Courtesy of The Root
The leaders of today’s Republican Party are expert storytellers. When it comes to manipulating racial stereotypes for political gain, they are akin to animation artists of the 1920s: coloring the lines in black and white.
Last Thursday Newt Gingrich told a crowd of senior citizens in New Hampshire, “The African-American community should demand paychecks and not be satisfied with food stamps.” Rick Santorum was even more egregious, claiming he doesn’t “want to make black people’s lives better by giving them other people’s money” (although he later claimed that he never intentionally said “black”).
Gingrich’s latest offense comes only weeks after he received widespread criticism for saying that poor children should work as janitors and clean toilets. He specifically made a point of addressing “inner city” youths — which has become conservative code for black and brown people everywhere, from the South to the coasts, the suburbs to the metropolises, regardless of where they actually live.
For some odd reason, this is acceptable rhetoric among the conservative political class. It is especially troubling because every reliable statistic shows that white Americans are the overwhelming beneficiaries of welfare in this country and make up the largest number of those in poverty by a wide and substantial margin. The Republicans’ well-rehearsed lies on the subject have been so effective that people of every hue have come to believe them, feeding widespread ignorance about the true face of poverty and the ever-growing gap between America’s rich and poor.
Perhaps it’s time for a lesson in mathematics and history.