How will you address civil unrest in South Carolina?
I am checking facts on my post and may take it down. The quote is legitimate but the context may not be. I picked this up from a source that presented context which may have been deceptive. “Go anywhere” may have been a reference to achieving public office, not from a regulatory standpoint but from a chances of success standpoint.
In an online forum Friday night where voters asked questions of the two candidates for the United States Senate in South Carolina, and which was an online forum rather than a debate because Sen. Lindsey Graham refused to take a COVID-19 test, Sen. Graham was asked the title question:
How will you address civil unrest in South Carolina?
This was his answer, verbatim:
I am asking every African-American out there, look at my record. I care about everybody. If you are a young African-American, an immigrant, you can go anywhere in this state. You just need to be conservative, not liberal.
I’m afraid of being patronizing here by pointing out the obvious but, just for the Hell of it, I’m going to go into the syllogistic logic of this for a minute: If a statement is true, its contrapositive also has to be true. Starting with the initial statement: “If A, then B,”
the converse: “If B, then A” does not have to be true,
the inverse: “If not A, then not B” does not have to be true
but the contrapositive: “If not B, then not A” has to be true.
If you haven’t done this before, try it. This always works. It has to. If B always happens when A happens then if B doesn’t happen A didn’t happen.
A: If a young African-American or immigrant can go anywhere in this state
B; Said young African-American or immigrant must be conservative.
If not B: Said young African-American or immigrant is not conservative
then not A: Said young African-American or immigrant cannot go anywhere in this state.
Where to go from here? There are so many places. I’ll finish with another if A, then B statement:
A: If someone says what Sen. Graham said Friday night
then
B: that person cannot support the First Amendment for young African-Americans and immigrants.
10/11/2020 @ 12:33 pm
Your logical analysis went right over my head, and that ain’t easy. My complaint with respect to Lindsay Graham’s statement is simple: how do you know that said African American – or, preferably, said black person – is a conservative?
The statement is racist on the face of it because there is no way that you can tell liberals apart from conservatives on the basis of their physical appearance unless they happen to be wearing paraphernalia from one candidate or the other.
By the way, have you noticed that there are virtually NO bumper stickers for either candidate? Here in Delray, which is a Democratic town in a Democratic county, I see very few Biden signs and even fewer Biden bumper stickers. I have seen a few very obnoxious Trump flags, some of them big enough to use for a shroud for a six-foot-tall, 275-pound compulsive liar. (I have stood next to Trump on a couple of occasions, decades ago, and he was the same height as I was, which was six-one before I started shrinking.)
10/11/2020 @ 12:35 pm
By the way, I recommend that you leave it up., I have heard that quote coming out of Graham’s mouth. It isn’t made-up and, in addition, the context is self-proving. No additional contextualization is required.
10/11/2020 @ 12:46 pm
The problem turns out to be what “go anywhere” means. He was talking about minorities and the children of immigrants – like Nikki Haley – who have achieved public office in South Carolina when he said this. What he’s talking about is opportunities for public office, as in “If you’re a young African-American or immigrant and you’re conservative, you’ve got a good shot at getting elected in South Carolina.” That’s a completely different statement than the interpreted one about public safety.
10/11/2020 @ 3:38 pm
Here is my problem with your analysis. The focus is on the wrong point. Your analysis is sound, but that is not what is offensive about it. It is not the one must be conservative for Lindsey Graham to give his permission for a Black person to do anything…but rather, it is that Lindsey Graham presumes to give a Black person generally what that Black person may choose for his reasons.
I know as sure as I am sitting here that you will say, that is not Graham’s message, and therefore is not his responsibility to avoid such messaging. I disagree. I think Graham’s words show a casual ease with granting or taking away that which is NOT THE WHITE MAN’S TO TAKE. And I have to make the distinction “White” because Graham did. He could just as easily said anyone. Graham does not deserve the benefit of the doubt. If Graham gave a fat rat’s ass about anyone but white men, he would not support Donald Trump. What Lindsey’s Graham did was say what someone else could do, demonstrated who was entitled to grant that permission, and he specifically named the class about which he was speaking.
10/11/2020 @ 4:21 pm
Sure it’s his responsibility to manage his own messaging. Let me be clear about what I am not saying. I am not saying that Graham isn’t racist. Nobody who provides Trump with that amount of support could possibly be not racist. What I am saying is that his remark does not mean that he is threatening the safety of liberal immigrants or young Black men and women based on what part of South Carolina they go to.
What he is saying – and I can’t tell whether this is an observation, a statement of his own policy, or a mixture of the two – is that young Black people and immigrants do not have a future of political office in South Carolina if they’re liberal. What that means is that he is differentiating the ability of White liberals being elected to South Carolina office from the ability of minority liberals being elected to South Carolina office. That’s where the problem with what he said really is. He is either saying that he would work to prevent specifically liberal minorities from getting elected or that he is accepting of the racism of his constituents in rejecting candidates based on ethnicity. Neither is acceptable.
I didn’t like being sold a bill of goods from a liberal source. If that source had presented along the lines of what I wrote in my previous paragraph, I would probably have written a post discussing that and I’d be able to support my work. Perhaps that’s the post I or someone else should write.
The fact that the wrong accusation was made doesn’t mean there isn’t an accusation to be made. I just can’t support the one I did make.
10/11/2020 @ 5:24 pm
If he is a racist senator in South Carolina, he is threatening the safety of immigrants and Blacks. It is all part of the same game. Access to public office, and practically everything else, has been restricted, in part, by violence. That is especially so in South Carolina. When I was in Georgia in the late 80s in the Marines, there were still sundown counties. There may still be today. All of that attitude that Graham expressed, and people like that racist ass from Greene County Ohio who blogged on Open Salon, (his name escapes me), all seek to restrict the object of their hatred by implied threat. You may recall that particular individual threatened to shoot me in the face. He’s at one end, and Graham is at another.
10/11/2020 @ 5:35 pm
I don’t remember the name he blogged under. I do remember his real name. He threatened to shoot you if you came to invite him for coffee.
10/11/2020 @ 6:45 pm
Graham’s message is an exercise in southern style white privilege.
His opponent is a young black man who is giving Graham a run for his money. Painting him as ‘liberal’ makes him a target.
Graham is has gone ‘retro’ and is taking a page out of the Jim Crow political playbook….
As such, the ‘message’ is both a warning and an admonition, just short of an overt threat of violence against the ‘liberal’ candidate and his supporters….
10/11/2020 @ 8:19 pm
I’m backing Bitey’s viewpoint.
The blogger from the past used numerous alt-names concurrently. He’d taunt himself and argue.
One I remember was Betty Deeds. Another was something like Hoggus Von Doggus, which had that plantation owner sound to it.
10/11/2020 @ 9:07 pm
That’s fine. Nothing wrong with his viewpoint.
My point in considering retraction was that by my source Graham was accused of something very specific. I can’t justifiably accuse him of that very specific thing. Once I get off that specific thing, it’s open season. Graham’s threat wasn’t about physical safety, which I thought it was. It was, however, about political access and there is nothing justifiable about it.
I don’t remember half his names. Mainly I don’t remember the main ones he used.