I Hate You!

[Rachmaninoff]

No really, apparently some people... do hate you. o_O I've always known that we have what's considered hate groups in the US, I just hadn't noticed the news that their activity has gone up. Though I shouldn't be surprised. The full details on that can be found here:

[URL="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30876593/ns/us_news-race_and_ethnicity/"][U]Homegrown hate groups increase in number[/U][/URL]

About the only thing I don't completely agree with is the sentiment of blaming it on the recession and our current president on account of him being black. Sure I expect things to influence it, but I also think people who are hung up on racial purity and so forth, will find an excuse to be like that, regardless of how things are going.

I haven't really noticed a lot of that here, but to be fair, we don't really have a high racial mix or diversity here. So if we have those groups, they don't really make themselves all that visible. What about the rest of you? What do you think of it?

[Delta]

[COLOR=#65465e]Their reasons are just that: excuses. One should be responsible for her emotions and reactions.

I think there's an underlying cause somewhere that we have yet or refuse to see here. Miseducation of a population perhaps, or misinformation about the issues these groups are raising. Or how about lack of transparency/communication/dialogue between lawmakers and their constituents re: immigration policy, guest worker program, etc.? And as a corollary, how about the laziness of the populace who'll jump on the issue without checking its history and just side with whoever shouts loudest or has the best shock tactics. Like neo-Nazism.

Hurr.[/color]

[Raiha]

[COLOR="DarkOrchid"][CENTER][FONT="Times New Roman"]I find it's somewhat disingenuous to only include the hate groups comprised of white people, unless your focus is only on the people that hate the US that are racist against black people.

How about the New Black Panther Party? Led by Malik Shabazz, the most anti Semetic, anti White, jerk to ever wear a beret and get in front of a microphone and exhort his fellow Black Panthers to terrorize people voting in Philadelphia.

Or we could talk about the home grown Muslim terrorists sent to private radical Muslim based schools that were raised being taught that America and Israel are the progeny of Satan and all infidels within those two countries must die. I find that just as disturbing as group of white people stuck in the pre Civil Rights era. Perhaps more disturbing.[/FONT][/CENTER][/COLOR]

[Gavin]

[QUOTE]But experts say it is the immigration debate that is most significantly contributing to the rise of hate groups, an issue that is exacerbated by the shaky economy.

“These groups have really successfully exploited the immigration issue,” Potok says. “For them it’s ‘brown skin people are coming into this country to destroy us.’”

Some groups, like the NSM, blame immigrants for the scarcity of available jobs.

“The government keeps telling us that these people are coming here to take the jobs that no one else wants,” says Jeff Schoep, head of the NSM. “I think it’s a lie, I think it’s a farce, and I think the American people are tired of being lied to.”[/QUOTE]

[CENTER][YOUTUBE="They Took Our Jobs!!"]GFG2P-toC6k[/YOUTUBE][/CENTER]

[SIZE="1"]Durka durr!!

Oops, forgot there was that bit at the end, yeah slight content warning for the end but the point stands.[/SIZE]

[Raiha]

[COLOR="DarkOrchid"][FONT="Times New Roman"]While I have my own personal stance on illegal immigration, I live in California, where illegal immigration does in fact negatively impact the health care system and the education system.

How does that happen?

Illegal immigrants of a certain strain use the ER as their own personal doctor and the taxpayer is compelled to pay the bills at risk of being called a racist for telling them to pay their own damn bills. The education system is flooded with students from parents who do not pay their income and education taxes and there are too many students for already packed classrooms.

I'm not saying we should deny education to any child, but unless you're paying for the subject, it's really difficult to compensate while still being capable of sustaining a good education for everyone. Too many students, too little money spread too thinly, and then everyone suffers. And California is so far into debt the light at the end of the tunnel may as well be the light of the surgeon standing over you with a scalpel ready to extract your wallet.[/FONT][/COLOR]

[Delta]

[COLOR=#65465e]^ I thought subsidized education was set up to give every citizen an opportunity to, well, get educated. To realize their potential, yeah? Never thought one needs to pay a premium to get in.

Also, it's not that there's too many students. We have to look at just how much of your state's budget is allocated to education.[quote=http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jun2009/cali-j05.shtml]In late May, Governor Schwarzenegger announced revisions to his May budget proposal that include $1.6 billion in cuts to the state?s education system for the 2008-2009 school year and $4.2 billion in cuts for 2009-2010.

These reductions in spending, coming on top of $11.6 billion in cuts already passed by the state government this year, will make California the last state in the US in terms of funding-per-pupil. They translate to roughly $3,000 in less money for every student in the state. [/quote]

Not from the US, but when one's country allots 70% to debt repayment and 20% to national defense spending while public health, education, rural development, research, public works and pork barrels fight for the remaining 10%, one appreciates how important investing in education is for nation building.[/color]

[Raiha]

[COLOR="DarkOrchid"][FONT="Times New Roman"]When a state is in debt how long, precisely, do you think such a subsidy will hold out?

Perhaps it might seem all cut and dried and simple to someone who doesn't live in California and has actually attended the public schools, but I assure you, it is anything but.

My mother substitute teaches and I volunteer as a TA and that's still not enough to defray the fact that teachers for grades K through 6 are expected to deal with 35 plus students per class. There ARE too many students for the teachers to give enough time and attention to and as such this merely results in a substandard education for everyone involved. For a smart child, it's easy enough to get by with only a cursory check over their work, but for a child who doesn't pick things up quickly and perhaps has English as a second language, it's extremely difficult.

That [b]premium[/b] you speak of is the tax that everyone pays as part of their typical adventure as a [b]citizen[/b] that has to pay their income taxes. As far as that goes, a rather large majority of the 15 million illegal immigrants in California pay no such tax and are not citizens.

Thank you for pointing out how superior foreign countries' systems of education are to US education, but I never claimed our education system was great, or good, or even vaguely useful at teaching children how to read. We consistently rank extremely low compared to other countries, but California is in the bottom 10 for the whole of the United States.[/FONT][/COLOR]

[Korey]

[FONT="Franklin Gothic Medium"]While it certainly doesn't surprise me about hate groups on the rise, I'm kind of tired of hearing the sentiment that the white man is the cause of all the Minorities problems. I remember our city being in an uproar about the possibility of a border fence and people were walking out of their jobs/ school in protest of possible stricter enforcement for illegal immigrants. To me, when people really are affecting the economy or healthcare my exploiting holes in the American system and the government decides to crack down on those who are exploiting the system in order to safeguard its people, the blaming figure really goes on the former party. We (as in, the government) didn't make you poor, we didn't tell you to join a gang, we didn't tell you to live in a poor neighborhood, we didn't tell you to not go to school. With the amount of resources being put into inner city neighborhoods in order to increase their opportunities for health care, education and getting into the work force, you would think people would take advantage of THOSE free services instead of exploiting Social Security, Medicare/aid, and Welfare.[/FONT]

[Sabrina]

[FONT="Tahoma"]Regardless of their excuse; yes I see it as an excuse since I don't believe there is any genuine reason for such hatred. I find anyone being racist or hating someone based on something as trivial as skin color or ethnicity, sad. It kind of feels like a setback to see the numbers of such people increasing instead of decreasing. [/FONT]

[Vicky]

[size=1]It's like the BNP in America, except there's no point being Nazis over in America (or anywhere else but that's not my point), because the place wasn't populated by white people until too long ago. Silly Nazis, they're immigrants too.[/size]

[SunfallE]

[FONT="Lucida Sans Unicode"][COLOR="RoyalBlue"]That's the wonderful irony about it Vicky, they're no different than those they would discriminate against. Anyway, I find groups like that rather pathetic. And if they're blaming the economy and our current president, then all they're doing is finding yet another excuse to be painfully stupid. And I do mean anyone who would blame that for the increase as well. An excuse, no matter how it's dressed up, is still an excuse.[/COLOR][/FONT]

[Nathan]

[FONT="Arial"]Every time I hear about this kind of thing, I am reminded of little children who don't accept responsiblity for their own actions. They instead, find other things to blame for all the troubles in the world. Pretty sad and pathetic really, to see grown adults behaving in this fashion.[/FONT]

[HopscotchEyelid]

Hate groups? is it really 2009?. Blaming their ways on other things? How pathetic. I'm not surprised by this but it is one of the stupidest things I've ever heard of happening. Being like that is not going to help anything, and you're wasting your life by doing so.

[Ol' Fighter]

It's pathetic and so very sad and it's been a cause of great strife throught all of time. It unbelievable in this age for me that is that we still have racists, but at the same time I wouldn't be living in reality if I ignored it. On top of that I feel obligated to aknowledge it because of the color of my skin.

Honestly, I don't think prejudices against other ethnicities will ever go away...

[Nony]

I'm honestly not that surprised about the existence of hate groups, considering my somewhat low opinion on humanity in general.

But anyway, I thought I'd share this on-topic story with you peeps. Earlier today, I went to go pick up something at the post office. By the entrance, there was a table and some people with pamphlets and various papers and such. But most interesting was a poster hanging on the table that pictured Obama with a Hitler mustache drawn on. When I was about to go inside the post office, they asked, "Hey, you wanna shoot Obama?" To which I replied, "No thanks."

Yeah, I've never seen that kind of stuff around town. Maybe I just don't get out enough, but it sure was... well, interesting. I'm not sure what they were trying to sell as it were, since I didn't get close enough to tell. But my guess would be that they were either 1) white supremacists, 2) really angry Republicans, or 3) a mix of the two.

[HopscotchEyelid]

[quote name='Ol' Fighter']It's pathetic and so very sad and it's been a cause of great strife throught all of time. It unbelievable in this age for me that is that we still have racists, but at the same time I wouldn't be living in reality if I ignored it. On top of that I feel obligated to aknowledge it because of the color of my skin.

Honestly, I don't think prejudices against other ethnicities will ever go away...[/quote]

Sadly enough, I think this is true as well, it will never go away. Same is true with any type of prejudice, be it sexual preference, or for some people, just social classes in general.

Honestly, how could you hate someone because of race, something they can't help. You often can't help social class either. You can help sexual preference (I think, I don't know though, maybe you can't), but it wouldn't matter either way. The point is that this kind of hating is acquired, and is not a natural emotion. It's not the same kind of hate that makes you spit out a gross food, or something of the sort, if that makes sense.

[Raiha]

[COLOR="DarkOrchid"][FONT="Times New Roman"]Lady A, I hope you're not implying that the only white supremacists are republicans. Because to be quite honest, I don't think that sentiment is fair. Furthermore, it demonstrates a prejudice of the sort that is simply a weaker form of the same hate practiced by said white supremacists.[/FONT][/COLOR]

[Nony]

Oh no, didn't mean to imply that. I don't really find #3 a strong candidate, especially based off what little evidence I have on the matter.
Bottom line, it can be said that those people were clearly not pleased with Obama.