The really shitty thing is that it wasn't that many decades ago that it was considered completely normal to say the N-word. Apparently, when my mom and her friends were children, they used to only know the older racist version of eeny, meeny, miny, moe.
I'm not saying this to excuse Trump's or anyone else's current or recent behavior. What I'm saying is that this should be considered far more scary than people are treating it. Yes, there is still a racial class system in the United States, but there are a significant number of Americans willing to roll things back to a considerably worse time.
And figuring out the road map to a pre-Civil Rights era really wouldn't be that hard considering that nearly 20% of voter-aged Americans are older than the civil rights act.
The next time someone tells you that racism is dead or downplays ongoing racism, remind them even some of our most progressive leaders took shockingly dark stances on promoting civil rights DECADES after the CRA had already been established.
Even our (hopefully) next president was around 6 years old when George Wallace, the "segregation now, segregation tomorrow" guy, circulated an ad showing a white girl surrounded by seven black boys, with the slogan "Wake Up Alabama! Blacks vow to take over Alabama.".
"Trump said a racist thing back when it was more normal to say racist shit," is a good attempt at character assassination for someone who has character left to assassinate, unlike Trump. Definitely don't ignore these kinds of stories, but focus on Trump's goals and the goals of the Conservatives willing to prop him up as their Popularist candidate. Trump is just part of a system that's trying to turn back the clock at least 60 years, if not 200 years.
Yes, we need to focus on defeating Trump before the next election, but we can't stop fighting if we win. We'll never be able to stop people who believe that slavery is a reasonable means to win at capitalism, but we can still push them back a little bit longer.
Wow, this got way more ranty than I expected. Sorry about that...