Juan Williams exposes the racism in the GOP campaign at The Hill:
The language of GOP racial politics is heavy on euphemisms that allow the speaker to deny any responsibility for the racial content of his message. The code words in this game are “entitlement society” — as used by Mitt Romney — and “poor work ethic” and “food stamp president” — as used by Newt Gingrich. References to a lack of respect for the “Founding Fathers” and the “Constitution” also make certain ears perk up by demonizing anyone supposedly threatening core “old-fashioned American values.”
The code also extends to attacks on legal immigrants, always carefully lumped in with illegal immigrants, as people seeking “amnesty” and taking jobs from Americans…
The former Speaker has declared that black people should demand jobs instead of food stamps. And he has proposed having poor students work as janitors in their high schools. Regardless of how they were intended, poor people and minorities sense that with those comments Gingrich is winking — some call it “dog whistling” — at certain white audiences by intimating that black people are lazy, happy to live off the government and lacking any intellect.
With comments like this, I wonder how long Williams will remain at Fox. Apparently exposure to ideas at NPR has made a difference. Getting outside of the right wing bubble from time to time might do wonders for other conservatives.
I’ll undoubtedly receive a response from a Republican insisting that he is not racist because he will claim that it is true that blacks are just interested in food stamps and immigrants take American jobs. I’ve certainly received a lot of defenses of Ron Paul’s racist newsletters based upon such logic. The Republican leadership provides a form of legitimacy to such prejudices.
