Over the weekend, Rick Santorum told an Iowa audience, “Diversity creates conflict. If we celebrate diversity, we create conflict.” It seemed like an odd thing for a presidential candidate to say.
The line does, however, help explain a bit about how the Republican presidential candidate thinks. (via Jamil Smith)
“Having that strong foundation of the faith and family allows America to be in a position where we can be more free,” Santorum says. “We can be free because we are good decent moral people.”
For Santorum that means cutting government regulation. Making Americans less dependent on government aid. Fewer people getting food stamps, Medicaid and other forms of federal assistance — especially one group.
“I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money,” Santorum begins. “I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money and provide for themselves and their families.”
Santorum did not elaborate on why he singled out blacks who rely on federal assistance. The voters here didn’t seem to care [emphasis added - not by me].
Why didn’t Ron Paul’s racist screed undermine his campaign in Iowa? This might have something to do with it.
As for Santorum, this is the sort of subtle racism — much like Newt Gingrich’s recent comments about low-income youth — that Republicans often don’t recognize as being racist. In Santorum’s mind, when he thinks of programs like food stamps, he automatically associates them with “black people’s lives.”
Why? Just because.
Also note the substance behind the policy position: Santorum thinks he’ll improve “black people’s lives” just as soon as he makes it harder for low-income families to eat and get medical care.
Diversity creates conflict? So Santorum supports segregation, then?
Diversity is actually a good thing. Bigotry, discrimination, intolerance, racism - all of those are bad responses to diversity, but diversity itself is a positive good. Diversity keeps things fresh. Diversity keeps you from getting stuck in a rut.
How boring, how stale, how depressing would life be if everyone was exactly alike? For us heterosexuals, certainly, it would be particularly bad, but it wouldn't be good for anyone.
And people can be different without being bad, without being lesser human beings - heck, without even being wrong. You may prefer different kinds of music than I do. You may have different opinions of movies or books. That doesn't make you wrong, because some things are just a matter of personal taste.
Your other ideas might be wrong, of course (like Santorum's ideas about diversity). Your facts might be wrong. Your interpretation of them might be wrong. But without diverse ideas, our own would never be challenged. And that would be a bad thing, because our own ideas could always be wrong, too. How would we ever discover that, if they were never challenged?
The second part of this is just unthinking racism. Well, perhaps I'm being generous here, but I assume that it was unthinking. I know plenty of racists who don't seem to realize how racist they are.
But Iowa is an overwhelmingly white state. And the Republican Party is almost entirely white. Even for Iowa, it's white. Assuming that your tax money goes to support lazy black people is just what Republicans do. And Santorum doesn't seem to be any smarter than his typical supporter.
True, ever since they developed their notorious "Southern strategy," Republicans have deliberately courted white racists. They've deliberately used this kind of language, they've deliberately used coded racism, they've deliberately implied such things, just for political advantage. This has been a deliberate tactic used by Republicans for decades.
So it might not be accidental here. It might not have been unthinking. Personally,... I guess I doubt that Santorum is smart enough to have deliberately planned this. It's very possible that his handlers got him to say this, knowing that it would go over well with the Republican base, but did they even bother telling him that was the plan?
I'm not saying that Santorum isn't racist, not at all. I just suspect that he's not smart enough to understand what he was saying. These Republican presidential nominees aren't the brightest bulbs in the pack!
Well, the Republican base isn't that smart, either. They didn't object to Santorum's remarks, either because they agreed with his racism or because they just assumed right along with him that "black people" are all welfare queens. Either way, it's not very smart.
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