Talk:Racism in the United States/Archive 5

Dismissive language
In the "Present" section of the article the word "alleged" was used to describe a scholarly article as well as the results of a study. The former is based on cited texts and accompanying studies and the latter was simply a stating of the factual results of the survey. There is a negative connotation to the word "alleged" that implies the statements are doubtful and unproven; it is not applicable in either of these cases. Is highly prejudicial and dismissive to use it in this context. It concerns me that this article has been infused with subtle and to so subtle dismissive language. This is very far from the "neutrality" Wikipedia alleges to espouse. Pearl2525 (talk) 15:10, 4 July 2015 (UTC)


 * I see this has been corrected.


 * There are constant instances of similar distortions in any article dealing with blacks in the U.S.: Slavery in the United States, Plantations in the American South, Origins of the Civil War ("states' rights" rather than slavery), etc. etc.


 * There are also sins of omission. I wrote the entirety of History of Tallahassee, Florida. What's disturbing is that it wasn't there already. There was nothing. deisenbe (talk) 20:20, 4 July 2015 (UTC)

South Carolina equals America?
An editor has restored the following:

"In South Carolina, for instance,"Whites were far likelier to name Clinton than Obama as being most qualified to be commander in chief, likeliest to unite the country and most apt to capture the White House in November. Blacks named Obama over Clinton by even stronger margins — two- and three-to one — in all three areas." (cited)


 * 1) It is WP:SYNTH to personally select one state as indicative of all. Could be placed into a South Carolina article. But SC is not a "swing" state, therefore it has not been shown to be significant.
 * 2) It is non-WP:TOPIC as well.
 * 3) It is a bit outdated (2008)
 * 4) The material seems to disagree with the selection of Hillary Clinton over Obama fairly early in the primaries, as I remember. She had an edge then. Why is this necessarily "racism." Why can't the people of any state state their preference for president?
 * 5) If the poll had asked, "which do you prefer, a white person or a black person for president?" the answers to that would have been significant. If the poll had asked, "Which do you prefer, a man or a woman for president?" that, too might have been significant. Though asking the question at that particular time, the people would naturally insert the current candidates. Asked  in 2005, or 2017 or some neutral year might have been even better. Student7 (talk) 15:47, 5 September 2015 (UTC)
 * If I were black and preferred Colin Powell to Donald Trump for president would that make me a racist? Student7 (talk) 18:10, 5 September 2015 (UTC)
 * You are reading the sentence out of context. It is not attempting to indicate anything about the US as a whole, or an example of how racist America is, but illustrating the fact that race continues to matter in voting patterns in the US. None of your objections actually address this, and your last question is a total red herring since this is not about individual choices but about demographic voting trends. If Black Americans as a group prefer Colin Powell over Trump or Hillary, then that would say something about the relevance of race in influencing peoples electoral decisions. An argument for removing this would be if a reliable source shows that race is not in fact still an important factor in voting demographics, or if a source shows that South Carolina is an atypical case. ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 19:30, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 * The more you look at it, the more the data seems unhelpful. South Carolina show a 2:1 white to black majority. Yet Obama won the primary easily in January 2008, really before anyone was seriously considering him as a potential challenger to Clinton. McCain squeaked out a victory in November. It was and is a Republican state. At the time (and maybe still), Clinton was considered the conservative candidate. She had done everything "right" as a Democratic Senator from New York, not rocking the boat, but favoring a strong foreign policy and strong defense posture. The material seems WP:SYNTH because it assumes that there was no other consideration other than skin color. There were plenty of other considerations, of which liberal vs moderate was prominent.
 * Had those same people been asked whether they preferred Colin Powell to Bernie Sanders, I suspect that they would have selected Powell. Student7 (talk) 17:46, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

Slightly Outdated
The recent killings of unarmed black men by police officers, other forms of structural racism, and the resulting Black Lives Matter movement have not been well documented here, and the only mention of 2015 in the section entitled "Present" is lacking a citation. There is no information on racism against Latin Americans in the present, and the section on Immigration does not include any information past 1986. The section on the Justice System is also outdated. I plan to edit this article in the upcoming weeks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gilperkins (talk • contribs) 00:28, 10 October 2015 (UTC) Gilperkins (talk) 00:40, 10 October 2015 (UTC)Gilperkins

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 2 one external links on Racism in the United States. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20070513184220/http://www.blackamericaweb.com:80/site.aspx/bawnews/stateof/hutchinson105 to http://www.blackamericaweb.com/site.aspx/bawnews/stateof/hutchinson105
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20071011215616/http://blackamericaweb.com:80/site.aspx/bawnews/stateof/hutchinson105 to http://www.blackamericaweb.com/site.aspx/bawnews/stateof/hutchinson105

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Suggested new article
Hi! I'm a student at Rice University and will be writing a new Wikipedia article as a class assignment this semester. I would like to write one on "Racism in American pop culture," with its parent article being "Racism in the United States." I am interested in this topic because when we discuss racism, I don’t think it’s acknowledged how much of it comes from the media and is unknowingly absorbed by the public. This topic is also particularly relevant because of recent controversy over the alleged whitewashing of award shows. Some ideas that I have for section titles are “Music industry,” “Scripted television and film,” “Reality TV,” and “Celebrity portrayal.” Athomas1995 (talk) 02:52, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

Hi again! I will not be moving ahead creating this article, but I encourage someone else to! Athomas1995 (talk) 02:36, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 2 one external links on Racism in the United States. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20110823060942/http://newsmine.org/archive/security/incarceration/racial-segregation-continues-in-california-prisons.txt to http://newsmine.org/archive/security/incarceration/racial-segregation-continues-in-california-prisons.txt
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://web.archive.org/web/20071118155355/http://www.byte.com/art/9402/sec8/art8.htm to

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Current racism
I'm going to let you all worry about this, I have too many other things to do. But I was surprised to find that the following text I added was immediately removed:


 * The election and reelection of President Obama have led to a renewal of anti-black activities. In some mostly Southern states, voting rights have been restricted by a new requirement that a state-issued ID be presented at the polls. African-Americans have these IDs at a much lower rate than white Americans, and are less likely to have access to the documentation needed to secure one. The state of Alabama closed the offices that issue IDs in many counties, at the same time it increased the fee for an ID by 50%.

Here's another quote along the same line. I'm typing this out, not pasting it, from the February 22, 2016 issue of The Nation, p. 22. The article is "Rethinking Civic Engagement" by Gara LaMarche, pp. 20-24.


 * "...the state of Alabama, which requires a Photo ID to vote, recently announced a plan to stop issuing driver's licenses in counties where 75 percent of the registered voters are black. As unbelievable as that may sound, the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency cited budget cuts as the reason why 31 of its satellite DMV offices would no longer have access to examiners, meaning that residents are forced to travel to other counties to apply for licenses. The move comes just a year after the state's photo-ID law went into effect. This outrage is of a piece with the closing of schools and public facilities in the 1950s and '60s to stymie integration."

deisenbe (talk) 18:59, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

Here's another article from today's New York Times saying clearly that under Obama there has been increased racism:


 * "Donald Trump and Reconstruction-Era Politics"


 * Every era of racial progress engenders a racist backlash. The one that is still unfolding in the wake of Barack Obama’s presidency bears a striking resemblance in tone to the reaction that swept the South after Reconstruction, the period after the Civil War when former slaves were granted constitutional rights and black Americans served in interracial governments that came to power in the former Confederacy. ...


 * Reconstruction-era talk re-emerged after Mr. Obama was elected in 2008. Tea Party supporters and others responded to the extraordinary turnout among black voters by contending that the election had been “stolen.” Since then, most of the states that had the highest levels of black turnout have passed laws making it more difficult to vote. A 2013 study from The University of Massachusetts Boston concluded that these laws were debated and enacted in a “highly partisan, strategic and racialized” process.


 * Antigovernment and militia groups have grown rapidly since 2008. Shortly after Mr. Obama’s election, the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors extremist groups, reported that the antigovernment militia movement had undergone a resurgence, fueled partly “by fears of a black man in the White House.” And for proof of violence like that of the Reconstruction era, look no further than the young white supremacist who is charged with murdering nine African-Americans at a church in Charleston, S.C., last summer.

I'm not going to revise the article again, because it could get reverted again. deisenbe (talk) 23:38, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on Racism in the United States. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive http://web.archive.org/web/20160310051204/http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2182918 to https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2182918

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