GOP candidates insensitive towards issues of race, welfare

Shane Wade
Opinion Editor

With Republican party candidates launching vitriolic attack ads against one another, sniping the others’ personal lives and engaging in general political cannibalism, I imagine it must be difficult to be a Republican this election cycle.

But as hard as that may be, it’s doubly so if you happen to also be an African-American Republican. Without leveling charges of racism, the view that the top Republican candidates have towards blacks and the unique issues Black Americans face is skewed and insensitive, to say the least.

Take the Republican frontrunner of the week, Newt Gingrich, for example. Gingrich, a man so committed to “traditional” marriage that he’s had three of them, is so committed to an outdated and offensive perception of blacks that he still believes that black households are the number one recipients of food stamps.

To put that into context, a few weeks ago, he urged blacks to choose “paychecks over food stamps,” and later referred to President Obama as “the Food Stamp President.” In reality, the Supplemental National Assistance Program’s 2009 fiscal report found that the majority of food stamp recipients are white, at 34 percent, compared to blacks, at 21 percent.

Rick Santorum made an odd comment that he didn’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.” The next day, however, Santorum backed away from that statement, saying he was misheard.

But what he and so many other Republicans have tip-toed around is an erroneous perception, that black people, and anyone, on welfare is a drain upon the system and has no motivation to find work that pulls them out of the poverty they face.

As a child of parents that were formerly food stamp recipients and a current relative of a food stamp recipient, I’m indignant and frustrated by the implications being made. No one aspires to live on the $200 a month that the SNAP food stamp program provides.

And while I would never call any of the Republican frontrunners “racist,” I would highly suggest that Republican politicians reevaluate their views on issues that affect the black middle and lower class.

To that point, of the 535 members of Congress, 44 representatives are black; all of them are in the House of Representatives. Black Americans, particularly those of the lower to middle class demographic, would greatly benefit from a more realistic representation; not because white politicians are out of touch with what it means to be black in America, but because all politicians are out of touch with what it means to be black in America.

What I think is the real issue that Republicans are trying to strike here, either by accidentally or purposefully being controversial and raising the attention of black voters, is the fear that blacks will vote for Obama just because he’s black.

But in reality, the manifestation of that fear in the form of insensitive and ignorant rhetoric perpetuated by Republican candidates, thereby distancing black voters, will lead to the re-election of President Obama.