{"id":1186,"date":"2012-01-18T12:48:06","date_gmt":"2012-01-18T17:48:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www3.law.harvard.edu\/journals\/hlpr\/?p=1186"},"modified":"2015-10-02T15:24:50","modified_gmt":"2015-10-02T15:24:50","slug":"newts-exit-may-be-the-end-of-racist-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/2012\/01\/18\/newts-exit-may-be-the-end-of-racist-politics\/","title":{"rendered":"Newt\u2019s exit may be the end of racist politics"},"content":{"rendered":"

Billy Corriher<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Mitt Romney\u2019s nomination is looking more inevitable, and Newt Gingrich is looking increasingly desperate.\u00a0 With his campaign coming to an end, Newt has shown himself to be the candidate most willing to stoop to new lows in appealing to racism.\u00a0 The good news is that \u2013 after months of silence from the mainstream media –\u00a0Gingrich is finally being called out.<\/p>\n

Gingrich recently visited an African-American church in South Carolina, where he was bombarded with questions about his racist rhetoric.\u00a0 In a Sunday sermon honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, the pastor of King\u2019s former church\u00a0accused<\/a>\u00a0Gingrich of \u201cscapegoating and race-baiting.\u201d\u00a0 Dr. Raphael Warnock stated, \u201cHe is playing an old game that\u2019s part of the Southern strategy.\u201d\u00a0 After finally hearing about Gingrich\u2019s racist statements in the news media, I have one question: In this post-racial America, why did no one call Gingrich out for being a racist before now?<\/p>\n

Newt\u2019s language offers not-so-subtle clues to those who already hold racist views.\u00a0 Newt has faced criticism for repeatedly\u00a0calling<\/a>\u00a0Obama \u201cthe food stamp president.\u201d Gingrich is not using the phrase because he wants to highlight growing poverty; rather, he is subtly suggesting that Obama is doling out government benefits to his black constituents.\u00a0 Gingrich also\u00a0thinks<\/a>\u00a0federal courts should not have ordered Southern schools to desegregate in the 1950\u2032s. He has\u00a0referred<\/a>\u00a0to Spanish as \u201cthe language of living in a ghetto.\u201d\u00a0 Gingrich, a former history professor, once\u00a0warned<\/a>\u00a0white people that you can only understand President Obama if you understand his \u201cKenyan, anti-colonial behavior.\u201d<\/p>\n

The most offensive idea to come out of Gingrich\u2019s mouth: he\u00a0claimed<\/a>\u00a0that poor children have no role models to teach them about hard work, so he advocates relaxing child labor laws to allow them to work as janitors in their own schools.\u00a0 For someone who once\u00a0touted<\/a>\u00a0his bipartisan education ideas with Al Sharpton, this idea is ridiculous. When would these students\/janitors do their homework? If these kids truly lack role models, the solution is to give them role models, not to have them cleaning up shit in their spare time.<\/span><\/p>\n

No other Republican presidential candidate has such a clear pattern of racist and offensive statements. Having grown up in the South and studied its history, Gingrich understands the language of racism. As a fellow son of the South, I know what Gingrich\u2019s rhetoric about food stamps and work habits really means.<\/p>\n

The other candidates have their own issues with race. Romney has\u00a0no idea<\/a>\u00a0how to talk to black voters, and Rick Santorum\u00a0thinks<\/a>\u00a0only black people are on welfare. But these guys seem more oblivious than malicious. Ron Paul has been rightly criticized for the unforgivable views espoused in his newsletters, but his current views don\u2019t seem to be racist.<\/p>\n

Gingrich is either attempting to appeal to racism, or he is just another racist Southerner who is completely oblivious to his own prejudice.\u00a0 Either way, it is clear that Newt is not as shrewd as he likes to think.\u00a0 Gingrich likes to brag that he is a student of history, and that\u2019s where politicians like him belong \u2013 in the past. One day, the history books will look back on his presidential campaign and say that it represented the last throes of racist politics in America.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Billy Corriher Mitt Romney\u2019s nomination is looking more inevitable, and Newt Gingrich is looking increasingly desperate.\u00a0 With his campaign coming […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peZQka-j8","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1186"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1186\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}