Republican agenda moves – as always – to the people they love to hate the most! « Eideard.
That didn’t take long.
As we’ve gotten around to casting votes to select a Republican presidential nominee, the antiblack rhetoric has taken center stage. You just have to love (and despise) this kind of predictability.
On Sunday, Rick “The Rooster” Santorum, campaigning in Iowa, said what sounded like “I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money. I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money.” At first, he offered a nondenial that suggested that the comment might have been out of context. Now he’s saying that he didn’t say “black people” at all but that he “started to say a word” and then “sort of mumbled it and changed my thought.”
“Uh huh.”
Newton Leroy Gingrich has been calling President Obama “the best food stamp president” for months, but after plummeting in the polls and finishing fourth in Iowa, he must have decided that this approach was too subtle. So, on Thursday in New Hampshire, he sharpened the shiv and dug it in deeper, saying, “I’m prepared, if the N.A.A.C.P. invites me, I’ll go to their convention and talk about why the African-American community should demand paychecks and not be satisfied with food stamps.” On Friday, Gingrich defended himself, as usual, by insisting that exactly what he said wasn’t exactly what he said. He was advocating for African-Americans, not disparaging them.
“Uh huh.”
…As to the false dichotomy of “food stamps” versus “paychecks.” First, according to the United States Department of Agriculture, most SNAP participants are either too old or too young to work. Forty-seven percent were under age 18, and 8 percent were 60 or older. Second, “nearly 30 percent of SNAP households had earnings in 2010, and 41 percent of all SNAP participants lived in a household with earnings.”
But race is usually less about facts than historical mythology, which evokes the black bogyman, who saps the money from the whites who earn it. Ever since blacks first arrived on these shores in chains, they have been perceived as lazy and dependent on whites — first as slaves, and then as “entitled” citizens…
The preface of the “Encyclopedia of Black Folklore and Humor” tells a story about the first black captives arriving in the New World and one slave “muttering angrily to himself.” The captain of the boat says to him, “What’s the matter with you? You’ve been in this country for only five minutes and already you’re complaining!”
Folklore or fact, this is the way many have viewed blacks in this country throughout history and even now: with scolding disdain and shocking blindness…
One of those charged by Nixon with implementing the Republican quest for the racist vote…Kevin Phillips, who popularized the right’s “Southern Strategy,” was quoted in The New York Times Magazine in May 1970 as saying that “the more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans.”
“Uh huh.”
We see the sick logic of bigotry’s political gear-shifters evolve over time. The core opposition to the values of our Bill of Rights comes down to a denial of equal opportunity – whatever the category: jobs, voting rights, marriage, healthcare, Republicans can find someone you should hate. So vote Republican and stop the spread of unconditional access to freedom and liberty.
RTFA for a few more examples. Just because the bigots’ clown show manages to accrete more gravel to their turd-coat of many colors doesn’t mean they’ll skip an opportunity to return to their core stink.
Procured from the WordPress Blog: Eideard
Related articles
- The Food Stamp Fallacy (theroot.com)
- Seven Days of GOP Bigotry (kaystreet.wordpress.com)
