General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: If you don't believe in (recognize) white privilege why the fuck are you on a Democratic Forum? [View all]DFW
(56,703 posts)Labels, expressions, even the grammar.
I'm conservative. I'm just not "a" conservative.
I'm a European-American, but I live in Europe, so big deal.
I'm privileged because I was born to parents who managed to provide for me and cared.
The two black guys I roomed with in college were smarter than I was, and I sure as hell never thought they were street thugs.
I don't think the Republicans are THE white people's party. I agree that the are A white people's party, but I'm white, and they sure as hell can't claim me among their ranks. The fact that they trot out black Republicans like Tim Scott, Clarence Thomas and Allen West just prove the point. If those three are what it means to be a black Republican, they fail. There probably aren't five hundred black people like that in the whole USA (to our credit, I might add).
On the other hand, the Democratic Party is mostly run by white people. But it is not a white people's party, and if we have an Obama or (later on, maybe) a Castro as its head, well, we're just as cool with that as we were when it was a white guy named Howard Dean. All comers welcome. "What do you have to say?" rather than "What do you look like?" or "What's your net worth?"
I think the fundamental difference is that we think of our party as an intellectual community. The Republicans think of theirs as an intellectual country club.