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Was Romney's Act Compassion or Condescension?
Date: Wednesday, January 18, 2012, 7:38 am
By: Tonyaa Weathersbee, BlackAmericaWeb.com
At first, I was peeved at Ruth Williams. Then I remembered that chronic unemployment can make some people resort to desperate measures – including reducing themselves to a stereotype.
The 55-year-old South Carolina woman recently made headlines when she claimed that God led her to support Mitt Romney. She said she was parked on the side of the highway praying for financial help when she saw Romney's campaign bus, and God told her to follow it to the airport.
She did – and the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination wound up giving her a wad of bills – about $50 or $60.
"He was kind to me," Williams said, displaying the kind of house Negro mentality that bestows overblown credit on white people for simply showing black people the kind of decency they'd show to people who look like them. "He held on to me, and he made Gov. [Nikki] Haley and ‘nem come see about me ..."
Interestingly enough, after taking the money, Williams also blathered on and on about how she didn't want anyone to give her anything, and how she just wanted to work.
As if Romney – a man whose history suggests that he cares more about filling his pockets than he does about protecting jobs for people like her – is the guy for that.
Williams isn't that different from a lot of people, black and white, who believe that God talks to them. But I fear that Romney's giving her a few bucks symbolizes something more dangerously condescending - that the needs of people who are struggling can be covered by charity when what they really need is justice.
Now, it could be that Romney simply heard Williams' sob story and responded in typical rich guy, "Tale of Two Cities" fashion. Or it could be his token way of trying to show compassion to counter a record that suggests he has little, if any, toward workers.
According to Reuters, Bain Capital, a venture capital firm that Romney co-founded, became the majority share holder in a Kansas City steel mill in 1993. It renamed the mill GS Technologies and was working to update it and usher in a new era.
But less than a decade later, that era was over.
The mill was closed. And while Bain had successes in other companies that it invested in, such as Staples office supplies, its failure at GS devastated many lives. Some 750 people not only lost their jobs, but their severance pay and health insurance. Their pension benefits were also cut by up to $400 a month.
Yet, Bain didn’t fare badly.
It made $12 million on the $8 million that it initially invested and millions more on consulting fees. On top of that, it also got the federal government to bail out its underfunded pension plan to the tune of $44 million, Reuters said.
Any candidate who is tainted with that sort of hypocrisy when it comes to job creation isn't ideal for black people, considering that our unemployment rate now stands at 15.8 percent.
That’s nearly twice as high as the overall unemployment rate of 8.5 percent.
And I don't think Romney has enough $50 bills for all of us.
Then there's Romney's promise to repeal President Obama's health care law. This law, known as the Affordable Health Care Act, is one that black people, of whom nearly 20 percent have no health insurance, stand to benefit from in a big way.
Williams ought to be embarrassed to support a candidate who would kill the health care act – just because he gave her some cash.
Truth is, Williams isn't much dumber han the millions of poor white people who continue to vote Republican against their best interests. The difference is that if Obama had tried to give one of them $50 or $60, chances are they would have flung it back at him and called him a socialist.
Still, Romney's generosity toward Williams doesn't resonate as an act of compassion as much as one of condescension. That's because what he did for her is contradicted by his record as a business person and his platform as a candidate.
And it's something that black people ought to be particularly wary of.
No matter how much money he hands out to poor, desperate, over-churched black women.
Date: Wednesday, January 18, 2012, 7:38 am
By: Tonyaa Weathersbee, BlackAmericaWeb.com
At first, I was peeved at Ruth Williams. Then I remembered that chronic unemployment can make some people resort to desperate measures – including reducing themselves to a stereotype.
The 55-year-old South Carolina woman recently made headlines when she claimed that God led her to support Mitt Romney. She said she was parked on the side of the highway praying for financial help when she saw Romney's campaign bus, and God told her to follow it to the airport.
She did – and the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination wound up giving her a wad of bills – about $50 or $60.
"He was kind to me," Williams said, displaying the kind of house Negro mentality that bestows overblown credit on white people for simply showing black people the kind of decency they'd show to people who look like them. "He held on to me, and he made Gov. [Nikki] Haley and ‘nem come see about me ..."
Interestingly enough, after taking the money, Williams also blathered on and on about how she didn't want anyone to give her anything, and how she just wanted to work.
As if Romney – a man whose history suggests that he cares more about filling his pockets than he does about protecting jobs for people like her – is the guy for that.
Williams isn't that different from a lot of people, black and white, who believe that God talks to them. But I fear that Romney's giving her a few bucks symbolizes something more dangerously condescending - that the needs of people who are struggling can be covered by charity when what they really need is justice.
Now, it could be that Romney simply heard Williams' sob story and responded in typical rich guy, "Tale of Two Cities" fashion. Or it could be his token way of trying to show compassion to counter a record that suggests he has little, if any, toward workers.
According to Reuters, Bain Capital, a venture capital firm that Romney co-founded, became the majority share holder in a Kansas City steel mill in 1993. It renamed the mill GS Technologies and was working to update it and usher in a new era.
But less than a decade later, that era was over.
The mill was closed. And while Bain had successes in other companies that it invested in, such as Staples office supplies, its failure at GS devastated many lives. Some 750 people not only lost their jobs, but their severance pay and health insurance. Their pension benefits were also cut by up to $400 a month.
Yet, Bain didn’t fare badly.
It made $12 million on the $8 million that it initially invested and millions more on consulting fees. On top of that, it also got the federal government to bail out its underfunded pension plan to the tune of $44 million, Reuters said.
Any candidate who is tainted with that sort of hypocrisy when it comes to job creation isn't ideal for black people, considering that our unemployment rate now stands at 15.8 percent.
That’s nearly twice as high as the overall unemployment rate of 8.5 percent.
And I don't think Romney has enough $50 bills for all of us.
Then there's Romney's promise to repeal President Obama's health care law. This law, known as the Affordable Health Care Act, is one that black people, of whom nearly 20 percent have no health insurance, stand to benefit from in a big way.
Williams ought to be embarrassed to support a candidate who would kill the health care act – just because he gave her some cash.
Truth is, Williams isn't much dumber han the millions of poor white people who continue to vote Republican against their best interests. The difference is that if Obama had tried to give one of them $50 or $60, chances are they would have flung it back at him and called him a socialist.
Still, Romney's generosity toward Williams doesn't resonate as an act of compassion as much as one of condescension. That's because what he did for her is contradicted by his record as a business person and his platform as a candidate.
And it's something that black people ought to be particularly wary of.
No matter how much money he hands out to poor, desperate, over-churched black women.
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