Southern Strategy – Catholic Edition
Some things never change. As the Republican presidential campaign goes south (geographically!), the racial dog whistles grow louder. Consider this simple fact: the white population of South Carolina is 66 percent. But the GOP primary is 99 percent white. Isn’t that a problem of vast dimensions?
And here’s the sad thing – our fellow Catholics New Gingrich and Rick Santorum seem to be in on the game, despite the clear Church teaching on the innate dignity of every human person (regardless of race) and the core unity of the human race (regardless of race). The Church teaches quite clearly that racism is an intrinsically evil act.
Our friends at Faith in Public Life have published an open letter to Gingrich and Santorum by 40 prominent Catholics leaders and theologians. Here is the letter:
“As Catholic leaders who recognize that the moral scandals of racism and poverty remain a blemish on the American soul, we challenge our fellow Catholics Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum to stop perpetuating ugly racial stereotypes on the campaign trail. Mr. Gingrich has frequently attacked President Obama as a “food stamp president” and claimed that African Americans are content to collect welfare benefits rather than pursue employment. Campaigning in Iowa, Mr. Santorum remarked: “I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money.” Labeling our nation’s first African-American president with a title that evokes the past myth of “welfare queens” and inflaming other racist caricatures is irresponsible, immoral and unworthy of political leaders.
Some presidential candidates now courting “values voters” seem to have forgotten that defending human life and dignity does not stop with protecting the unborn. We remind Mr. Gingrich and Mr. Santorum that Catholic bishops describe racism as an “intrinsic evil” and consistently defend vital government programs such as food stamps and unemployment benefits that help struggling Americans. At a time when nearly 1 in 6 Americans live in poverty, charities and the free market alone can’t address the urgent needs of our most vulnerable neighbors. And while jobseekers outnumber job openings 4-to-1, suggesting that the unemployed would rather collect benefits than work is misleading and insulting.
As the South Carolina primary approaches, we urge Mr. Gingrich, Mr. Santorum and all presidential candidates to reject the politics of racial division, refrain from offensive rhetoric and unite behind an agenda that promotes racial and economic justice.”
Well said.
Comments are closed.
Says it all.
Santorum didn’t make the comment attributed to him in this letter. Source
Blackadder, please. Listen to the video. He may have caught himself three quarters of the way through the word “black,” rendering it as “blaah” or “blag,” but it’s there and it is unmistakable. And it is not simply a pause. That said, I’m not sure it means he’s a bad guy, but it does suggest a certain understandable distance from the concerns and sensitivities of black Americans, in the same way Obama’s 2008 reference to small town Americans clinging to religion and guns indicated his essential detachment from those people.
By the way, here’s Colbert’s funny take on “Black-gate”: http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/405560/january-09-2012/rick-santorum-on-gays—bla-people
Pieces like that are why I prefer Stewart to Colbert.
It’s utterly dependent on having an audience eager to believe Santorum is a racist. And as I mentioned the below, even if one accepts the worst possible interpretation of it, all it reveals is that Santorum has some subconscious racial stererotypes, which he recognized and acted to correct.
Which is a devastating critique, if we think that most of us have no such stereotypes, but I think we all know that’s not true, as much as we’d like to pretend otherwise.
No, I gotta call “bull” on that interpretation. I just listened to the video multiple times. He says (to what appears to be a virtually all white audience) “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 on them so they can get your vote.” Then he stumbles over his words a bit and says “I don’t want to — to — to make lives — to make peoples lives better by giving them somebody else’s money.”
Watching and listening to the video it takes a real act of imaginative suspicion to come to the conclusion that he’s suddenly inserting some sort of racial aspersion here. The folks who wrote this letter clearly thought the slur was too good to check, but it’s obviously unfair to Santorum who is not behaving at all in the racially tone deaf way that Gingrich was in his notorious comment.
Source: http://hotair.com/archives/2012/01/03/did-santorum-really-say-he-didnt-want-to-make-black-peoples-lives-better/
I’ve listened. My ear hears “bla..ah people”. I would be inclined not to believe he had the word “black” trhree-quarters the way out of his mouth if he didn’t wait days to think up a correction to the news reports.
There’s only one thing more boring and pointless than race-baiting, and that’s accusations from one candidate to another about what their SuperPAC is doing.
Moreover, this depiction of Santorum as racist is stretch at most, and malicious at worst, when you consider the full context of what he said. It’s definitely not poetry, but calling him a racist is unproductive.
M.M.
Where is the source quote for this charge please:
“Mr. Gingrich has… claimed that African Americans are content to collect welfare benefits rather than pursue employment.”
Or did he rather really say that some….some… “welfare people” prefer welfare since he’s well aware that nationally more whites than blacks are on welfare. The charge above doesn’t parallel his awareness level. And some welfare people do prefer welfare. Right out of college, I did welfare work for a year in New York City and had to help in the arrest of a man who had 5 addresses just for five separate welfare checks. I had a pimp threaten me because I cut the check of a prostitute of his.
I’ll answer myself then. The charge above is ludicrous in that had Gingrich or anyone in the public eye literally said that African Americans are content to collect welfare, then their enemy….Romney in this case….would be citing the original Gingrich quote constantly in his ads. That’s not happening because the letter stretched an original welfare comment into a racial remark…and well known theologians like Lisa Cahill signed it. I’d urge all of them to check the 8th commandment….that should be basic for theologians who often wonder why not enough Catholics listen to them (as was expressed at “Catholic Moral Theology” site some months back).
Give me a break. I think this black rep responds nicely to the food stamp part.
http://biggovernment.com/whall/2012/01/23/rep-allen-west-there-is-no-race-code-its-a-fact-that-obama-is-the-food-stamp-president/
I would note that the exit polls showed that the good Catholics of South Carolina who are Republicans had a strong preference for Mitt Romney, the centerist candidate. Among the South Carolina Catholics who are Democrats, they are steady in their support for the President.
Oh, the irony. On this most infamous anniversary and the very day designated by our Church as a Day of Prayer and Penance…. to focus on an off-the-cuff, spontaneous, and taken-out-of-context statement by a person seeking the presidency based on the dubious argument that the statement is supportive of an intrinsically evil act, while another person also seeking the presidency formally publishes a prepared statement unquestionably supportive of a different intrinsically evil act.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/01/22/statement-president-roe-v-wade-anniversary
In other words, Thales, we are banned from ever discussing the reality of racial injustice until all abortions are illegal.
I strive to be charitable, but I find it difficult to avoid the conclusion that the purpose of this post was to tar candidates MM doesn’t like with a charge of racism rather than to discuss the reality of racial injustice.
Can you please point me to the part of this post where MM either highlights this reality, or proposes solutions for it?
Kurt,
Not at all.
I’m just amused at the irony of this post on January 23, of all days…. and making a big deal of the Santorum quote and questionably claiming that he was supporting “an intrinsically evil act”…. in contrast with the President and his statement.
In other words, Thales, we are banned from ever discussing the reality of racial injustice until all abortions are illegal.
Well, discussion of the reality of anything, really.
Thales,
A quick search and I note MM is hardly the only writer who has not reserved all public commentary on that day to the abortion issue. Of published opinion pieces by Catholic and conservative columnists I’ve see the topics of deficit reduction, relations with Pakistan, Obama’s “failed fiscal record” censorship and Mitt Romney’s electoral chances all covered.
Is it racism or MM who is to be singled out for silence on this day? Or are these conservative and Catholic columnists equally amusing to you for writing on a different topic?
Kurt,
It was not merely being silent about the abortion issue or talking about a different topic; it was the singling out a statement made by a presidential candidate as being supportive of an intrinsically evil act (a criticism which I find to be a bit of a stretch), when another presidential candidate unquestionably makes a statement supportive of a different intrinsically evil act, and doing so on the very day designated by the Church and the rest of the pro-life movement as the annual day of prayer, penance, action, and protests, in memory of that latter issue.
I was amused by the irony. You weren’t. And that’s fine.
Thales,
I guess I’m even lower than MM. On the day reserved for prayer and penence, I actually had a conversation about a pair of shoes that pinched my feet. I don’t what I was thinking.
When the errors in the quotes attributed to Messrs. Gingrich and Santorum are in ways which characterize them as racists, it undermines the argument.
And I hope they have stopped beating their wives as well.
On the Santorum one — even if one accepts the worst possible interpretation — that, yes, he was about to say “black,” then caught himself, is that really so bad?
First, I am not a Santorum supporter, and would not vote for him because of his support for torture as well as his bellicose foreign policy,
What this would essentially mean is that Santorum harbors some subconscious racial stereotypes (which anyone who has taken implicit tests(https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/selectatest.html would acknowledge is universal), recognized he was speaking from those, and then made an adjustment.
That he made an adjustment and disavows the comment also demonstrates that he was not “speaking in code” or sounding a “dog whistle” to whites nursing racial grievances.
So, essentially, sometime in the non-stop campaigning he was doing in the past several months, his filter slipped. Or else we’re all pretending that none of us harbor racial stereotypes.
Maybe that’s why he’s in trouble — so we can go on flattering ourselves.
Johmeg, I don’t think even accepting all you wrote means that we have to censor any discussion of racial injustice. Fine, maybe he slipped and didn’t filter a stereotype many citizens have. Why does that mean we must be silent about racial injustice?
No, I’m not saying we can’t talk about racial injustice. I’m saying it’s unfair to call Santorum an agent of injustice based on this one quote.
If we want to use this as a teachable moment for the stereotypes we have and need to confront, I’m fine with that.
To put it another way, saying it’s unfair to call President Obama “pro-infanticide” doesn’t meant we can’t talk about abortion.
John,
No disagreement. Rick Santorum is not Sherriff Bull Connor. But this slip of the tongue is a good time to address our need to continue the effort for racial justice.
Guys, maybe you aren’t from the South, but there is no doubt in my very small-town, Southern mind that this is dog-whistle politics. You hear what you want (that the candidates you support are not racist) and I’ll hear what they think my backwoods self wanted to hear (you don’t like blacks and I’ll screw them more than I’ll screw you while engineering a massive income redistribution from the poor, working, and middle classes to the upper class).
Given that he later denied he made the comment, what exactly is the “dog whistle?”
It seems that what these people want to hear is someone who is going to fight for them, not back down, and is in touch with them.
Starting to say something racially charged, immediately backing off, then denying you were ever saying it would seem to have the opposite effect.
“Starting to say something racially charged, immediately backing off, then denying you were ever saying it would seem to have the opposite effect.”
@ johnmcg — Not at all. Those people got the message. And they understand why he needs to walk it back. The fact that he started to say it displays what’s really in his heart.
So they want someone who is a racist at heart, but lacks the courage of his convictions?
John McG is right. And Charles is also right. The question remaining is what do these two “rights” add up to? If only John were right, the problem would be negligible. Who among us is completely without sin in these areas? But to the degree that Charles is right, it would seem to me that we have a problem, since the tactical code is being strategically deployed by a presidential candidate.
@ johnmcg –
I never said they were intelligent.