CMV: Donald Trump is not a racist

Well, pretty much every argument in the thread is about showing how trump doesn't have to use specific phrases to be racist. That there's ways to weasel around being openly bigoted. People provide examples where it's very difficult to show that Trump's motivations come from anything other than racist attitudes. For instance they show the murders and rapists quote, the one about black and Latinos being criminals, and others that they think belie his internal racism.

But OP keeps asking for "racist" comments, even though they're already showing them. He's not addressing the heart of the argument, which is that, barring slurs, there's no 100% indisputable "that's racist" comment he could say.

So people are saying his definition is changing because it started off as "show me that trump is racist given reasonable logic and evidence" to "Show me without a doubt that what he said is racist and could not possibly mean anything else even though it thoroughly points to bigotry."

Now disclaimer, I'm going to give a personal example that might be taken the wrong way. I don't mean to imply that trump supporters are like the person in my example, but that a bit of the underlying logic is going on in the thread.

Have you ever tried to argue with that one family member or friend who believes a lot outlandish stuff? I have one who believes that corporations have cured cancer and are keeping it a secret, chem trails, and a few other conspiracy theories.

Every conversation we have ends up with him asking over and over "But how do you know? What if all this evidence you showed me is a lie? How can you be 100% certain your aerospace textbook isn't censored?" No matter how many things point to him being wrong, there's always .0000000000001% that he might be right. In the end, there's nothing I can say to disprove that.

I can't help but feel a bit of that is going on here. Trump says stuff that racists says. He plays off of racist stereotypes. He creates policies that are rooted in racist narratives. This is all good evidence that he's racist. The only thing missing is explicit slurs.

But people in this thread keep asking for more "proof." The proof has been provided. No it's not 100% definitive. Yes, all those damaging statement could be perfectly innocent. But then again, my textbook might also be censored. At some point we have to accept that 99.99% sure is good enough.

/r/changemyview Thread Parent