Religion
Related: About this forumAn Open Letter to Newt Gingrich From the Pastors of Poor Children
complete letter at link
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joi-ruth-orr/newt-gingrich-racism_b_1217614.html
Mr. Gingrich,
For this you still owe our children an apology:
"Some of the things they could do is work in a library, work in the front office, some of them frankly could be janitorial; what if they clean up the bathrooms, what if they mopped the floors, what if in the summer they repainted the school; what if in the process they were actually learning to work, learning to earn money; if they had their own money, they didn't have to become a pimp or a prostitute or a drug dealer. [If] they had the dignity of work and learned how to be around adults who actually wanted to mentor them and help them. This is not a casual comment... It grows out of a lot of thinking over many years of trying to figure out how do we break out people trapped in poverty who have no work habits." -- Gingrich
We, the students and faculty of the Delaware Annual Conference Ministerial Institute of the AME Church, representing over 34 congregations and their constituents throughout Delaware and southern Pennsylvania are outraged at your continued demeaning of poor children and their families.
As a candidate vying for the Republican Presidential nomination, to suggest that poor children collectively lack a work ethic and drive for legal and productive work is entirely classist. Your national platform is no place for such irresponsible remarks. Our children deserve better than your degrading rhetoric.
cleanhippie
(19,705 posts)Does degrading rhetoric include telling children that they will go to hell if they don't do as god says?
Does it include telling children that they are sinners from birth an must be redeemed?
Does that include telling children that impssible acts in the world we live in are in fact real events with supernatural origins?
I find this rhetoric just as degrading as what Newt said, do you?
MarkCharles
(2,261 posts)A propagation of myths, as much as the one Newt is propagating. And interestingly, southern Christians by the hundreds of thousands voted for Newt on Saturday. I believe his total vote count on Saturday in SC was 240 thousand, of which, I doubt any of them were atheists, and very few were Jews or Muslims.
Sad.
Jim__
(14,077 posts)I hope they really intended the message for the general public and not for Newt Gingrich. I doubt he'll ever read it; and further doubt that he would understand it if he did read it.
cbayer
(146,218 posts)The racial undertones of much of what Gingrich has been saying have been pretty alarming. I really like the way this is framed to address that issue.