Rick Santorum Surges in Iowa with Stereotypes of Lazy Blacks Taking Welfare Out of White People's Pockets

How you think the brother "working" the camera behind him liked that?

Rick Santorum has been riding a real surge in Iowa over the last few days, moving into striking distance of being in the top three finishers out there in the caucuses.  He's been putting in work the old fashioned way, visiting every single county in the state, doing small group meetings one after the other and talking to the voters.

Campaigning isn't the only thing Santorum is apparently doing the old fashioned way. Using stereotypes of blacks as a convenient shorthand to illustrate the ills of America as white voters see it is another way that Rick is demonstrating his old school campaign chops. At a campaign stop in Sioux City Iowa, a voter asks Santorum: "how do we get off this crazy train? We've got so much foreign influence in this country now," adding "where do we go from here?"

Santorum's answer perhaps started with foreign influence but rambled over to the subject of government creating dependency and he apparently reached into his campaign communication bag of tricks for the most easily relatable and easy to understand illustration of that issue he could think of on the fly: black people:

Notice how he basically defaulted to this stereotyped racially based meme in trying to communicate with a room full of white folks?  Check the pause as he was trying to find an illustration of his point about dependency.  He needed that illustration right then, something that would resonate with a room full of white people and where did his brain go in that moment? Black people.

With his numbers surging in Iowa, Santorum is perhaps poised to be the next of the Not Romney's to rise in the polls and get a more serious look.  I was certainly willing to pay him some more attention, as I've got real respect for a guy who hits the ground and pounds the pavement like he's been doing in Iowa.  But unless Santorum gives a far more insightful, honest answer to the question of why he defaulted to "blacks" as the best illustration for his point regarding dependency on government, he's effectively blown any serious future look from me irregardless of what he says.  When asked directly about why he talked about blacks, he ducked and dodged.




I'm sorry, but his response is not gonna cut it with me.  We'll see if any other media ask him to speak to the issue.  I think it would be an interesting exercise to ask the other candidates to assess those remarks as well.  No one is gonna do it, but I'm already certain that one or more of them would likely double down on it if they were asked.

Here's what he said:

"It just keeps expanding - I was in Indianola a few months ago and I was talking to someone who works in the department of public welfare here, and she told me that the state of Iowa is going to get fined if they don't sign up more people under the Medicaid program. They're just pushing harder and harder to get more and more of you dependent upon them so they can get your vote. That's what the bottom line is. 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 and provide for themselves and their families. The best way to do that is to get the manufacturing sector of the economy rolling again." 

There is a lot to object to in Santorum's statement;

Context: he's in Iowa, in a room full of white people, in a state in which about 3% of the population is black, using "blacks" to illustrate the problem of government dependency.
 

Implicit assumptions: To illustrate his point about government dependency, he plays to a stereotype that the majority of blacks are dependent on government welfare.  He just says "blacks".  He doesn't qualify it or limit it in anyway, presumably because he doesn't have to.  Everyone in the room will immediately understand and agree with his implicit assumption that most blacks are on welfare.

This is a guy who's response to Howard Dean saying diversity was a strength of America was that talking about our diversity is divisive.  Yet, here, he plays to racial resentment by implicitly suggesting that "blacks" are being given white people's money, money which the government took from hard working white people to give to lazy blacks. He wants to give us "blacks" the opportunity to go out and earn the money and provide for ourselves, I guess because all us shiftless lazy Negroes don't work to take care of ourselves. Those are the implicit assumptions behind his statement.  Its offensive.  Its untrue.  We've been called lazy for hundreds of years.   When we were forced to work for free as slaves in the fields on pain of death, they called us lazy. It was not true then.  Its not true now.

His statements and the assumptions behind them are pretty offensive.  "Blacks" are on welfare.  All of us.  Now of course, the out he and others will use to justify labeling blacks as welfare parasites, if he's even asked, is to say "what I was really referring to is that a larger percentage of blacks are on welfare relative to their share of the population compared to whites".  Right?   Wrong. What is welfare?  I say welfare is any government financial assistance that is received but not earned, that taxes one group to support another group, meaning it's pay-as-you-go and not a contributory scheme where people's own savings pay their  benefits and lastly Congress can alter benefits to reflect changing needs, economic conditions and politics.  That being the case, welfare comes in many forms besides public assistance that goes to poor black people, like for example the subsidies we pay farmers NOT to farm or even better, Social Security, which is definitely welfare.  Those programs are breaking the bank and even more interesting, the majority of those benefits go to people who are not the same color as me. But Santorum doesn't have a problem with welfare payments where the benefits go primarily to white people. If welfare and government dependence are really the big issues, lets talk about all of it; why do you get in a room with other white people, start talking about welfare and single out black recipients? How do you justify such divisive talk on the campaign trail, even as you claim to be all about our equality and our common citizenship? Its racebaiting, and what makes it really insidious and repugnant in this instance is the routine nature of it.  That particular meme of black dependency on government is a standard staple of political discourse on the right, certainly within its more conservative wings, even though its not supported by the facts. Its a racial lie that has been perpetuated in just the way Santorum spreads it here.

Nobody in that room of good Iowa voters in there challenged that.  Indeed, Santorum got applause for those remarks, so clearly there were a significant number of the voters in that room who completely agreed with those comments.  Rick Santorum is a darling of the Tea Party, regarded as a consistent conservative after their own hearts.  He's the darling of aTea Party that vehemently denies any allegation that it is racially biased in any way whatsoever. Well,  here is an opportunity for the Tea Party to actually demonstrate its regard for African Americans as equal citizens worthy of the basic consideration of not being blanketly described as lazy, welfare parasites leeching the money of hard working white folks.  Repudiate these statements of Santorum's.  Publicly state that they are wrong and divisive. Demand that he apologize for them.  I'm not gonna hold my breath.  And if you're a Tea Party member and think these statements are okay, then I'm gonna tell you that you and the Tea Party do have racial bias when it comes to race if you buy into the stereotypes and assumptions implicit in Santorum's statements.

I'm betting that no one in the Tea Party movement will decry these statements or even criticize them in any but the most namby pamby of ways.  I'm betting none of his fellow candidates will say squat about these comments or take the opportunity to hammer him with them in political attack ads (though well they should).  On the contrary, to the extent anyone else in the party speaks to the comments, I'm betting they will either soft pedal their critique or more likely and worse, they will try to explain, using statistics, how blacks are heavily dependent on government welfare and that Santorum's comments are really accurate. But the facts are quite the opposite.  Whites receive far more welfare benefits than blacks.  Saying anything else is simply a divisive racially biased lie.  Unless of course you're Rick Santorum on the campaign trail in Iowa looking to get nice white conservative voters on your team. 

President Obama, Don't Leave Ms. Sherrod Under the Bus

Dear President Obama,

Secretary Vilsack's decision to fire Shirley Sherrod in response to Andrew Breitbart's fabricated racebaiting attack on her is unacceptable. That the White House has endorsed that action, given the facts that have come to light, is unconscionable.

It's one thing to rush to judgment. It's another to refuse to correct the error when it becomes clear that you were wrong.

On several occasions since you have been president, you have been willing to candidly admit when mistakes have been made. I applauded your candor in those moments and I urge you to be as straightforward and direct here.  You lose nothing by doing the right thing here, namely instructing Sec. Vilsack to reinstate Ms. Sherrod.  If you do not however, you co-sign a clear injustice and let stand a decision that the majority of the nation will be unable to respect. You gain the respect of the American people when your administration admits mistakes and rectifies them. That is what is called for here.

I therefore urge you in the strongest possible manner to reinstate Ms. Sherrod to her position, as the decision to force her to resign was made based on a lie.  Its the right thing to do.

Letter to Lincoln: Stereotypes Disguised as Satire Reflect Real Views of Tea Party and GOP Rank & File

Mark Williams,  leader of the Tea Party Express, in response to the NAACP's resolution calling on the Tea Party to expel bigots from its ranks wrote a Letter to Lincoln.

I've reproduced it below as Williams has removed it from his site, but you can find the text and and a screenshot here:

Dear Mr. Lincoln
We Coloreds have taken a vote and decided that we don’t cotton to that whole emancipation thing. Freedom means having to work for real, think for ourselves, and take consequences along with the rewards. That is just far too much to ask of us Colored People and we demand that it stop!

In fact we held a big meeting and took a vote in Kansas City this week. We voted to condemn a political revival of that old abolitionist spirit called the ‘tea party movement’.  The tea party position to “end the bailouts” for example is just silly. Bailouts are just big money welfare and isn’t that what we want all Coloreds to strive for? What kind of racist would want to end big money welfare? What they need to do is start handing the bail outs directly to us coloreds! Of course, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is the only responsible party that should be granted the right to disperse the funds.

And the ridiculous idea of “reduce[ing] the size and intrusiveness of government.” What kind of massa would ever not want to control my life? As Coloreds we must have somebody care for us otherwise we would be on our own, have to think for ourselves and make decisions!

The racist tea parties also demand that the government “stop the out of control spending.” Again, they directly target coloreds. That means we Coloreds would have to compete for jobs like everybody else and that is just not right. Perhaps the most racist point of all in the tea parties is their demand that government “stop raising our taxes.” That is outrageous! How will we coloreds ever get a wide screen TV in every room if non-coloreds get to keep what they earn? Totally racist! The tea party expects coloreds to be productive members of society?

Mr. Lincoln, you were the greatest racist ever. We had a great gig. Three squares, room and board, all our decisions made by the massa in the house. Please repeal the 13th and 14th Amendments and let us get back to where we belong.

Sincerely
Precious Ben Jealous, Tom’s Nephew NAACP Head Colored Person

 Mark Williams' letter played right into the hands of Tea Party opponents on the left.  Numerous commentators and the general public have labeled it a virulent screed that is so offensive on its face that it proves the NAACP's point. Reading this letter, my personal take on this guy is that he is really angry at black people, because he employs some nasty stereotyping and insulting language. Looking at his history, this isn't new.  A regularly intelligent commentator here, the Everlasting Phelps, once pointed out to me that white people are convinced that racism is evil and this explains why Tea Party denials of racism are often so vehement as to appear unhinged.  That's the charitable way to interpret the virulence of Mark Williams' response to the NAACP in terms of this letter and his public comments.

I don't feel particularly charitable however. I feel like talking some truth.  Here's one. The underlying stereotypes and background assumptions in Mark Williams Letter to Lincoln reflect what he and a majority of Tea Party members really feel about blacks as a political constituency, disguised as satire. Here's another.  Conservatives often use satire to respond to criticism from the black community because if they straightforwardly articulated their actual thoughts, the general public would find them repugnant. 


Let me clarify the meaning of what I said above just a bit. Specifically, I'm NOT declaring Williams to be a racist. If you read this blog even semi-regularly then you already know I consider the term "racist" to be almost devoid of utility in our public discourse due to its gratuitous misuse.  I am declaring that Williams does not consider blacks to be a political constituency necessary or essential to the Tea Party's aspirations for governance and is representative of the Tea Party rank and file he leads in that respect.  

I make this conclusion based on the way in which Williams draws on stereotypes and what I consider widely shared assumptions within the Tea Party in the writing of his letter. Lets examine them:


As Coloreds we must have somebody care for us otherwise we would be on our own, have to think for ourselves and make decisions!

Williams is expressing here in satire what I will argue to all comers is a dominant sentiment among Tea party members and quite frankly the GOP rank and file, namely that blacks are brainwashed thralls of the left and so incapable of independent thought that it is essentially not even worth the effort to engage them in political discourse. Its why the messaging of the GOP and the Tea Party is so consistently bad on the issue of race. Tea Party rank and file members don't believe blacks as political constituency engage in any thoughtful consideration of the merits of conservative positions, but  reflexively resist conservatives because they are told to. Its a perspective that has evolved to a species of contempt on the part of Tea Party and conservative GOP leadership and rank and file which prevents them from seeing or engaging blacks as rational political actors.

  Bailouts are just big money welfare and isn’t that what we want all Coloreds to strive for?
  How will we coloreds ever get a wide screen TV in every room if non-coloreds get to keep what they earn?

These two comments flow from the idea that blacks are unwilling to work hard, preferring to benefit from the efforts of the white working class via welfare programs or other government largess paid for by the tax dollars of the white working class. I think Williams believes this to be essentially true, but since he won't say it straightforwardly, he can only thinly disguise it as satire to maintain plausible deniability to the charge that he is trafficking in stereotypes. 

 That means we Coloreds would have to compete for jobs like everybody else and that is just not right.

This line plays to the related idea that what jobs blacks have, we don't earn, but rather are given them through misguided affirmative action policies at the expense of hard working whites.  Again, I will argue this is what Williams feels about blacks as a political constituency but can't say in any way other than satire without repelling most people. I will further argue to all comers that this feeling is widely shared by the members of the Tea Party movement in general. 

These themes permeate the discourse and the unspoken and spoken views of the Tea Party Express membership. Thats absolutely true, because Mark Williams is the spokesperson and leader of that group. He articulates the feelings and viewpoints of his membership.  He is their leader and spokesperson because they believe he represents and articulates their views the best.


Its unfortunate. Mark Williams and the Tea Party movement writ large have a political point of view that many blacks would find appealing, and when he articulates that, he is in the zone.  Listen to him here on Anderson Cooper: 

 

If  the Tea Party stuck to that message, they'd do just fine with black folks.  

Williams has since appeared on Geraldo at Large along with Sharpton and Ben Jealous and some others and to hear Williams tell it, they all managed to sing Kumbaya by the time the program ended.  I'm reserving judgment on that score until I see the video after it airs. Perhaps a moderation of my view on Williams himself may be in order. We'll see. 


In any event, I have strong words on the Letter to Lincoln and strong assertions. I'm open to having those assertions disputed.  Give it your best shot.

Left & Right Rhetorical Fail: Tea Party "Yup, I'm a Racist" T-Shirts

Hat Tip Racialicious for spotlighting "Yup, I'm a Racist" T-shirts for sale at a Lexington KY 4th of July Festival.  An Examiner writer moseyed over with his video cam to take a look at the merchandise and engage the sellers in some dialogue about them. 

 Its a very obvious satire that these Tea Party folks are engaging in with these T-shirts.  A very in your face politically incorrect satire.  The person who made the video wanted to pretend not to understand that and try to really leave the impression that these people were actively supporting the idea of being a racist.  Its disingenuous.

I don't think that the satire they are engaged in is particularly effective or subversive in a way that makes people think or be persuaded to their cause.  In fact, the nature of the satire highlights the insular, highly interior conversation Tea Party activists are having amongst themselves.  This is not a rhetorical approach that will attract people who don't already share their views. Its indicative of the tone deaf, tin ear messaging approach that plagues the GOP, from its rank and file all the way up to leadership in Congress, the recent attack on Kagan via Thurgood Marshal, an excellent case in point.

So I think it fails on the messaging score.  Its an inside joke.  But it is a very obvious satire which the Examiner simply didn't want to acknowledge.  Had he been more interested in examining and reporting what they thought instead of trying to insinuate with snark and contemptuousness what he believed they thought, this could have been an interesting exposition of their views.  Instead, the video represents a wasted opportunity.

Imagine if the Tea Party was Black

Staying with the White Privilege topice for a minute (Phelps, my comments are broken, I cant respond to your comment from yesterday, I'll get it fixed), this seems like a very thought provoking piece. The following was written by Tim Wise.  I don't think all of his examples work equally well, but quite a few of them are on the money.  Read it for yourself and then tell me in the comments if he has a point or not.

----------------------------------

Let’s play a game, shall we? The name of the game is called “Imagine.” The way it’s played is simple: we’ll envision recent happenings in the news, but then change them up a bit. Instead of envisioning white people as the main actors in the scenes we’ll conjure - the ones who are driving the action - we’ll envision black folks or other people of color instead. The object of the game is to imagine the public reaction to the events or incidents, if the main actors were of color, rather than white. Whoever gains the most insight into the workings of race in America, at the end of the game, wins.

So let’s begin.

Imagine that hundreds of black protesters were to descend upon Washington DC and Northern Virginia, just a few miles from the Capitol and White House, armed with AK-47s, assorted handguns, and ammunition. And imagine that some of these protesters —the black protesters — spoke of the need for political revolution, and possibly even armed conflict in the event that laws they didn’t like were enforced by the government? Would these protester — these black protesters with guns — be seen as brave defenders of the Second Amendment, or would they be viewed by most whites as a danger to the republic? What if they were Arab-Americans? Because, after all, that’s what happened recently when white gun enthusiasts descended upon the nation’s capital, arms in hand, and verbally announced their readiness to make war on the country’s political leaders if the need arose.

Imagine that white members of Congress, while walking to work, were surrounded by thousands of angry black people, one of whom proceeded to spit on one of those congressmen for not voting the way the black demonstrators desired. Would the protesters be seen as merely patriotic Americans voicing their opinions, or as an angry, potentially violent, and even insurrectionary mob? After all, this is what white Tea Party protesters did recently in Washington.

Imagine that a rap artist were to say, in reference to a white president: “He’s a piece of shit and I told him to suck on my machine gun.” Because that’s what rocker Ted Nugent said recently about President Obama.

Imagine that a prominent mainstream black political commentator had long employed an overt bigot as Executive Director of his organization, and that this bigot regularly participated in black separatist conferences, and once assaulted a white person while calling them by a racial slur. When that prominent black commentator and his sister — who also works for the organization — defended the bigot as a good guy who was misunderstood and “going through a tough time in his life” would anyone accept their excuse-making? Would that commentator still have a place on a mainstream network? Because that’s what happened in the real world, when Pat Buchanan employed as Executive Director of his group, America’s Cause, a blatant racist who did all these things, or at least their white equivalents: attending white separatist conferences and attacking a black woman while calling her the n-word.

Imagine that a black radio host were to suggest that the only way to get promoted in the administration of a white president is by “hating black people,” or that a prominent white person had only endorsed a white presidential candidate as an act of racial bonding, or blamed a white president for a fight on a school bus in which a black kid was jumped by two white kids, or said that he wouldn’t want to kill all conservatives, but rather, would like to leave just enough—“living fossils” as he called them—“so we will never forget what these people stood for.” After all, these are things that Rush Limbaugh has said, about Barack Obama’s administration, Colin Powell’s endorsement of Barack Obama, a fight on a school bus in Belleville, Illinois in which two black kids beat up a white kid, and about liberals, generally.

Imagine that a black pastor, formerly a member of the U.S. military, were to declare, as part of his opposition to a white president’s policies, that he was ready to “suit up, get my gun, go to Washington, and do what they trained me to do.” This is, after all, what Pastor Stan Craig said recently at a Tea Party rally in Greenville, South Carolina.

Imagine a black radio talk show host gleefully predicting a revolution by people of color if the government continues to be dominated by the rich white men who have been “destroying” the country, or if said radio personality were to call Christians or Jews non-humans, or say that when it came to conservatives, the best solution would be to “hang ‘em high.” And what would happen to any congressional representative who praised that commentator for “speaking common sense” and likened his hate talk to “American values?” After all, those are among the things said by radio host and best-selling author Michael Savage, predicting white revolution in the face of multiculturalism, or said by Savage about Muslims and liberals, respectively. And it was Congressman Culbertson, from Texas, who praised Savage in that way, despite his hateful rhetoric.

Imagine a black political commentator suggesting that the only thing the guy who flew his plane into the Austin, Texas IRS building did wrong was not blowing up Fox News instead. This is, after all, what Anne Coulter said about Tim McVeigh, when she noted that his only mistake was not blowing up the New York Times.

Imagine that a popular black liberal website posted comments about the daughter of a white president, calling her “typical redneck trash,” or a “whore” whose mother entertains her by “making monkey sounds.” After all that’s comparable to what conservatives posted about Malia Obama on freerepublic.com last year, when they referred to her as “ghetto trash.”

Imagine that black protesters at a large political rally were walking around with signs calling for the lynching of their congressional enemies. Because that’s what white conservatives did last year, in reference to Democratic party leaders in Congress.

In other words, imagine that even one-third of the anger and vitriol currently being hurled at President Obama, by folks who are almost exclusively white, were being aimed, instead, at a white president, by people of color. How many whites viewing the anger, the hatred, the contempt for that white president would then wax eloquent about free speech, and the glories of democracy? And how many would be calling for further crackdowns on thuggish behavior, and investigations into the radical agendas of those same people of color?

To ask any of these questions is to answer them. Protest is only seen as fundamentally American when those who have long had the luxury of seeing themselves as prototypically American engage in it. When the dangerous and dark “other” does so, however, it isn’t viewed as normal or natural, let alone patriotic. Which is why Rush Limbaugh could say, this past week, that the Tea Parties are the first time since the Civil War that ordinary, common Americans stood up for their rights: a statement that erases the normalcy and “American-ness” of blacks in the civil rights struggle, not to mention women in the fight for suffrage and equality, working people in the fight for better working conditions, and LGBT folks as they struggle to be treated as full and equal human beings.

And this, my friends, is what white privilege is all about. The ability to threaten others, to engage in violent and incendiary rhetoric without consequence, to be viewed as patriotic and normal no matter what you do, and never to be feared and despised as people of color would be, if they tried to get away with half the shit we do, on a daily basis.

Game Over.

Tim Wise is a prominent anti-racist writer and activist.  His latest book is called Between Barack and a Hard Place.

Is This Racist?

That's the way fellow blogger Cobb frames his question about the Tea Party member pictured below.  I'd like to frame the question differently:

Based solely on the information in this photograph, would it be reasonable, justified or warranted to question the character of this man or draw the conclusion that bias, prejudice or stereotypes play a role in what he says and how he behaves? 

Leave your answer Yes or No and why you think so in the comments.

Tea Party Protests Unfairly Characterized

Hat tip to Cobb:

If you needed some visual proof that the criticism of Bush from the left during his term was every bit as rabid and unhinged as that directed at Obama now, here's some for you. Those of you on the left that scream the Tea Party movement is made entirely of racially motivated Obama Derangement Syndrome zombies, look at this.  Look at it and OWN IT.  If the signs and the language and the Hitler, fascism, socialism, dictator, freedom destroying comparisons are the measure of irrationality, then you were every bit as unhinged as the Tea Party members you criticize now. 

If you call yourself a member of the Tea Party movement or a conservative and are among the group of people who are quick to point out that the left was crazy in their protests, you can rightly feel vindicated, but you shouldn't feel particularly superior.  Essentially, the standard of political behavior coming out of the GOP right isn't any better. We keep saying "they did it too".   It seems to me we are setting the standard for the quality of political discourse way too low.