It’s a Mystery Why Republicans Have Trouble Attracting Black Votes
Newt Gingrich provides another example.
Newt Gingrich speaks:
“And so I’m prepared if the NAACP 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.”
[…]
“The fact is if I become your nominee we will make the key test very simple – food stamps versus paychecks. Obama is the best food stamp president in American history. More people are on food stamps today because of Obama’s policies than ever in history. I would like to be the best paycheck president in American history.”
Now, I expect that Gingrich and his supporters would state that what is being said here is that it is better to have a job than to have to rely on handouts. That message is one that I expect most people would find palatable. However, that isn’t all that is being said here.
First, Gingrich isn’t just saying that getting a paycheck is better than getting food stamps. No, he is specifically saying that he needs to go tell black people that fact. The positioning here is clear: that arguably the largest and most well-known organization focusing on issues of significance to African-Americans needs Newt Gingrich to bring the message to tell persons of color that they need to get off food stamps. Because, of course, otherwise, who has the courage to point this out?
Second, this forwards a stereotype of minorities as being nothing but leeches on the system. In other words, Gingrich is not saying, as a generic notion, that citizens of the US should expect policies that produce jobs rather than simply relying on social policies to help them out. No, he wants to evangelize blacks on this subject. Indeed, he says as much when he says “the African American community should demand paychecks and not be satisfied with food stamps”—because, apparently, they, as a community, are currently satisfied with just getting handouts.
Third, it is true that there are high levels of poverty amongst African-Americans. However, instead of acknowledging the long-term reasons for this, Gingrich plays into the notion that said poverty is simply a result of the community being “satisfied” with handouts. Not only does such rhetoric ignore long-term problems that contribute the poverty in question, it also ignores that there are plenty of successful African-Americans and, likewise, there are plenty of poor whites (indeed, there are more poor whites than there are poor blacks in US). Indeed, Gingrich’s rhetoric is part of a narrative that says that all poverty is simply the result of laziness.
Indeed, fourth: whites receive food stamps as well. However, Gingrich is not proposing going to, say, the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting, to talk “about why the white community should demand paychecks and not be satisfied with food stamps.”
Fifth: the reason that food stamp usage has surged since 2008 is because of the state of the economy, not because Obama is a “food stamp president” (an assertion that has long-term racial implications within American political rhetoric).
Certainly were I an African-American I would not translate Gingrich’s rhetoric as “jobs are good,” but rather I would hear another white Republican telling a predominantly white audience that if he had the chance he would gladly lecture blacks about how they ought not be so lazy.
But, of course, it is a mystery as to why African-Americans vote predominantly Democratic.
I think “fifth” should have been second, after the sad racial linkage.
I talked yesterday about anti-intellectualism and lack of linkages between economic realities.
That a self-described intellectual would say this, is astonishing:
Well, maybe true in the sense that Obama is willing to feed them. The unstated linkage is to 21st century Social Darwinism, I presume. As some liberal wag once noted, the only kind of Darwinism the right can accept.
I would totally buy tickets to watch that happen.
Along those lines, there’s also Santorum’s recent was it “black” or “blechk” people moment.
http://www.mediaite.com/online/did-rick-santorum-really-talk-about-making-%E2%80%98black-people%E2%80%99s-lives-better%E2%80%99-with-%E2%80%98somebody-else%E2%80%99s-money%E2%80%99/
Unfortunately the existing racial politics that the Republican part has used mean that even if it was the latter, its hard not to hear the prior.
Republicans will never get the blah vote this way.
Unfortunately many in this country think just like him. The party of no has held back any recovery efforts by the President so people, black, white,or brown can pull themselves up out of poverty and he has has the nerve to say it is the presidents fault. Then to add insult to injury give it the bad black guy that is sucking the country dry. Newt Gingrich is so out of touch with the people how did he think him, or any of his party would be able to lead this country forward. Unless he thinks the country should be taken back to a society of Rich and Poor and eliminate the middle-class. The more I listen to the GOP they seem to be getting bolder in their choice of words and do not care how much those words are getting diluted day by day. We are going backwards my friends.
Related:
Innate Staring Differences Between Liberals, Conservatives
I’d love to see Gingrich go speak to a community of poor whites and give them the same message. It will simply never happen. This line of argument is a racist dog whistle if ever there was, delivered by a condescending white guy who made his money by exploiting his political connections. It’s not like he’s ever done much in the way of real work, or contributed much to society, so that he can buy Wife #3 Tiffany trinkets.
Please Newt–go deliver your message at the NAACP. Better yet–try an African-American church in any large American city. Let’s see how well it goes over.
This line of argument is a racist dog whistle if ever there was
It’s not a dog whistle if we can all hear it. It’s just blatantly racist.
It’s almost as if Gingrich has never heard of Jay-Z, Will Smith, the NBA, the NFL, or {gasp} Herman Cain. (Lemme think on it and I can come up with less obvious examples.) Oh, I know, I know. It’s absurd to think Gingrich lives in such a bubble that he’s not aware of these (wealthy black) people.
It’s just likely that Gingrich doesn’t believe they belong to the “African American community.” It’s as if you can be black, educated, successful in your field, wealthy, and well-known, but you will never get to represent the “African American community.” Not to the Gingrichs of the world.
Oh dear. Ma was an NAACP member from 1972 until she died in 2003. Fish bellies envied her whiteness. The Newtster suffers from the same problem everyone in his tiny, brain-damaged class suffer: not really loving anyone different from themselves, even the white ones. It goes unmerrily downhill from there.
It’s almost as if Gingrich has never heard of Jay-Z, Will Smith, the NBA, the NFL, or {gasp} Herman Cain.
Odd choices, I must say, with the exception of Herman Cain. How about Kenneth C. Frazier, President and CEO of Merck? Or Kenneth I. Chenault, Chairman and CEO of American Express, or Rodney O’Neal, Pres. and CEO of Delphi? Ursula Burns is Chair and CEO of Xerox.
Of course, those are very successful African-Americans. How about all the workaday folks? My neighborhood is more than 1/3 black, and not a single one of my black neighbors is unemployed.
There are around 37 million African Americans. Around 45 million Americans receive food stamps, and about 12 million of them are African American. What about the other 25 million African-Americans? They are teachers, construction workers, businesspeople, firefighters, etc., just like everyone else.
It’s less disturbing to me that the salamander doesn’t recognize black sports and entertainment stars. While they’re famous, they don’t really represent the population (just like their white counterparts don’t). What’s disturbing is the salamander’s apparent lack of recognition of the millions of regular working black folk. He either doesn’t realize they exist, or he specifically wants to insult them because he believes it will help him get votes from racist whites. Either way, it’s a disgusting bit of racist cynicism. In other words, Republican boilerplate.
Mr. Taylor, it is not at all hard to explain why blacks aren’t attracted to the Republican Party. It is because they are all on the “Democrat plantation”.
Everybody know that.
Can you imagine an African-American intellectual talking about the problems of black poverty and using the exact same “paychecks vs. food stamps” analogy? I certainly can. The problem isn’t the analogy. It’s that Newt and conservatives are in denial about how that analogy sounds coming out of the mouth of a white person.
Let’s be honest. Even with a black guy in the White House, race baiting from the Right is nowhere as common, constant and intentional now as it was in the 70s and 80s. But the near total refusal of conservatives to acknowledge that history of racial politics, let alone apologize for it, has produced this awesome condition of tone deafness that makes it hard for Republicans and right wingers to avoid saying racially charged stuff.
Mike
Well, at least the Republicans can rely on Hispanic Americans for votes.
@MBunge:
Unfortunately, I think there’s an argument that we’ve progressed to “racism 2.0” (or neo-racism) which at once denies a racist past (your point), tries to emphasize the need for everyone to be post-racial and colorblind, and finds new language to mask the same racism (discussion of the president’s “thuggish” attitude, his birth certificate, and that there’s no way he deserves anything that he’s given).
Of course, to be completely fair, there’s a lot of this type of racism in play across all skin-tones and political ideologies.
There’s another category of poverty that the Republicans don’t like to deal with and that’s the working poor. One or both parents have badly-paying jobs without benefits or work only part-time, and are one domestic crisis – medical treatment, major dental work, car breakdown – away from a major financial panic. It’s always poverty = welfare with them.
I am a little surprised that Newt did not work fried chicken and watermelon into his remarks…
Ahh, Mike? It’s not tone deafness and denial of history that causes Republicans to make
racially chargedracist comments. It’s the fact that they know a lot of Republicans like hearing it.@anjin-san:
Or “Strapping young bucks”.
@anjin-san: “It’s the fact that they know a lot of Republicans like hearing it.”
No, that’s why they talk about Latinos and immigrants the way the do. The stuff with black folks is more historically, socially and psychologically complicated.
Mike
@john personna: Awesome! We can now blame traffic jams on gawking Republicans!!!
Pretty much everything in life is more complicated than it appears to be on the surface. Bottom line is that the GOP base likes this crap, and it’s acceptable to the party that it’s leaders peddle it.
Wrap this garbage any way you like, it still stinks.
This does raise an interesting set of questions, however:
What percentage of welfare recipients — white and black — want to stay on welfare? Expanding that a bit we can and should ask what percentage of all handout recipients — again, regardless of race — indeed are satisfied with staying on the public dole.
As to the first query, based upon what I’ve seen of the inner cities, I’d say that percentage is quite high. As to the second inquiry, based upon the unemployment insurance gamesmanship I’ve seen, along with staggering examples of Medicare fraud, workers’ comp. fraud and SSI fraud, with which I’ve also dealt, I’d say that that percentage too is quite high.
An inconvenient truth about left-wing social and economic policies is not only that they don’t work, which is obvious to anyone other than leftists, but that they have negative ripple effects which outweigh even their negative notional effects. Create an entitlement society and society itself becomes the impediment to prosperity. For examples of this check out the poverty, crime and homelessness rates in places like Detroit, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Staggering.
As far as the black vote vs. GOP dichotomy, there’s little question Republicans themselves have contributed with their own ham-handedness. The greater “mystery,” however, at least in my view, is how the party of Byrd, Stennis, Wallace, Fulbright, Thurmond and Gore, Sr., along with Alcee Hastings, William Jefferson, Jesse Jackson, Kwame Kilpatrick and Al Sharpton, continues to get 90 or even 95-plus percent of the black vote. Saddening.
@Tsar Nicholas:
You just demonstrated why.
Of course Byrd, Stennis, Wallace, Fulbright, Thurmond and Gore, Sr are all long dead and gone…but Gingrich, Lott, Barbour, Brewer, and Allen are all alive and well, and as long as the GOP is represented by these kind of people, their party will never recieve a significant number of votes from minorities…
@Franklin:
Of course, teh liberals will be dawdling along the roads on beautiful days 😉
For examples of this check out the poverty, crime and homelessness rates in places like Detroit, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Got anything to back up your assertion that the poverty, crime, and homelessness rates in those cities are a result of an “entitlement society?”
As a counterpoint, let’s look at poverty rates by state, shall we? I know dealing with actual data is a lot more difficult than making baseless assertions, but give it a shot.
Here are the ten highest poverty rates by state:
50 Mississippi 20.1%
49 Louisiana 18.3%
48 New Mexico 17.9%
47 Alabama 16.7%
46 Texas 16.2%
45 Arkansas 15.9%
44 Oklahoma 15.6%
43 West Virginia 15.4%
42 Arizona 15.2%
41 South Carolina 15.0%
Notice how none of the cities you mention are in those states? Hmm. Notice how the majority of them are in the south, where the “entitlement society” is not as strong as in other states? Hmm. Isn’t that interesting?
Let’s look at crime now, shall we? Here are the states with the highest per capita violent crime rates:
South Carolina
Tennessee
Nevada
Louisiana
Florida
Delaware
New Mexico
Alaska
Maryland
Michigan
Hey, you got one! Detroit is in Michigan, which has the tenth highest violent crime rate.
Ok, let’s look at the “entitlement society” figures, shall we? The ten states with the greatest percentage of their populations receiving government assistance through Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), colloquially known as welfare (with percentages):
California: 3.30%
Maine: 2.37%
Tennessee: 2.15%
Massachusetts: 2.09%
Vermont: 2.02%
District of Columbia: 1.99%
New York: 1.92%
Minnesota: 1.88%
Washington: 1.86%
Indiana/New Mexico (tie): 1.83%
You got another hit here, with California at the top of the list. But considering this list, describing in at least one way the “entitlement society” of the states, does not correlate with the lists of poverty or crime rates for the states, one might ask, how do you draw your conclusions. An intuition that cities are bad places full of lazy leeches? Your intuitions do not make good arguments.
In fact, one might draw a tentative conclusion that the high crime and poverty rates of many southern states may actually be caused by their relative lack of strong government assistance. Notice how only one of the top ten welfare states is in the south, and many of the same southern states are on the high crime and poverty lists? Perhaps the lack of a strong social safety net in those states increases both poverty and crime. I’m not ready to make that conclusion, but the data do not refute it here.
@mantis:
And in addition you can go to international data. Of the successful nations of earth, 100% have considerable safety nets, the weakest being the US safety net which is also where we see far more violent crime.
Perplexing, isn’t it? So far, we’ve had not one, but two (count ’em, TWO) GOP presidential candidates sending out racist “dog whistles”…and we’ve only just gotten through the first primary!
At this point, I’m almost convinced the GOP will proudly proclaim “Mission Accomplished” on election night as they watch the entire nation turn blue.
The mystery of course is not why African-Americans vote Democratic. The mystery is what toadying, bootlicking compulsion drives working class whites to support the GOP that believes millionaires should pay less and working people should pay more.
@mantis: Thank you for showing us that the states with the highest poverty and crime rates are also states with some of the highest percentages of black residents. Newt couldn’t have said it any better himself.
I enjoy how you put two observations in narrative order, and then proceed to assert the two are connected without, y’know, logically demonstrating that connection. It’s as if I’m seeing the cognitive chasm that exists in every demagogue, where the description of an undesirable particular (poverty) becomes the prescription for a desired universal (end of entitlement state). I’m reeling from this; no, no, the proper description is that I’m geeking out about this.
See to me, this mystery of why blacks do not generally vote Republican is because the GOP’s message to blacks (actually minorities as a whole) are not popular within those communities. For example, the post about how the Hispanic vote may still go to Obama because of the Republican presidential candidates’ views on immigration.
Not only that, but leaders of the GOP just flub out minorities. Gingrich just did that with his speech, and Ann Coulter does it almost every weekend. Fox News does it every night with skewed programming. Of course minorities are not going to flock to Republicans if all they hear are policies and views they do not agree with. And even as the minority vote is getting bigger (especially Hispanics), the GOP still has not made a great appeal to the minority vote.
Newts gaffe shows why professional propagandists are careful to select disseminators who do not to actually believe it, as they tend to embellish.
The meme they wish to present is that the reason you, the middle class, are poorer is because of blacks and immigrants. Handy scapegoats, but expecting that the scapegoats themselves believe it as well is to be fooled by ones own bullshit.
Thank you for showing us that the states with the highest poverty and crime rates are also states with some of the highest percentages of black residents.
Not really, no, but thank you for plainly revealing your racist attitudes. It’s obvious you want that to be true.
Anyway, let’s have a look. For reference, the United States population is 12.6% black.
Poverty rates:
New Mexico, 3rd highest poverty rate. Black population: 2.3%
Texas: 5th highest poverty rate. Black population: 11.8%
Oklahoma: 7th highest poverty rate. Black population: 7.4%
West Virginia: 8th highest poverty rate. Black population: 3.4%
Arizona: 9th highest poverty rate. Black population: 4.1%
Wow. Five out of the ten states with the highest poverty rates all have black populations below that of the country as a whole, and most of them quite significantly so. Hypothesis unsupported by data!
Crime Rates:
Nevada: 3rd highest violent crime rate. Black population: 8.1%
New Mexico: 7th highest violent crime rate. Black population: 2.3%
Alaska: 8th highest violent crime rate. Black population: 3.3%
Three of the ten states with the highest crime rates have significantly smaller black populations, percentage wise, than the nation, and two have tiny black populations. Want to blame their crime on black people? What are they, tourist criminals?
Anyway, the five states with the highest percentages of black people in their populations are: Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia, Alabama, and South Carolina.
So some of the states high in poverty and crime are also states with high percentages of black people, but others are states with very low percentages of black people. You’re going to have a hard time proving causation if you can’t even demonstrate correlation, bucko.
Newt couldn’t have said it any better himself.
Oh, he would have said it with much more disdain and condescension for black people, I assure you.
@michael reynolds:
And in addition you can go to international data. Of the successful nations of earth, 100% have considerable safety nets, the weakest being the US safety net which is also where we see far more violent crime.
Now that’s correlation. See how that works, Septic Tank?
@mantis: You need to review basic statistics: One cannot make assertions about individuals (e.g. a City) based upon the statistics for the group they are a part of (e.g. States).
My knowledge about Philadelphia is quite personal: I did grad school at Temple University in the heart of North Philly. I’ve been told they’re “getting better”, but at the time I was there:
— The Philadelphia Police Department got in trouble for under-reporting it’s crimes (it downgraded everything it could). Once everything was re-evaluated, it had the highest murder rate in the US.
— Taxes & Insurance were utterly ridiculous. Everyone who could got out of Philly. Most houses went unsold, even in the nicer neighborhoods.
— They drove out businesses with their policies. The only “major business” left in Philly is Education, and since their all Non-Profits their taxes aren’t the same.
— The school system was so bad that the State was eventually forced to take it over. At Temple that had a fairly standard “five-year” plan for four year degrees. They simply couldn’t assume that someone from a Philly school had actually learned something.
On the other hand, I saw a lot of students that were very dedicated to improving their lot in life. Sadly, they were all but guaranteed to leave Philadelphia once they graduated — there isn’t much call for Technical specialties within Philly city limits.
Of course, the problem was not Welfare — it was the corrupt political environment. (I suspect it still is.) They used welfare as part of their corrupt politics, but the welfare itself was not the issue.
@John D’Geek:
That’s Mantis’ point.
The NAACP is mostly comprised of blacks who have already gotten Newt’s message, and already have a job. I think he needs to take this more directly to the people who need to hear this message.
Is there any blighted area of Detroit where he could speak directly to the unemployed blacks who are settling for handouts?
@michael reynolds:
I was quite pleased with the Republicans’ “50% of Americans pay no income taxes” thing — it really showed that they were out to screw the screw the poor regardless of race.
You need to review basic statistics
Ok. Done. Why did i do that?
One cannot make assertions about individuals (e.g. a City) based upon the statistics for the group they are a part of (e.g. States).
Oh, well, seeing as how that’s not what I did, I guess I wasted my time reviewing things I hadn’t forgotten.
I looked at state data because that’s how the census breaks it down and that’s how social programs such as welfare, Medicare, and food stamps are managed and distributed. So, you know, I had to shift it a bit from cities to states because of the data I had to work with. Notice how all of my data is from the states? That’s because I was comparing states, showing where correlation may or may not exist between different social phenomena among them. I suppose I could have tried to find the relevant data for each of the cities listed, but the census nicely breaks things down by state, and I wasn’t going to waste a whole lot of time just because some racist dope decided to pick a few cities he thinks are especially black, even though they aren’t necessarily so. For instance, San Francisco has a black population of only 6.1%.
Thanks for sharing your personal and anecdotal memories of Philadelphia, though. Those totally add weight to your assertion that I’m being sloppy with statistics.
@mantis:
Mantis, didn’t you know your not supposed to use facts and reason to persuade people? It’s totally unfair to the unreasonable.
@mantis: I’m not the one who thought it was a cool idea to post the states’ poverty and crime statistics. You did! If you weren’t smart enough to realize that you were proving Newt’s point, that’s your problem. Black Americans should demand more from their elected officials. They’ve been voting Democrat for 50 years. What has it gotten them? High poverty and crime, at least according to the stats you posted.
@septimius:
I’m always interested to hear how the Republican policies would have magically made everything better…please go on.
@septimius:
Actually, you’ve just done a beautiful job of proving exactly why many Black Americans vote democratic… you’ve just condensed an entire ethic group into poor, inner city residents who are being plagued by high poverty and crime. Which is funny because, most of the African Americans I know (which is quite a few) live in the suburbs, have jobs, stable families, and are not on welfare.
But the fact that you immediately need to lop them all into the impoverished category or start to talk (in Ann Coulter’s case) about how “our blacks are better” points out exactly the type of naive racism that unfortunately permeates much of the Republican party.
I’m pretty sure you’re being sarcastic here, so why all the “unhelpful” votes?
The parasites should suck it up, America is tired of footing the bill for the ungrateful leech bastards.
I have to admit it: white Democrats are a lot better when it comes to pretending to care about poor African-Americans…
@michael reynolds:
BECAUSE TEH GHEYS!!!
Sorry, that was meant to be a reply to Pug at 11:22.
@shukov:
Russian? Perhaps you are unaware of the history.
Got some time, here’s a great story of the history of Oakland. While specific to the mystery of how a particular black community, one similar to the blighted northern slums, came to be on the West Coast, it tells the tale of how things came to be the way they are there too, to a degree.
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/302567-1
The blacks were brought in for labor during the war. They suffered a bit from the indignation of the whites, but the fun began when the war ended and jobs got tight. Of course, just like today, they were the first out the door. Then they were effectively herded into segregated community’s by land-sale covenants.
@Gustopher spewed:
As a former Detroiter, I think it’s clear that most Detroiters would think you’re a dick.
@shukov:
Hey, stay on topic, pal!
This isn’t a post about Wall Street banks.
Sheesh.
@Tsar Nicholas:
What a conundrum! All these Democrats, racists all, yet the darned black people keep voting Democrat!
Lets see…what do all these names have in common?
Oooh, I know! They all made their careers during the 1940’s and 50’s. Why no racist white Democrats since the 1960’s?
Its almost as if something happend in the mid-1960’s that caused white people to go Republican and black people to go Democrat.
Hmm, what could it be?
If only there were a way to research it!
@Liberty60: This isn’t a post about Wall Street banks.
You rock, Liberty60.
But enough about people like Newt Gingrich…
Perhaps they should follow the lead of white Republicans and simply stereotype African-Americans as a group…
@An Interested Party:
“Perhaps they should follow the lead of white Republicans and simply stereotype African-Americans as a group…”
Well said- Republicans are just a bunch typical white people clinging to their guns and religion…
@Miscreant: I was using Newt Gingrich as a guide…unless you are saying his views aren’t those of a typical Republican…
@Liberty60: You and your “history” and “facts”, when you know reality has a well known liberal bias.
“Perhaps they should follow the lead of white Republicans and simply stereotype…”
…unless you are saying his views aren’t those of a typical Republican…”
Stereotypes are wrong, uncalled for, and hurtful.
That said, as long as they are directed at somebody else, then they are acceptable…
If you don’t believe that black americans suffer disproportionately from crime and poverty, then you are delusional. But, since you have a few middle class black neighbors, I guess it’s all good.
This thread has been amazing.
It’s almost sad that a majority of TANF recipients are employed anyways.
@Tsar Nicholas:
Any chance we’ll see your extensive, rigorous research published in an academic journal? Please let us know if so. Thanks in advance.
I’m confused … not that long ago, conservatives were arguing there was no poverty because all allegedly poor people had cell phones and flat screen TVs. Now they’re arguing that liberal policies have created a poverty-stricken underclass. Liberal policies have either made all poor people rich or condemned them to permanent poverty conditions. Which is it?
Indeed, stereotypes like African Americans being satisfied with food stamps…
Explain how that justifies what Gingrich said…
Live by the Southern Strategy, die by the Southern Strategy.
@septimius:
That is not a bug, it is a feature. link
Not only do we inflict most of our crime on the blacks, we get to lock up more of them than they did in South Africa at the height of Apartheid. It is a Win-Win as far as I can see, don’t you agree?
Shhhhh….. I think they’re on to us….
@mantis:
You are on a roll today.
If you go here, select a state, you can then pick counties or cities for more specific data. Such as:
City of St. Louis: Black persons, percent, 2010 (a) 49.2%
People of all ages in poverty – percent, 2005-2009 24.4%
Shannon Co MO: Black persons, percent, 2010 (a) 0.2%
Persons below poverty level, percent, 2009 29.9%
or my home county…
Washington Co. MO: Black persons, percent, 2010 (a) 2.2%
Persons below poverty level, percent, 2009 24.8%
I’m not sure what it all means, but there it is.
Mantis, thanks for doing the leg work and raising the caliber of the discussion.
Hear, hear!
Mantis obliterates Tsar Nicholas in a match that leaves the latter bleeding onto the canvas and crying, “Mommy.”
@OzarkHillbilly:
Well its obvious- somehow that one black family in your county is causing a full quarter of the population to become poor.
I blame the droopy drawers and hippity hop music.
@mattb:
Well, The problem is this. According to stats posted here, which are not sourced , but assuming they are true. %32 of all blacks are on food stamps. %26 of all food stamp recipients are black. That is a pretty disproportional amount of blacks that are poor and on welfare. Yes, there are more whites on foodstamps than blacks, but there are 4x as many whites as blacks. There are also more whites who have jobs – its a mute point because there are more whites than blacks. The problem is with the Black community. They accept low standards, they accept being poor and doing nothing about it, they accept handouts, they accept drugs, they accept crime, they accept out of wedlock kids with multiple men. Its not to say they are the only group that does this, but they do embrace it and do not look down on it. Hispanics are bad on this also, they do not look down on crime, drugs, multiple kids, gangs, getting free money from the government. You can say “but there are rich and hard working blacks and Hispanics” Did I ever say there were not? Our prisons – over 50% are black, over 25% are Hispanics. The problem is in the culture, as as long as democrats keep stealing money from others to pay for their pet minority block voters, they will never rise above the bottom of the barrel.
This is an amazing comment section — so cohesive and assured in it’s cultural and societal assessments of this diverse and more-often-than-not racially dysfunctional country. While Gingrich’s assertions were blunt and tactless, they did hold granules of observable truths, that have been distorted and discarded via progressive prescriptive lens.
Similar to Gingrich, Bill Cosby, for many years, has issued similar criticisms regarding the inadequate parenting, language, behavior skills exhibited within his own racial community And, he too has been negatively framed for these unusually forthright public observations concerning blatant problems he sees as keeping his own ‘people’ from rising up from the lower classes into the middle and upper ones. In fact any member of the black culture, who dares stray off the accepted politically-correct script (written, maintained and obsessively guarded by you guys), is instantly excoriated, demeaned, called a racist in the attempt to keep accountability and equal and fair treatment of all people excluded from these conversations.
Basically, for some social progressives, there is no room for honest opinionated free speech or debate juxtaposing and contrasting their POV, unless it has first gone through the fine-tuning of a liberal biased red pencil — otherwise it is demagogued .
@An Interested Party:
Hey there quick learner!
Don’t you get it? I agree with you!
I think stereotypes are wrong. That’s why I agree with President Obama and wish that those bible-thumping Jesus freak NASCAR-watching inbred Repugs “clinging to their guns and religion” would stop stereotyping people.
@Miscreant: Yes, yes. The important thing is that Obama said something 4 years ago that angers you. We get your point.
@jan:
Free speech does not mean freedom from criticism, Jan. Do you see anyone in this thread advocating for Newt Gingrich to be locked up? No. Do you see anyone asking the OTB staff to ban SD or TN or Miscreant? No.
This is what a debate is, Jan. I have no idea what you think a debate looks like, but I imagine it involves you never being called to the carpet ever.
@MM:
“No. Do you see anyone asking the OTB staff to ban SD or TN or Miscreant? No.”
Whoever is putting Miscreant’s comments into the “your comments are being moderated queue” may beg to differ.
There’s a far longer comment waiting in moderation, but the primary problem here is that like with big issues like Climate Change, the parties involved can’t even agree to agree on the stakes of the question.
Folks like Newt and @Jan immediately go to a level of radical personal responsibility or “failed liberal policies” that completely ignores the possibility that there is such a thing as systemic racism or that the very facts on the ground suggest that race (racial markers) have a strong influence on one’s destiny that is largely outside of one’s own control. Again, I’m not saying that the current policies are perfect, but starting from the position that it’s the policies (and not something happening a much deeper cross-social level) is really problematic.*
Until we can even agree to seriously discuss the possibility of systemic racism, then we cannot begin the process of crafting intelligent policy. But the problem is that for too many people simply admitting the possibility of this problem is to threatening to their sense of American Exceptionalism.
* – Equally problematic, and sadly too common on the Right (though not absent on the Left) are those that immediately go to a genetic explanation rather than tackle the issues of
If that were true you wouldn’t have written that little comment about white Democrats pretending to care more about poor African-Americans…meanwhile, if you are so against stereotypes, who do you choose from in the GOP? Obviously Gingrich is out, but Santorum? Romney? Slim pickings for you…
Oh really? Why don’t you show us these scores of black people who are satisfied with food stamps rather than demanding pay checks…oh, and sorry, but hiding behind Bill Cosby doesn’t help you…
@An Interested Party:
“If that were true you wouldn’t have written that little comment about white Democrats pretending to care more about poor African-Americans…”
George Soros, Nancy Pelosi, John F. Kerry, Alan Grayson, Elizabeth (“1%”) Warren, Obama’s numerous hedge fund buddies, and on and on are hoarding billions of dollars (sometimes even cheating on taxes and engaging in insider trading) while- statically speaking- an unfortunately fairly large percentage of African-Americans live in poverty. I don’t see any serious rush- beyond the usual class warfare rhetoric to dupe the gullible- for the former group to hand over their enormous wealth- or just as importantly, their power- to the latter. Ten, twenty, fifty years from now we’ll have the same BS going on. Sorry, but the truth is a defense.
@OzafkHillbilly:
While the Human Rights Watch study regarding the racial disparity for incarceration rates for drug offenses is interesting, it’s completely irrelevant. All drug offenses are not equal. Possession is not the same as distribution, nor is possession of marijuana the same as possession of heroin. The study did not address that at all. Just because blacks and whites use drugs at the same rate does not necessarily mean that their incarceration rates for drug crimes should be the same. That being said, I don’t automatically discount that there is a racial factor present in the criminal justice system.
However, my concern is really not with the criminals but with the victims. For every black person incarcerated for a violent crime in the U.S., there is a victim. And, that victim is most likely black. Hence, my point that black Americans suffer from crime at disproportionate rates. If you are black in America, you are 6 times more likely to be murdered than if you are white. You are 3 times more likely to be a victim of sexual assault or robbery.
Blacks are twice as likely as whites to live below the poverty line in America. They are twice as likely to be unemployed.
This is a travesty. Blacks deserve better and should demand better from their elected officials.
@Miscreant: You’ll get no argument from me that many national leaders in the Democratic Party are far too cozy with Wall Street and Big Money (something they share in common with Republicans, by the way)…at the same time, Democrats aren’t openly hostile and insulting to minorities (particularly blacks and Hispanics) in the same way that so many Republicans (in this case, Gingrich) are to those groups…ask yourself, if the horrible things you list are so obvious, why do blacks still overwhelmingly support Democrats? Oh, and far be it from me to ask for facts in response to a frothy rant, but do show us the evidence of Alan Grayson and Elizabeth Warren supposedly hoarding billions of dollars…
Tsk, tsk…many of your fellow travelers would characterize writing like that as nothing more than class warfare…
@legion: This is his primary message to all audiences. Not something special just for black ones. He says this everywhere he goes and would just say the same there. There is no more to this story.
That you assume so shows your bigotry not his.
@An Interested Party:
“ask yourself, if the horrible things you list are so obvious, why do blacks still overwhelmingly support Democrats?”
Great point! I think the Democrats should be proud of that. How awesome is it that we have record unemployment among black youths (in recent decades) under the first black president, and that Obama will still get 95% of the black vote! Great job! When it comes to politics, I don’t think anyone can argue- if you’re going to get the vote anyways, why not take people for granted?!
“at the same time, Democrats aren’t openly hostile and insulting to minorities (particularly blacks and Hispanics)”
My view is that when it comes to race or gender, if the person is white, or not a Democrat- then anything goes. Fire away! If you want to say the most vile sexist things about Sarah Palin, or racist things that would make a slave owner blush about Herman Cain, have at it! Because you’re a Democrat! They’re like the Kulaks under the Soviet regime, or the Jews under the Socialist Germans in WWII. IOW, they are not human beings.
Blacks, OTOH, deserve full respect, and deserve to have nothing negative said about them- ever, no matter if it’s true or not (unless it’s a white Democrat cracking a racist joke- then it’s ok). And I think it was disgusting that Rick Santorum said those things about blacks that he didn’t say. Unlike whites, blacks deserve full respect- under the first black president, they apparently just don’t deserve as many jobs…
Oh, and far be it from me to ask for facts in response to a frothy rant, but do show us the evidence of Alan Grayson and Elizabeth Warren supposedly hoarding billions of dollars…
I meant cumulatively. Yes, our white #OWS class warrior hero is a piker sitting there in her $3 million dollar home pretending to care about the poor while reviewing her $10 million portfolio, calling up George Soros, who’s chuckling to himself about the billions he made driving poor people out of their homes, and how those same folks are so stupid to think that he’s their hero! Understand, I’m not bashing these folks- I think they’re brilliant. If you can make that much money while leading on a bunch of gullible chumps willing to do the dirty work for you (and catch diseases with the rats at #OWS), why not?!
@Septimius:
Ok, assuming that your comments are heart felt and not simply arguing for the sake of it, let me point out that statements like:
are again why Black/African Americans have a problem with a large strain of thought within the GOP/Conservatives.
You realize that you just told an entire ‘race’ of people, of which you are not even a member, how they should be feeling about something if they really ‘understood’ what was going on. In that one move you essentially set up a power dynamic from which “they” can never take power. More so, you essentially stated that you know what’s best for “them.”
Can you begin to see the problem with that?
Further, you went straight to crime statistics without looking at the economic issues. Your statistics are correct. But you conveniently leave out some other important statistics, like when controlling for education level, African Americans are still both underemployed and underpaid than Whites (with the one exception at the P.h.D level).* This has little to do with public policy and far more to do with systematic racial issues within *private* businesses. But that’s a far more uncomfortable topic to discuss, because it indicates that we might still need things like Affirmative Action.
Yes of course, because that record unemployment is all the fault of the first black president…here’s a clue for you…why would those blacks have any reason to vote for Republicans? What have Republicans done to try to get those votes?
It’s hardly surprising that yours is a warped view…of course racist insults about Herman Cain and sexist insults about Sarah Palin are disgusting…about as disgusting as racist insults about the President and sexist insults about Nancy Pelosi…
You were the one who pointed out how bad stereotypes are…so yes, making comments about them demanding paychecks rather than settling for food stamps isn’t true but is disgusting…
Ohhhhh, I get it…so anyone who is wealthy can’t express an attitude of wanting to help the poor or even do anything to help the poor…using that logic, we can say that many of the Republicans who never served in the military have no right to express positive attitudes and solidarity toward the military…
You might want to clean out your own closet first, as that strategy has worked pretty well for many Republicans in dealing with the various parts of their base…
@mattb: No, I don’t see a problem in saying that black Americans being twice as likely to be unemployed or twice as likely to live below the poverty line as white Americans is a travesty. Any right-minded person would say that.
@Septimius:
Good. Hopefully you can also agree a few more facts:
(a) that Blacks (and Hispanics) are also still under represented on college campuses.
(b) that, controlling for education level, Blacks still make less money than whites, even as education level goes up.
(c) when fired Blacks tend to stay unemployed longer than whites
(note: i can produce all of the statistics to back these up, just don’t want the multiple links to force this post into moderation… @JamesJoyner any chance regular posters could one day get a way around the link embargo).
I bring all of these stats up to show why a larger conversation needs to take place about the possibility of systemic racism (which, let me stress IS SOMETHING DIFFERENT THAN PERSONAL/INTENTIONAL RACISM). That hopefully starts us on the path of some real conversations about how (a) just working harder isn’t enough and (b) that programs like Affirmative Action may still be very necessary in order to redress long term inequalities created by generations of active and often intentional discrimination.
@An Interested Party:
“Ohhhhh, I get it…so anyone who is wealthy can’t express an attitude of wanting to help the poor or even do anything to help the poor…”
Hey, if destroying the currencies of Third World nations- forcing people to go hungry (Soros), cheating on your taxes and depriving your state of needed revenues while chillin’ out on your $7 Million dollar yacht (Kerry), and making millions (Jacob Lew) and billions (Georgie Soros) profitting from subprime foreclosures is “helping the poor”… the only question is, where do I sign up?…
@mattb:
“I bring all of these stats up to show why a larger conversation needs to take place about the possibility of systemic racism (which, let me stress IS SOMETHING DIFFERENT THAN PERSONAL/INTENTIONAL RACISM).”
And yet, despite all of this rampant, “institutional, systemic racism” from privileged white males… the median household income for single-race Asians in 2006 was $64,238- the highest among all race groups, and within that category, Asian Indians were at the top with a median income of $78,315. Weird huh?…
I don’t know, but whatever government program made this possible- and this result can only be due to a government program, of course- we should adopt it and use it to benefit other races. Dontcha think?…
@mattb: Ok. I have a compromise. When the out-of-wedlock childbirth rate among black Americans drops to 50% instead of 70% and the black American high school dropout rate is only 1 and 1/2 that of the white American dropout rate instead of double, then we can attack systemic racism as the cause of the disparities that you mentioned.
P.s. I’m actually being sincere. I don’t discount that racism plays a role in American society. But, just like any evil, racism will never go away. Government intervention has had a significant effect on combatting institutional racism. (For example, in government hiring, voting rights, etc.) But, we will never get to a point in which we have relative equality of economic results when blacks and whites behave differently in significant ways.
@Miscreant: Your observation misses/ignores/willfully elides/something a rather fundamental set of facts (and many of your fellow travelers in this comment thread do the same thing):
1. Slavery until the end of the Civil War (colonial era until late 1860s)
2. quasi-slavery post-CW in the South (e.g., share cropper era, general post-slavery poverty and illiteracy) (1870s+)
3. Jim Crow and segregation (until the 1950s)
4. Systematic discrimination in voting and voter registration (until the late 1960s)
5. And if we are honest: a great deal of entrenched and accepted racism even into the 1970s and beyond.
Apropos of last night’s BCS championship game, I would point out that the first time the Alabama Crimson Tide had black players was 1971. If you think that that was because there were no sufficiently talented black athletes in the country prior to that, I have some ocean front property in Arizona you might want to purchase. However, I suspect you aren’t interested and would have to acknowledge that there had been systematic racism within college football for many decades. And if it took until 1971 for Alabama to integrate its football squad, what do you think life was like in other aspects of, say, Birmingham society, for blacks in the 1970s?
The issue not, as you seem to want to make to be, that there is something wrong with black people. The problem is that there is a rather substantial set of historical and structural issues that cannot be ignored. One can differ on how they should be dealt with, but many in this thread simply want to ignore these issues. This cannot be done if one is going to be intellectually honest.
(And while there was a great deal of anti-Chinese bigotry in place in the 19th Century in and around the construction of the railroad, there is simply no comparisons to be made here.)
@Steven L. Taylor:
The issue not, as you seem to want to make to be, that there is something wrong with black people.
That’s putting words into my mouth. I don’t know what others may have said, but I said no such thing.
” @Miscreant: Your observation misses/ignores/willfully elides/something a rather fundamental set of facts (and many of your fellow travelers in this comment thread do the same thing):
1. Slavery until the end of the Civil War (colonial era until late 1860s)
2. quasi-slavery post-CW in the South (e.g., share cropper era, general post-slavery poverty and illiteracy) (1870s+)…”
There was also blatant racism against Japanese-Americans in fairly recent years. Taking away families’ property and putting them in internment camps solely because of their ethnicity is about as racist as it gets. And yet, instead of being dragged down by the presumably harmful after-effects of such obvious discrimination, from a purely statistical standpoint, as I highlighted, Asian-Americans are outperforming all other races in the US when it comes to wealth and education. Why is that?
Further, if there is all this blatant institutional racism, then why are certain other races (and good for them, IMHO) outperforming whites- the race that the “institutions” are supposedly designed to benefit?
@Miscreant:
After we’ve had a few centuries of violently terrorizing other ethnicities and creating entire regions economically dependent on their slave labor, then your equivalence might have some validity.
Until then, I suggest you read some Ta-Neshi Coates.
@Miscreant: If you will notice, I was referring specifically to Elizabeth Warren, who is not guilty of any of those particular charges…