Over
the last few weeks, Republican Party Presidential Nominee,
Newt Gingrich, has found a way to make himself relevant
again. Not to the Republican Party, because are trying
to find a way to sink him. Newt has become relevant to
the always dysfunctional (and uncomfortable) race discourse
in this nation.
This
time around Newt is trying to explain the class divide
in America by constructing an hypothesis around who attracts
wealth and who doesn�t, and why. Newt says Blacks and
Latinos don�t understand how to attract wealth. He says
Asians do.
Newt
suggests that it is somehow a racial work ethics problem
and if blacks would just let go of welfare, their lives
would change forever. Really?? This follows his analysis
- if you can call it that - around how black men can find
work by simply picking up a broom. Newt has a skewed perspective
on race. Always have. And he has this thing about wealth
being tied to black people. Welfare is not a �black thang�
or a �Latino thang.�
Whites
statistically have more people receiving welfare, but
Blacks and Latinos have a greater percentage of recipients
per their percentage in the population. That�s how he
gets away with that. Newt knows that welfare resonates
with the struggling middle class in this country. This
time around, instead of attacking people on welfare -
his tact to suggest how people can get off welfare while
assailing President Obama as the �Welfare President.�
Newt is quick with it, and he is slick with it. He has
made an art of trying to intellectualize racism�for political
advantage, of course.
In
the 1990s, after the Republicans took over the House of
Representatives for the first time in 50 years, Newt led
the 1994 �takeover� with a people�s mandate to reduce
government spending. Called the �Contract on America,�
Newt led an anti-taxation, anti-affirmative action, anti-welfare
platform that pushed then President Bill Clinton to the
wall on welfare reform. It played Clinton�s two largest
support bases, poor black and middle whites against each
other. Congress passed the Welfare Reform Act of 1995
and Clinton, facing re-election, was forced to sign it.
Gingrich won. Clinton lost. The �welfare to work� job
training aspect of the legislation was largely a failure,
producing fewer jobs than the Republicans give Obama credit
for creating. It contributed to the explosion of homeless
in the African American community, but it was by and large
ignored.
The
fate of the poor continues to be ignored by Congress today.
For those people who have become staunch poverty advocates
and wonder why the poor are ignored, you only have to
look as far as Newt Gingrich. He is the one who intellectualized
racism by codifying race. Poor translated to almost exclusively
black, as did welfare. �Urban� translated to wherever
blacks lived, so money and resources where diverted away
from the poor and urban areas.
What
we know about African Americans is that they don�t have
the same access to capital as even poor or middle class
whites do, largely because of the stigmas and codes that
have been put in place by the leader of the new school
of racism, Newt Gingrich.
As
a Presidential candidate, he is reintroducing that same
codified rhetoric into the President�s race. His term
for Obama as Welfare President is a code. Every time he
says �Welfare President,� he is seeking to remind his
base, and others to never forget that there is a �Black
President�. We know Newt Gingrich�the intellectual racist.
And we know what he is doing by continuing to stigmatize
African Americans.
By
intellectualizing racism, he is leaving his signature
card with Americans that still have a race problem with
Obama. We can�t let it work.
BlackCommentator.com
Columnist,
Dr. Anthony Asadullah Samad, is a national columnist,
managing director of the
Urban Issues Forum
and author of
Saving The Race: Empowerment Through Wisdom. His Website is AnthonySamad.com. Twitter @dranthonysamad. Click
here
to contact Dr. Samad.
