In a blog entry at Atlantic magazine, Ta-Nehisi Coates examines Newt Gingrich's offer to attend a NAACP convention to explain why African Americans “should demand paychecks and not be satisfied with food stamps.”
He should expect a frosty reception:
Oscar Eason, President of NAACP State Conference of Alaska, Oregon and Washington State, told CBS News Gingrich's comment "goes right to the heart of real racism - that African Americans are lazy and don't want to work and depend entirely on handouts.
It's true that white people make up the majority of SNAP participants (59 percent.) It's also true that a disproportionate number of people participating in SNAP are black (28 percent.) But what's salient here is that most black people (62 percent) actually are not on food stamps. Moreover, I strongly suspect that the percentage of black people who are not on food stamps, and are politically conservative, is even higher. Of course these black almost always vote Democratic.
I wonder why.
Read Ta-Nehisi Coates' entire blog entry at the Atlantic.