Free Stuff

The NAACP held its annual convention this week in Houston and Mitt Romney showed up to speak talk down to them…and was promptly booed like an off key singer at the Apollo Theater attempting a Whitney Houston song. In spite of this I think his little publicity stunt worked as he had planned. Romney walked into a crowd of obvious President Obama supporters and swiftly began attacking the president’s policies, generally putting him down and referencing his health care plan as the derogatory Obamacare. Anyone who did this would expect to get booed…right? You don’t go to an event sponsored by the nation’s oldest civil rights organization and toss out Tea Party inspired slang against the first African-American President. I don’t know maybe with this crowd he should have actually referenced the real name of the health care legislation. He said, “If you want a president who will make things better in the African American community, you are looking at him.”…feel free to insert your own comment here. When the crowd reacted negatively as expected and booed he said, “You take a look”.. I have no idea what he meant by that so I don't have a snarky comment. But what was most telling of his ultimate intention was when he spoke later in the day to a crowd of his mostly white supporters in Montana and told them if those in the NAACP audience like "free stuff," from the government they should vote for Obama…wait, what now? Health care, a decent living wage, benefits and a pension are considered free stuff?

The truth is Romney was being deliberately provocative and he got exactly the reaction he wanted, so now he can boast of his ability to speak truth to those people. This was to show conservative voters "Oh well, I tried" and make him look like he is reaching out to the black community. Julian Bond said after Romney's speech, "He was speaking to that slice of white America that hasn't made up its mind about him, and he's saying, I can say things to them that they don't like, so I'm not afraid to stand up to them.” His statements only serve to further entrench himself with people who think Black people want and get benefits without "earning" them. Free Stuff, was this statement meant to infer that the NAACP audience was full of welfare and food stamp recipients? Well guess what, of the 46 million people living in poverty in America, in 2010 the U.S. census revealed that 31 million were white, ten million were black. Of the 49 million people without health insurance coverage, 37 million were white; 8 million were African-American. Latinos and Asian-Americans represented the remaining largest ethnic groups. White Americans, poor and middle-class alike, receive the vast majority of tax-funded government assistance programs, from monthly assistance to Social Security to food stamps. But truth is not this man’s or his party’s objective. He is committed to race baiting and pandering to the bigoted minds of his supporters. Speaking of which, Rush Limbaugh weighed in immediately saying the Republican candidate was booed “simply because Romney’s white”. Yeah Rush it couldn't possibly have been his rhetoric. 

The only way that Republicans can continue to win elections in this country is to demonize and vilify the poor, minorities, gays, women and those that acknowledge the existence of science. They have managed to convince middle class and poor whites to vote against their own best interests by plugging in to their irrational “fear of a Black planet”. In addition, the Republicans insistence of denying voting rights for hundreds of thousands of Americans, if it continues, will allow them to "win" more elections. Just ask any minority voter in Florida or Texas whose registrations have been purged from the records.