Gingrich on Slavery: "Emotional Symbolism"

Gingrich on Slavery: "Emotional Symbolism"

Monday, June 16th 1997 -- You just have to wonder who tells Newt Gingrich what to say.

The Speaker himself, a man who nearly single-handedly engineered a GOP takeover of the House and Senate, couldn't possibly be dumb enough to continuously open his mouth without thinking first. So, someone must be pulling his strings.

Friday the 13th: here's the President of the United States attempting to heal old wounds between black and white, rich and poor, and there's the old Newt "scoffing" -- as The New York Times put it --at a proposal from more than a dozen House members that Congress might want to apologize to those black Americans whose ancestors were slaves. Here's what Gingrich said about the apology:

"Any American, I hope, feels badly about slavery. I also feel badly about genocide in Rwanda. We can go back and have all sort of apologies. But will one more child read because of it? The emotional symbolism as an avoidance of problem-solving strikes me as a dead end."

Rwanda? What does that have to do with American slavery?

Emotional symbolism? He must be joking!

To top it off, Gingrich then lit out after a panel President Clinton appointed earlier in the week to help fight racism -- a growing problem in the United States. Newt's response?

"Unless the commission has a dramatically different agenda and a different approach, the same tired old big government liberalism will be like commissions we've had for 30 years."

Of course, Mr. Gingrich's idea of "a different approach" is "tax cuts" for business and "improved" inner-city education -- in Newtspeech this means private and charter schools.

Of course, as usual, Gingrich is intentionally mixing apples and oranges in an effort to muddy the waters surrounding race-based bias and growing. Democrats and the President have proven they are not against making things cozier for business and examining the improvement of urban school systems.

But Gingrich, frustrated by his sinking reputation, now grabs on to anything that might get him headlines -- including bashing what might be two good ideas:

First, why not apologize to American blacks for allowing slavery to flourish for 100 years? We've taken great pains to apologize to Japanese-Americans for the horror they suffered during World War II.

Second, why not illuminate, through the racism panel, that American blacks and whites are not getting along as well as they should and that increasingly, a kind of de facto segregation is occurring in this nation?

I'll tell you why not. It's because Gingrich and his ever-shrinking band of congressional allies realize that any discussion of race relations will almost certainly boil down to a discussion of class conflict highlighting American's fears that the country is becoming a battleground of haves against have-nots.

Mr. Gingrich, with some sad cooperation from right-wing Democrats, laid the foundation for this battle. His consistent pandering to money interests has left him with few friends on either side of the aisle. Now he's afraid of being exposed for what he is -- a twister of truth in the name of profit.

The upside is that Gingrich's unfortunate remarks only add another nail to his political coffin. His remarks last Friday sent yet another shudder of embarrassment through the Republican party. GOP leaders, moderate and conservative alike, were very uncomfortable with the Speaker's needless and heavy-handed combativeness. Even Congressman J.C. Watts (R-OK) -- normally a courtesan for GOP ideology -- broke with the speaker over the apology issue, appearing on Evans & Novak this weekend.

The Republican rumbling over a no-confidence vote on Gingrich and sidekick Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott began anew Friday evening. Perhaps this time, the thinking men and women of the Republican party will dump these two turkeys and begin anew.