Rox, you just mentioned something that happened this week, that pushed my Berserk Button. I saw something on MSNBC that I then had to research. This was footage captured at an anti-immigration rally on Capitol Hill by a reporter for The Nation, George Zornick. From his report-
'Monday... several hundred people gathered in Upper Senate Park to denounce immigration reform as a job-killer. As ThinkProgress noted, a white nationalist named John Tanton organized the rally; he is famous for works such as “The Case for Passive Case Eugenics” and saying that black Americans are a “retrograde species of humanity.”
So, the rally went about as one would expect. Ken Crow, who used to be president of Tea Party of America until he bungled logistics of a Sarah Palin speech and is now affiliated with Tea Party Community, got up and started talking about “well-bred Americans.”'
The moment was caught on tape. Here's the transcript:
"From those incredible blood lines of Thomas Jefferson and George Washington and John Smith. And all these great Americans, Martin Luther King. These great Americans who built this country. You came from them. And the unique thing about being from that part of the world, when you learn about breeding, you learn that you cannot breed Secretariat to a donkey and expect to win the Kentucky Derby. You guys have incredible DNA and don’t forget it."
Now, I'm not dead certain, but I think that I was just compared to a horse in that metaphor. And I'm pretty sure also that every Hispanic person in the entire world was compared to a donkey. I find both of those comparisons pretty insulting, but the donkey one is more so; and intentionally, if I'm any judge. It also betrays a horrible lack of scientific knowledge on the speaker's part.
First off, there is only a tenuous link between genetic heritage and IQ at best- so we can ignore all that rot about the Founders' "bloodlines" for a start. (Interesting how MLK has ascended to a spot among the Founding Fathers, though...)
Genetic variation between any two human beings is at most 0.5%. The genetic variation between a human being and a chimp is about 4%. That's a lot more similarity between our fellow humans than between us and our next nearest genetic relatives. I didn't use that information to compare anyone to a chimp, just to point out that each of us is 99.5% identical to every other human being in the world, no matter what skin color or ethnicity you or he or she is. Barring a severe mutation or birth defect, all humans have 46 pairs of base chromosomes (XX for females, XY for males) and therefore we can all interbreed successfully and into indefinite generations (unlike the horse and donkey, which result in the usually infertile mule). So- human beings are not like horses or mules.
Either Ken Crow doesn't understand that- because he never took Bio 101, or didn't understand what they taught in class- or he doesn't think that the people in the audience understand that, or both- or, more likely in my mind, he does know that all human beings are one race (Homo Sapiens), all have the same DNA and the same number of chromosomes, and therefore can "breed" with no ill effects to anyone concerned; but he cynically believed that his audience was a bunch of nativist, racist morons who had no moral problem with comparing millions of their fellow Americans to donkeys.
I have a moral problem with Ken Crow.
He is a racist, who surrounds himself with other racists. And he is the reason that the Republican party is going to be a footnote to the 21st Century, unless the party itself rejects him and people like him.
Let me make clear that I don't care what your stance is on immigration. You can be for it or against it, whatever. But if you're against it because you believe Hispanics are a different species than Caucasians, then you are wrong. You are wrong, scientifically, if you believe that there is more than one species of human being. The same applies if you believe that Jewish is a "race", or Black is a "race", or White is a "race", or if you use the term "Race" interchangeably with "Ethnicity".
Human is the only Race that we belong to.
I recently came back from Gettysburg PA, and that trip reminded me of what used to be great about the Republican Party; the Party of Lincoln; the Party of Eisenhower; the Party of Equality, dammit!
The far Right of the Republican party now, sounds like the far Right of the Democratic party in the 1850s-60s, when I would have been ashamed to call myself a Democrat; they are, in fact, racists. And it's high time they were called on it.
Are some (many?) on the far Left just as bad, in the opposite direction? Are they oversensitive to any mention of race? Yes. Yes they are. But they still have a reason to be. And Ken Crow has highlighted exactly why they still have a reason to be.
And also; the term "Breeding" used in relation to human beings is the nastiest way I have heard fucking described for a long time. :rantswitch:
