The Progress Report
From the subtle to the sickening, this Republican primary season has seen a normalizing of racist and racially-coded language. It was not so long ago that the chairman of the Republican National Committee apologized for his party’s history of “trying to benefit politically from racial polarization,” and told the NAACP, “I am here today as the Republican Chairman to tell you we were wrong.” Such leadership cannot be found now.
Newt Gingrich may be the new master of race politics with his efforts to label Barack Obama the “food-stamp president” and his generous offer to lecture African-Americans at the NAACP on why they should demand paychecks instead of food stamps. We know that Mr. Gingrich’s claims of being a “historian” for Freddie and Fannie are a strain, but would it be that hard for him to check the history of NAACP’s leadership on developing and demanding groundbreaking job creation policies? (Or to note that more food stamp recipients are white than any other race or ethnicity?) But why would a historian let facts get in the way of historical racial prejudice?
ThinkProgress’ Jeff Spross has compiled a recent history of the GOP’s dehumanizing and divisive language that threatens to plague the primary process for weeks to come. Watch it:
Related articles
- Welfare issue makes political comeback (goerie.com)
- Gingrich Defends Food Stamps vs. Paychecks Charge (abcnews.go.com)
- Welfare issue makes political comeback; so do mistruths (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
- Gingrich On Defense After NAACP, Food Stamp Remarks (alan.com)
- It’s a Mystery Why Republicans Have Trouble Attracting Black Votes (outsidethebeltway.com)
- You: Gingrich wants to urge black people at NAACP convention to demand paychecks, not food stamps (washingtonpost.com)
#1 by sekanblogger on January 31, 2012 - 9:23 AM
If you’ve visited my humble blog and read the page COGNITION, you know that I’m an average guy; “A thoroughbred redneck descended of Hillbillies and Sooners”. What I don’t say is that my Son-in-law is black and my two grandkids are mixed-race. Needless to say, the GOP’s “coding” and thinly veiled racism really boils my honky blood.
#2 by LongTimeLurker on January 31, 2012 - 1:55 PM
I’m not at all anti-immigrant, but I personally feel a certain kinship with old time Americans like yourself. When I hear a Santorum or a Gingrich or a Romney talk about being the sons or grandsons of immigrants I have to stop and wonder “how much do they really feel America in their bones?”
I know you know what I mean by that.
#3 by LongTimeLurker on January 31, 2012 - 1:02 PM
To the Republican Party the interests of big business are paramount. But big business run amok produced and justified slavery. Africans were said to be less than human and deserving of less in life, including wages for their labor. However, that same mentality lowered the threshold for ALL wages, even for “White” people, since, by comparison to “Blacks” (who for hundreds of years were not entitled to any wages at all) the “Whites” always had a better deal.
It amazes me that even today so many “White” Americans have not been able to see through this scam and still embrace those same racial politics being fostered by big business and the Republican party – racial politics which artificially diminish the value and wages of ALL American workers as an unavoidable consequence of the degradation and devaluation of SOME American workers.