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Comment by elgabogringo | Hacker News Reader

You are a perfect example of the type of person we are talking about in the valley. Someone who wants to shut down debate by name calling.

You don't actually want to have a debate, you just want to call me a name and hope that ends the discussion.

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It's a sincere question and I'd like an answer. I'm not trying to shut down debate I'm trying to hear your rationale.

I'm not really on either side (I strongly dislike like Trump but also I don't identify with the left at the moment), but I'm curious about the argument here. Why do you call Trump racist? That's a very strong accusation and I'm wondering what drives your thinking on that.

Are you seriously asking this? Is his long history of racist, xenophobic, misogynistic and (for want of a better term) religiously-bigoted comments not enough for you? Are you asking us to go to Google and turn up one of the hundreds of compilations of these comments that you could very easily find for yourself?

Have you forgotten that he was a birther, and still is?

Is there anything short of a video of Trump at a KKK rally that would persuade you? It seems you're determined to pretend that he's not a racist despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

It'd be handy if there was a page listing his comments you could point those who don't really follow what he's said to.

For people who (a) have not been following US politics at all up to now, (b) can't use Google, and (c) have taken a sudden interest in Donald Trump?

I didn't think many people matching those criteria would be reading my comment, but ok:

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=trump+racist+comments

Scroll down a bit and you'll see that even Paul Ryan has noticed that there's a problem here.

"Are you seriously asking this?" Yes, I seriously believe in asking questions.

Birthers are ridiculous, but you don't actually have to be racist to be a birther. It's driven primarily by partisan politics. Racism just gets mixed in sometimes.

Here's what I see, over and over again: Trump does something that is not exactly racist but ambiguous enough to be interpreted as such. The media goes wild and declares him Hitler. But when you read the details, it's not nearly as bad as the media claim. So Trump gets free publicity and makes his critics look unreasonable. A clear example of this is the "star of David" incident.

It's a sleazy tactic, but very effective. He uses this tactic not just with racism, but with all kinds of manufactured fake scandals.

If you mix in enough of these incidents with your own confirmation bias, you can be very confident that Trump is racist and yet not be able to provide any solid evidence. I suspect this is what is happening here.

>Here's what I see, over and over again: Trump does something that is not exactly racist but ambiguous enough to be interpreted as such.

By far the most plausible explanation for that behavior is that he is in fact a racist. However, you've made it clear that you won't believe Trump is a racist unless he goes on TV and says "I am a racist". By your standards of proof, hardly any racists exist in the entire USA. It's also inaccurate, by the way, to say that birthirism is driven by partisan politics. The mainstream of the Republican party never touched it, and it was not a component of McCain's campaign. It's driven by people who don't like the fact that the current President isn't an old white dude. After all, McCain himself really wasn't born in the USA, but no-one ever made much of that.

My own preference for POTUS would be someone who, say, doesn't retweet bogus crime statistics by white supremacists, or promulgate factually inaccurate and highly incendiary stereotypes of Mexican immigrants as criminals and rapists. You may be ok with a POTUS who does those things. If you are, then there is probably not much point in us having a discussion.

By the way, it might surprise you to know that you also have confirmation bias. (As confirmation bias is something that we all have, it tends to be a bit of a double-edged sword, rhetorically speaking.) I can see that you are not going to accept that Trump is a racist simply because you interpret all the evidence on the assumption that he is not. However, the alternative hypothesis you're outlining is that he's someone who cynically exploits racial tensions for political gain. That is hardly any better.

"However, the alternative hypothesis you're outlining is that he's someone who cynically exploits racial tensions for political gain."

This is exactly what I'm saying. And I agree that it's not good.

I don't support Trump. I won't vote for him. I'm not okay with people playing off racial politics on either side. I also am not convinced that he's not a racist, I just don't see solid evidence either way. That's why I asked for evidence, and instead of providing it, you just attacked the "standard of proof" you imagine me to have. Your assumption that birthers are all racist (and not just partisan fools) is not proof of anything. You're making up all kinds of assumptions and accusations (before and after all your edits). And then you call me a troll (before editing that out).

I do think that it's trolling to ask why people think Trump is a racist. Your own previous comment makes it perfectly clear why people would think that Trump is a racist. I'm suspect that in reality you know perfectly well which facts lead people to draw that conclusion.

I did not say that all birthers are racist on a personal level, but the movement is undeniably a racist movement. As you know, there are no credible grounds for believing that Obama is not a natural born US citizen. People only think that he is not because he is black.

It's perfectly appropriate to attack your standard of proof when your standard of proof is too high. By your own admission, Trump keeps saying things that appear to be rooted in racism. The comments in question are widely known and abundantly easy to find. I can't really interpret a request for "evidence" as sincere in this context.

If that socialist candidate that you mentioned was big on, say, defense spending, and what you cared about most was defense spending, and the other candidate held the opposite view on defense spending, then it's not unreasonable that you might vote for the socialist candidate despite all the other character or political flaws that candidate might have.

Someone big on defense spending might not believe in any part of socialism, but vote for the socialist anyway to get the result they want on the issue they care about. I imagine they'd get annoyed if people started assuming they were socialist based on WHO they voted for, rather than WHY they voted for that person.

Alright, I'll bite, even though I can't vote here, so I suppose my opinion doesn't really matter and I would not say I am a strong supporter of either candidate.

There are many issues with your question ("Why would you support a racist candidate if you weren't also racist").

First, most of what I've heard about Trump being a "racist" is his comments about illegal Mexican immigrants (which is not a race... it's a group of by-definition criminals, since last time I checked illegally entering the US is, well, not legal). Similarly for the more rigorous checks of people coming from countries having known radical islamist ties -- not a race (and FWIW, many leaders across the world are proposing essentially the same thing -- but Trump gets singled out for some reason). People also seem to paint Trump as being very anti-immigration, though I fail to see how Hillary is any better. Neither appears to have any plan to do anything about highly skilled immigrants -- Hillary does have some stop gap measures for non-skill-related immigration (why does this take priority over immigrants who contribute more to the economy..?), but that's about it.

So then, I'm not that convinced he's a racist in the first place, at least not much worse than everyone else. It's not like you're either an angel or a racist -- probably everyone has some unconscious prejudices, and I'm not going to base my rating of people based on how carefully they choose their words. Content not delivery.

But more importantly, it is entirely possible to support a racist candidate even if you are not racist. Simple example: one candidate is racist but has mostly reasonable policies. The other candidate is "not racist" but proposes to nuke all of the world the day they're elected. It's always a tradeoff.

Thanks!

Trump's racist credentials go quite a way beyond his comments on illegal Mexican immigrants. For example, there are his comments about judge who allegedly can't do his job because he is "Mexican" (though born in Indiana):

http://edition.cnn.com/2016/05/31/opinions/trump-attack-on-j...

http://edition.cnn.com/2016/06/07/politics/paul-ryan-donald-...

And there were the times he retweeted bogus crime figures from a white supremacist twitter account:

http://fortune.com/donald-trump-white-supremacist-genocide/

And of course the time he called for all Muslims to be banned from entering the USA.

Trump said the judge had a conflict of interest.

He said that the judge had a "conflict of interest" because his parents are Mexican.

Yes, that his ties to his Mexican heritage would suggest that he would be biased specifically against Donald Trump due to Trump's position on Mexican immigration. This is not a particularly strong argument but it's hardly racist. Racist would be some unconnected national lawsuit controversy where the judge made a questionable decision and Trump said 'what do you expect? he's Mexican.'

The judge in question was a member of an ethnic/activist Hispanic lawyer's group. Imagine if the judge presiding over a case with a prominent African American plaintiff turned out to be a member of 'The Dallas Lawyers Association for White Culture' or something. I doubt that everyone who pointed this out would be considered racist.

As Paul Ryan put it, suggesting that someone can't do their job properly because of their ethnic background is pretty much the textbook definition of racism.

The goals of the California La Raza Lawyers Association are (i) fighting prejudice against Latinos in the legal system and (ii) encouraging Latinos to go into law careers. Swap out 'Latinos' for 'white people' and neither of those goals really makes sense any more, because whites and Latinos in California have different histories and face different problems. For that reason it's unclear what sort of organization the 'Dallas Lawyers Association for White Culture' would be, or what sort of goals it would have. The analogy doesn't make any sense.

Trump has, not surprisingly, been shamelessly lying about the association and trying to paint it as some sort of Mexican supremacist organization. As you might expect, given that it counts a very respectable judge amongst it's members, it is no such thing:

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jun/...

All of this is happening because Trump is a bigot. I think it's quite possible that he believes in the conspiracy theory that he's concocted. However, there have so far been no signs of Curiel doing anything inappropriate:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/06/...

Paul Ryan's comment completely ignores the context. The job of a judge is to make unbiased decisions. A judge engaged in ethnoactivism may conceivably be biased against a defendant whose political platform runs against those interests. This is simply not a racist claim. The mistake you and Ryan make is to misinterpret it as a much more general claim than it actually is.

You said there was an extensive list of racist comments by Trump, but then the only examples you can bring up are incredibly flimsy. It's therefore hard to take your accusations seriously.

It is an absolutely straightforward example of a racist comment. Trump knows full well that his complaints about Curiel are baseless, so he's lashing out by trying to make something out of the fact that the judge has Mexican parents. In other words, he's using racial insults because he's lost the argument. In legal and logical terms, he might just as well have said that Curiel is a poopy pants.

Quite often there are efforts to weave conspiracy theories around Trump's incoherent ranting. So in this instance, there is some kind of story about how the California La Raza Lawyers Association is a shady "ethnoactivist" group, whatever exactly that is supposed to mean. All of this is just a way of providing cover for another one of Trump's uncontrolled bigoted outbursts. The judge is a member of a completely unremarkable kind of law association. It is no different from a gay judge being a member of an LGBT bar association, or a black judge being a member of a black bar association. Everyone knows that these sorts of organizations have the purpose of tackling specific problems faced by (respectively) LGBT and black people in the legal profession. To say that membership of such an organization can disqualify a judge from a particular case is effectively to say that gay judges can't make judgments on gay issues and black judges can't make judgments on black issues. That would be racism/homophobia par exellence.

By the way, you may recall that Trump has expanded his comments on judges since. He also believes that he could not be judged fairly by a Muslim judge. I wonder what complicated theories people have come up with to try to justify that comment.

It says something quite extraordinary about the present state of the country that there are people willing to defend a Presidential candidate who attacks a federal judge using ugly racist language. Even mainstream Republicans like Paul Ryan don't want to touch this.

It's a simple implication of bias for this particular case. The example of the Muslim judge is also straight forward. No complicated theories or conspiracies are necessary. People whose common sense is not clouded by liberal hysteria can see this.

Donald Trump has offended every ethnic, national and religious group other than white Christian Americans, and thinks that this gives him the right to be tried by a white Christian judge with American parents. Apart from having no legal merit whatsoever, this kind of speculation about possible biases degenerates into incoherence, since there are many different facets to any judge's background and many of them will point in different directions. For example, Curiel was appointed to the state superior court by a Republican governor. Does that mean he shouldn't try the case because, as someone with probable Republican sympathies, he might be biased in favor of Trump? You could fish through Curiel's background and come up with all kinds of speculations about possible biases. Trump chose to take the low road here and throw a bone to his racist supporters by making a totally irrelevant reference to the nationality of the judge's parents. Let's not dignify that disgusting behavior by pretending that Trump was making some kind of legitimate complaint about possible bias. If he had a legitimate complaint, his legal team would be arguing it.

>People whose common sense is not clouded by liberal hysteria can see this.

So Newt Gingrich is clouded by liberal hysteria? He called Trump's comments regarding the judge "inexcusable". And I guess Paul Ryan must be another closet liberal hysteric. It's quite incorrect to paint this as the fringe liberal left vs. common sense. The split of opinion is simply the split between racists and non-racists.

Compare these two statements:

"A defendant, who is running for office on a promise to get tough on Mexican immigration, questioned the neutrality of a judge from a Mexican immigrant family who is presiding over a private lawsuit against the individual."

"A politician, who is running for office on a promise to overturn carbon emissions legislation, called into question the credibility of climate scientist on the grounds that he was of Mexican descent."

Paul Ryan's comment applies to one of those statements, not the other. We don't need to discuss the overall merit of Trump's argument, I'm just saying it's not good evidence of Trump being racist.

(The liberal left is anything but fringe... as far as I can tell, American political discourse is dominated by liberal hysteria, with a few other oddities mixed in like hero worship of the police and military, and unswerving support for Israel. But I digress.)

I'd say that locating Newt Gingrich and Paul Ryan on the liberal left is quite a heroic attempt to save that particular argument! If it is really your view that they are left wing liberals, I wonder if your definitions of other terms (e.g. racism) may be so idiosyncratic that a productive discussion is impossible.

As to your comparison between the two statements, it's important to understand first of all that neither of them makes any sense. So in fact it is important to discuss the merits of Trump's argument. As I said before, there are multiple aspects to Curiel's background which point in different directions as to his possible biases. Why is it that Trump chose to focus on unfounded speculations regarding the influence of his ethnicity? Because dogwhistle racism is part of his platform. What he's essentially saying is that the judge is not a "real" American and hence can't be trusted.

The entire edifice of modern liberal politics seems to be built upon the very idea of conscious and unconscious bias on the part of people wielding some fraction of institutional power. Usually it's referred to with terms like 'white privilege' or 'patriarchy.' Calling this out as racist or sexist doesn't get much traction. On HN I even recall repeated discussions on whether white programmers can be trusted construct non-racist algorithms.

People wielding institutional power do have conscious and unconscious biases. It's not racist to point that out. But you do seem to have an unusual definition of the term, so I'm not quite sure what you have in mind there. Are you trying to suggest a comparison with what Trump is doing? If Trump has evidence that institutions controlled predominantly by people with Mexican ancestry are systematically discriminating against white Americans, then he should make it public.

The "racist algorithms" thing sounds made up.

You seem to have contradicted yourself. You admit that people wielding institutional power (who would surely include judges) can make decisions affected by conscious or unconscious biases, and it's not racist to point this out. Case closed.

Here's one discussion of biased algorithms https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9211436

It is not racist to point out institutional racial biases when there is evidence for their existence. It is racist to make baseless speculations about an individual person's biases simply because of their ethnicity. It's the difference between pointing out that black Americans are more likely to be involved in violent crime than white Americans (not racist) vs. assuming that a particular individual is going to commit a violent crime simply because they are black (racist).

The algorithm discussion is too vague to really engage with, but it's presumably possible that a person's biases could influence their choice of algorithm in certain instances. If we're talking about, say, an algorithm for matching profiles on okcupid, then certain biases of the programmer might "leak" into the design of the algorithm. You could argue semantics over whether the algorithm itself is really "biased", but there's nothing fundamentally wrong with the discussion you linked to.

> illegal Mexican immigrants [...] a group of by-definition criminals, since last time I checked illegally entering the US is, well, not legal

Improper entry is a crime, but lots of illegal immigrants aren't guilty of it, but only unlawful presence, which is a civil wrong, not a crime (it is illegal but not criminal -- these things aren't the same.)

http://blogs.findlaw.com/blotter/2014/07/is-illegal-immigrat...

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