Jesus Christ, your standard of racism is ridiculously lenient.
Maybe it might seem that way. Perhaps my sense of racist nuance is skewed because I live with two overt, uncensored racists, and I also live in a (formerly) tea party district in California.
But my self assessment is that, no, my standard of racism is not "ridiculously lenient". I recognize the insidiousness of dog whistles. I understand coded language because I grew up with my peers and their parents using it constantly. I hear it on TV, I see it in the media, I hear it on the radio, and I've seen its disgusting traces in our educational material, too. I see racism everywhere in this country but if I had to give an intensity rating to everything that was even slightly racist, Newt Gingrich would barely show up on my Geiger counter.
Here's a list of supposedly the most bigoted things he's said. That seems mostly tame to me, and most surprisingly is the fact that he said "blacks need to work twice as hard in this country" compared to their white counterparts. That's definitely very self aware of his own privilege for a Republican. A racist man does not say that. Nor does he say "I agree with Al Sharpton, education is the number one civil rights issue of the 21st Century". Not when almost the entire Republican base sneers and seethes at the very concept of civil rights issues, or the idea that black people don't have access to the same educational resources.
do you say you are a racist
- yes
- no
Definitely not racist.
I'd counter that it isn't a standard. It's a blank cheque.
Just last week I got stared down while driving to my house by some bearded rednecked motherfucker and his disgusting trash of a girlfriend as if I didn't belong in
his fucking neighborhood. Not the first time I have been treated qualitatively different from white people where I live.
Don't accuse me of giving a blank check to racists. That offends me more than you think.
I give him credit for the good he has done in the past, it will just be a damn shame if race issues are indeed on his lower list of priorities. It makes him seem indifferent, which is almost as bad as being racist, I feel. He would just be turning his cheek on the suffering many would face under a Trump presidency. Including those children he shook hands with.
Gingrich has already said that what Trump said about the Mexican judge was unequivocally wrong, and unnacceptable as a presidential candidate. He's willing to put his foot down. He also said that Trump's statements about Muslims should, uh, "evolve" into something more limited. ...That's not perfect, but it's a definitely better than the sniveling surrogate scum I see on CNN like Katrina Pierson.
