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[mainiac]

Believe it or not, bigotry is not about everyone respecting your opinion.  Bigotry is about intolerance towards people.  You see, for the past forever, people have been acting like dicks towards each other for no good reason.  Bigotry is the word we use to describe that.  Judging someone by the content of their character is pretty much the opposite of bigotry.  It might be intolerance, but it's not bigotry.  And I can sleep well at night knowing I'm intolerant towards xenophobes (or at least I could if it weren't for this darn insomnia.)

"racists border security lovers" was meant to be a tongue in cheek insult of those who oppose decent treatment for immigrants, not those who are actually concerned with securing the borders.  We all want an end to the cross border traffic that feeds crime.  However some of us want an end to the cross border traffic that does not feed crime and I have absolutely no respect for that position.  Apologies if the cheek was not brazen enough.

[AtomicPaperclip]

I think this thread is a perfect example of the average internet. Except with less porn.

[Aqizzar]

It doesn't have to.  When the local cop knows that hispanics fit the bill for illegal immigrants.  You probably won't find them asking whites if they are illegal, except to be jackasses.

Exactly. Let's be realistic. The vast majority of illegal immigrants near the US-Mexico border are of Hispanic descent. Those of you who complain that the bill itself is racist apparently have not read the bill itself. There is a statement in the bill that outlaws investigation that is "based solely on race, color or national origin."

The attorney general or county attorney shall not investigate complaints that are based solely on race, color or national origin.

Read if for yourself. Page 7 of the PDF, lines 28-30. http://www.azleg.gov/legtext/49leg/2r/bills/sb1070s.pdf

Yeah.  Once again, saying it's not allowed totally stops it from happening.  Let alone the gordian knot you're tying yourself in trying to simultaneously say that the law prohibits being enforced based on race, while also saying that race is a perfectly acceptable basis of enforcement.

Why is the bill racist?  Because you're turning one correlation into another.  To use Nikov's example, if 95% of crack users were black, then saying "if (crack user) then (black)" would be perfectly acceptable as a statement of fact, racially oriented though it be.  When you turn that around into "if (black) then (crack user)" as a motivating basis for police to stop and investigate people, then it's racist.

That's exactly what the Arizona law is doing.  It's take a genuine acknowledgment of the situation, "if (illegal immigrant) then (Hispanic)", and turning it into "if (Hispanic) then (probable illegal immigrant)", giving police carte blanche to harass Hispanic people.  Just because the vast majority of illegal immigrants are Hispanic does not make it not racist to use that as a basis of legal profiling.  Now, you can claim that necessary and I won't bother trying to dispute, but stop pretending it's something it's not.  America has a long and proud history of taking any legal endorsement of profiling and running to maniacal extremes with it.  Aside from being willfully obtuse because you guys think taking the tough-guy position makes you cool, I don't understand how you can possibly not see this.

[Nikov]

Its possible I'm not doing this to be cool.

I wish this country would move past bitching over race. *poof!*

[MetalSlimeHunt]

We would stop bitching over race, if we stoped getting imput that suggests racisim is happening.

[Zangi]

We would stop bitching over race, if we stoped getting imput that suggests racisim is happening.

We would stop bitching over race, if we all became color-blind.  But that still won't work.  We'd still have white, shades of gray, and black.  And then there are still some common racial distinctions that we can see from each other that indicates our ancestry and race.

The solution, kill everyone.

[RedKing]

re: this notion of "securing" the border, I have to ask: have you looked at the border?

I'm serious, pull up Google Earth, zoom down a few thousand feet altitude, and start tracing along the US-Mexican border. Now tell me you're going to come up with a way to reliably keep people from crossing it at anywhere other than the 42 official crossings out of the entire 1,951 miles of it.

The Chinese built a big damn stone wall to keep the steppe peoples out that was about twice as long any "fence" would need to be, and it was 20+ feet high, 20+feet wide, and manned with thousands of sentries. Guess what? It didn't work either.

[fenrif]

re: this notion of "securing" the border, I have to ask: have you looked at the border?

I'm serious, pull up Google Earth, zoom down a few thousand feet altitude, and start tracing along the US-Mexican border. Now tell me you're going to come up with a way to reliably keep people from crossing it at anywhere other than the 42 official crossings out of the entire 1,951 miles of it.

The Chinese built a big damn stone wall to keep the steppe peoples out that was about twice as long any "fence" would need to be, and it was 20+ feet high, 20+feet wide, and manned with thousands of sentries. Guess what? It didn't work either.

Wasn't someone trying to build a fence across the border? I think it might've been bush? It was in the news a few years ago then it vanished.

I think Penn & Teller's Bullshit did a segment on how many ways you could get around/over/under it.

I love the idea that theres a small segment of the border that has a fence. Extra funny if you can easily see where it ends to walk around it. Wonder how much it cost?

[smigenboger]

Has anyone offered The Great Wall of China America? We could make murals miles long like Portsmouth did to make it less omenous.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

To be fair, alot of the unfenced areas are uninhabited for miles and miles. Border smugglers have been known to just dump their latest clients out in these places after being paid, wheren they soon die from heat stroke/are killed by El Chupacabra.

[Duke 2.0]

 I propose we build our own great wall so that people can see it as a national monument in the future and take pictures on top of it, do their kung fu training on top of it, claim to be able to see it from space and stuff like that.

[ToonyMan]

I propose we build our own great wall so that people can see it as a national monument in the future and take pictures on top of it, do their kung fu training on top of it, claim to be able to see it from space and stuff like that.

The next Karate Kid remake will take place in France and Jean Reno will be the new mentor.
And there will be training shots on the Eiffel Tower.

[RedKing]

re: this notion of "securing" the border, I have to ask: have you looked at the border?

I'm serious, pull up Google Earth, zoom down a few thousand feet altitude, and start tracing along the US-Mexican border. Now tell me you're going to come up with a way to reliably keep people from crossing it at anywhere other than the 42 official crossings out of the entire 1,951 miles of it.

The Chinese built a big damn stone wall to keep the steppe peoples out that was about twice as long any "fence" would need to be, and it was 20+ feet high, 20+feet wide, and manned with thousands of sentries. Guess what? It didn't work either.

Wasn't someone trying to build a fence across the border? I think it might've been bush? It was in the news a few years ago then it vanished.

I think Penn & Teller's Bullshit did a segment on how many ways you could get around/over/under it.

I love the idea that theres a small segment of the border that has a fence. Extra funny if you can easily see where it ends to walk around it. Wonder how much it cost?

That's pretty much exactly what happened. They built little segments of fence, a mile or two here, a mile or two there. And as you would expect, immigrants and smugglers just changed their routes around it. Pretty soon, somebody realized this was a mindboggingly stupid waste of money.


There was a Hispanic comedian (might have been George Lopez) who had a great bit about the fence. "Who do you think they're going to get to BUILD it, f**kers? You know we're just going to put like a little doggy door in there.'

[Sir Pseudonymous]

That sounds like the tired, misguided ramblings of carlos mencia.

[Nikov]

1,951 miles, right? If I were President, I'd take those 52,000 troops in Germany back home along with the 9,000 in Italy and Britain, give Europe a bunch of books on speaking basic Russian, and start a catch and release program using drones, helicopters, and a string of small picket bases along the border. Basically what we're doing on the Afghanistan / Pakistan border without the Spooky gunship strikes.