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Power Femme
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Cinnamon spiced, caramel colored, power-femme
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She
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Married to a wonderful horse girl
Join Date: Oct 2009
Location: Lat: 45.60 Lon: -122.60
Posts: 1,733
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Quote:
Originally Posted by QueenofSmirks
I find it offensive that it is implied that anyone who lives here (in Arizona) or stands up for it is somehow a part of "this racist state".
The entire state is not racist; I don't even agree that the majority of people who live here are racist. I, do, however, believe that our political system is fucked up and people get elected for ALL KINDS of reasons, not necessarily because they are popular or right or hold a majority opinion. The same goes for laws written by these people. I lived in Colorado when Amendment 2 passed - the first anti-gay legislation to ever get on a ballot. I didn't hate or blame the entire state of Colorado. The wording on the ballot was confusing; the conservative right banded together and got everyone in a frenzy - so it passed.
I don't believe in boycotting the entire state of Arizona, I didn't believe in it before I moved here either. I do believe in fighting the problems, instead of "throwing out the baby with the bath water" so to speak.
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The very same thing could be said about, say, the states south of the Mason-Dixon line prior to the end of Jim Crow. Not *everyone* in the state supported those laws--the 30 - 50 percent of those states that were black, for instance, largely did not support segregation laws targeting them. Not all of the whites in those states supported those laws. NEITHER of that actually matters all that much on a day-to-day basis. Precisely how much good does it do to know that not all people in the state support SB 1070 if one is legally driving down the street, gets pulled over for a broken tail light and is then asked for their birth certificate and, when it turns out one is not in possession of it, one is detained? In that moment, as you are put into the police car, how much do you think it matters to know that not everyone supports the law? The law is in force, you are feeling the full effect of the law, do you think it helps to know that your neighbor doesn't support it?
Cheers
Aj
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Proud member of the reality-based community.
"People on the side of The People always ended up disappointed, in any case. They found that The People tended not to be grateful or appreciative or forward-thinking or obedient. The People tended to be small-minded and conservative and not very clever and were even distrustful of cleverness. And so, the children of the revolution were faced with the age-old problem: it wasn’t that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people. As soon as you saw people as things to be measured, they didn’t measure up." (Terry Pratchett)
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