If that is the case you will probably want to stick to that because it’s just not going to happen. I’m simply not stopping, and I was explicit about when I do so above.
It’s a difference without a distinction because I focus on racist beliefs, thoughts, communications and actions. Those are what I call racist and those have effects on society. They should be called out casual or calculated. It’s entirely possible for a person to feel that they do not want to live in such a society but still create one based on their actions and communications, and the beliefs and thoughts that create them.
I’m being charitable and assuming that you don’t want anyone here ignoring such things. But until you can offer a realistic and effective alternative to these bad examples of labeling people racist (that you still need t point out) you are simply not useful to doing anything about racism, quite the opposite.
Nowhere did I assume that racism or racist ideology are intrinsic to US conservatism. I spoke about proportions of racist individuals in groups that have a racism content and racist individuals that I encounter. You are also neglecting the racist status quo that has existed and still exists in this country. That dovetails with conservatism in form if nothing else (and bringing up the substance would be irrelevant to my point).
This does nothing about my desire to call out racist beliefs, thoughts, communications and actions of conservative activists. It is useless to me.
I see no evidence of any right things that Trump voters want, and even if it existed that is irrelevant to dealing with racist beliefs, thoughts, communications and actions which is my interest. You are still functionally arguing that they be ignored.
Why should we allow you to derail the conversation towards that? The conservative support by the KKK and racism within conservatism is worth talking about. If what you see as legitimate conservative activists are not intrinsically racist (which I do not assume) they should be working on dealing with that. In fact it’s ideal because they have an in-group psychological advantage.
I’m unaware of the connection between Rockwell and Trump. As I outlined above I look for patterns of xenophobic, bigoted prejudice and discrimination that I see now. Sanger is dead and her problems were unfortunate. I’ll not be baited by that anti-abortion trope (intended or not).
Maybe the KKK was the militant wing of the Ds at one point? I really don’t know and that changes nothing about the Ds that I deal with now. Also I am not an R or a D so those group appeals are not effective.
Interestingly I deleted a point in an earlier comment about how you were edging towards Dawkins territory. See the original post up there? That defines the social context that you are disrupting and I’m not even convinced that it’s impossible for you to talk about liberal prejudices in a way that does hinder confrontation of racism within conservatism/R party.
You are the one who wants us to stop complaining about something based on assertions and qualitative characterizations. You assert prejudice against conservatives, and it’s not even the same phenomena. You can separate out conservatives as a group and see more racism (discrimination), you can assume that we will see more racism from conservatives as a group based on current trends (prejudice) because IT’S RATIONAL (and that can be done in a way that allows for improvement in behavior). AND you can do that while treating individual conservatives as individuals as I have done with you. The whole point to racism is that the prejudice and discrimination is irrational, and that it leads to bigoted behavior against individuals.
***
I am hating what they believe, think, communicate and do. I am hating the de facto results of those things regardless of their intent. If I am hating what they are, it is very carefully defined things like racist character which is determined through experience, that is reputation.
I suspect hating THEM as whole people is a path to bigotry and I try to avoid that.
rq #54
Heheh.
Appreciate it, but it’s all good. People being capable of putting aside bias, personal privilege, and cognitive tendencies to always assume they know the answers without even knowing the facts is more than enough to qualify support. We all have them, I think good people are those who do their best to account for and minimize them.
And, I’m not particularly upset because I am personally of the group being discussed. I would be just as amped up if it were some other group being told how to respond to people who act, vote, believe and speak in ways that disparage them as a human being based on abject prejudice.
But ya, you give more support to people with your posts here than just about anyone, so you have no reason to apologize for anything.