70% of Food Stamp Recipiants are white. Why doesn't Newt and Dick bitch about them?

[LynneSin]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/05/newt-gingrich-paychecks-food-stamps_n_1188193.html

Santorum's comments were criticized by National Urban League President Marc H. Morial as pandering to racist elements within the GOP. Morial also said that 70 percent of people on food stamps are white. The Agriculture Department does not break down food stamp participation rates by race.

[comipinko]

1. Because they are white.

[zbdent]

2. hmm ... every time Obama does something slightly left of Rush Limbaugh, he's accused of

pandering to his far left liberal "base". Now, if they mean the "base" as "the majority of the people who support (Obama)" ...

then does playing to the Republican/Teahadist/Conservative base mean that this is the Republicans/Conservatives/Teahadists finally admitting that, yes, they are racists?

[LeftinOH]

3. Look at it this way: Of the 30% who are non-white, 100% are minorities...

which means that 100% of welfare recipients are minorities. Right wing math is a little different.

[pampango]

4. Doesn't fit the rightwing template. If the facts don't fit, you must ignore it. n/t

[LynneSin]

7. I know that kinda bothered me to but look at it this way

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States#Race_and_ethnicity

May 30% is too high of a number but one thing is clear - 64% of the United States is still identified as White. And despite what these bozos think - poverty is very rampant in rural parts of the country where whites tend to be the predominate race.

those numbers alone pretty much show that it would be impossible for every food stamp recipient to be black.

which makes Newt and Dick racists!

[i was a cathar]

14. Well, we have two different arguments here.

The first one is that the majority of food stamp recipients are White. Well, the majority of AMERICANS are also White. The question is really one of percentages. If Whites are at least 60% of the total population and Blacks only around 12%, then you are looking at 5X as many Whites in this country. The stats I saw say that around 39% of all Blacks and a similar percentage of Whites are on welfare. Despite all the poor, rural Whites, overall doesn't it make sense that there is a much higher rate of poverty in the Black community as a whole? Why even go there and try to dispute those numbers? Is it out of shame? I really don't get it. It's completely disingenuous for anyone to use the "more Whites than Blacks" argument. And what's even worse is that it totally misses the point.

The point is that Newt is a tool because he TARGETED the Black community, as if they were the only ones on food stamps. That's not a dog whistle; that's a bull horn!

[KansDem]

6. Because they need their votes...nt

[banned from Kos]

8. Too bad its not linkable - I need that info for a wingnut.

The Urban League quote won't fly.

[dmallind]

9. How good of a retort this is depends on the definition of white

Non-Hispanic whites are last I saw 66% of the population so if 70% of FS recipients are white in this sense it would obviously mean it's not a population with an unusually high amount of minorities - the opposite in fact.

However many classifications include a majority of the Hispanic population as whites, and that total is 80%, which would indicate that even at 70% white, the program has a non-normal amount of minorities.

Now of course it doesn't matter a red cent if 100% of the recipients were Chinese by ancestry if the criteria were applied in a non-racially biased way and everyone who qualified just happened to be Chinese - that's a statistical anomaly and nothing more, but it would mean that characterizing the program recipients as more likely than the norm to be non-Caucasian would be perfectly true.

It depends on what we care about. Racial compositions are facts. Extrapolating what that says about the value or need of the program is often bigotry.

[haele]

12. There's a Social Services office up the street from where we live -

I go by it every morning around 7am on my way to work. This office provides general low-income assistance - food (WIC), temporary welfare, Social Services/Social Security/United Way agency navigation, employment assistance, housing, medical and child care referrals. The area was historically middle class black from the bad old segrigationist days, but is now pretty much melting pot working lower-middle class with a good chunk of section-8 thrown in. And this is just a small, 10K+ population community within a big city.
Just looking at the long queue for assistance that is forming that early in the mornings (especially on Mondays and Fridays) as I ride slowly by on the main drag(lots of pedestrian traffic), I figure there's an average daily breakdown of (at least at 7am):
- a little over a third older (worn-out looking over 50 types) people,
- almost 1/3 are usually wearing obvious work clothes and/or have tools or briefcases with them.
- 1/3 look to be disabled (wheelchairs, crutches, canes, oxygen, or walkers, or look in some sort of physical distress from standing)
- 1/3 - 1/2 look to be primarily Caucasian,
- 1/4 - 1/3 look to be primarily "black" - African immigrants and/or African Americans,
- 1/3 look to be primarily Hispanic,
- a sprinkling look to be primarily Asian,
- with almost 2/3 female, a little under half with young children (note - a few of those in line look to be supporting friends, so some might not be there for assistance themselves)

Quite the mix, considering that on pretty much a daily basis, there's already a line of twenty five to a hundred people looking for job, food, medical, or housing/child care assistance a full hourbefore the office opens, and when I'm coming home around 4pm, there's still a few people waiting to go in. The few times I leave around 6:30 am, there's still a sizable queue of people there that look as if they've been there for a while already.

Just from what I see, this says more about joblessness, community health issues, or lack of living wages or affordable housing than it does about some mythical "racial laziness".

Haele

[Tarheel_Dem]

10. It's a tried & true dogwhistle, kinda like the infamous "Welfare Queen". Works everytime.

On edit: Rev Al talked about this on his show, but his figures are different from yours. The breakdown was 34% White; 22% Black; 17% Hispanic, so I'm not sure about the makeup of the remaining 27%.

[tallahasseedem]

11. Because only Blah people count...

that's why!

[Cali_Democrat]

13. White privilege. n/t