One of the reasons a lot of people, myself included, like Newt is because he says politically incorrect things that ordinary people think. In other words, his politically correct utterances aren’t out of the KKK playbook, they’re out of “the reasonable common-sense before 1960s Leftist education took over”
A week ago, he said that child labor laws are stupid insofar as they prevent children from getting paying jobs (including janitorial jobs) that would help them to maintain their own schools — at less cost, incidentally, than using unionized janitors. His most recent utterance, expanding on this point, was that poor children have no work ethic:
“Really poor children, in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works so they have no habit of showing up on Monday,” Gingrich claimed.
“They have no habit of staying all day, they have no habit of I do this and you give me cash unless it is illegal,” he added.
All the usual suspects are up in arms. I haven’t bothered to hunt down quotations from the unions that keep schools supplied with janitors, but I’m sure they’re not happy. More than that, though, Newt’s statements have been interpreted to mean that he advocates a return to 19th Century child labor, complete with seven-day work weeks, 12 of which are spent laboring in a coal mine. Take a gander, for example, at this screen shot from YouTube after I searched up “Newt Gingrich poor children”:
Charles Blowhard, New York Times opinion columnist, is horrified that Newt might look at the way in which the poor behave and conclude that their learned behavior contributes to their poverty. He also comes back with reams of statistics about the fact that the poor do work:
This statement isn’t only cruel and, broadly speaking, incorrect, it’s mind-numbingly tone-deaf at a time when poverty is rising in this country. He comes across as a callous Dickensian character in his attitude toward America’s most vulnerable — our poor children. This is the kind of statement that shines light on the soul of a man and shows how dark it is.
Gingrich wants to start with the facts? O.K.
First, as I’ve pointed out before, three out of four poor working-aged adults — ages 18 to 64 — work. Half of them have full-time jobs and a quarter work part time.
Furthermore, according to an analysis of census data by Andrew A. Beveridge, a sociologist at Queens College, most poor children live in a household where at least one parent is employed. And even among children who live in extreme poverty — defined here as a household with income less than 50 percent of the poverty level — a third have at least one working parent. And even among extremely poor children who live in extremely poor areas — those in which 30 percent or more of the population is poor — nearly a third live with at least one working parent.
I’ll accept as true the fact that the poor work, but that’s too facile. We also need to look at their attitude towards work. As Shakespeare would say, there’s the rub. Let me quote from a post I wrote a couple of weeks ago, describing the way in which a white liberal tried desperately to explain away the fact that large corporations find it extremely difficult to keep minority employees:
Mr. Bookworm works for a very large corporation. While we were in the car with the kids, the conversation turned to the exquisite sensitivity the corporation has to show when it’s faced with firing a minority employee. The process is arduous, requiring huge HR involvement, dozens of staff interviews and a lengthy paper trail.
The reason for this labor intensive firing is the unfortunate fact that minorities tend to be less satisfactory employees. As Mr. Bookworm was at great pains to point out to the children (and correctly so), this is a group trend and has nothing to do with the merits of any individual minority employee. It’s just that, if you look at a bell curve of minority employees versus a bell curve of white employees, you’ll find more white employees than minority employees in the segment denoting “good worker.” No modern corporation, however, wants a reputation as a “firer of minorities.”
The above are facts. What fascinated me was the different spin Mr. Bookworm and I put on those facts. Mr. Bookworm sent twenty minutes explaining to the children that, to the extent blacks were poorer employees, it was because their culture made them incapable of working. (This was not meant as an insult. He was talking, of course, about the culture of poverty.).
Mr. Bookworm painted a picture of a black child living in a ghetto, with a single mother who gave birth to him when she was 14, with several siblings from different fathers, with a terrible school, surrounded by illiterates, hungry all the time, etc. No wonder, he said, that this child doesn’t bring to a corporation the same work ethic as a middle class white kid.
This creates big problems for corporations. A modern corporation truly wants to hire minorities. Once it’s hired them, though, according to my liberal husband, it ends up with workers who are incapable of functioning in a white collar, corporate environment. The corporation therefore finds itself forced to fire it’s minority hires more frequently than white or Asian employees, with the result that it’s accused of racism. Its response to that accusation is to proceed with excessive caution and extreme due diligence whenever a black employee fails at the job.
My suggestion to the children was that minority employees, aware that it’s almost impossible to fire them, might be disinclined to put out their best efforts on the job. Why should they? Logic and energy conservation both dictate that a smart person should do the bare minimum to get a job done. In this case, for the black employees, the job their doing isn’t what’s in the job description. Instead, their job is simply to keep their job.
Amusingly Newt thinks exactly the same as my liberal husband does. They both blame black culture for poor black employment habits. The difference is that, while Newt thinks it’s a fixable situation, starting with the children and their attitude toward labor, my husband, like Mr. Blowhard, thinks that all one can do is accept that minorities are going to be lousy employees.
America’s black poverty culture (as opposed to the Asian or East Indian) poverty culture is handicapped by a terrible, false syllogism:
- Slavery was work
- Slavery is evil
- All work is evil
Even when they’re getting paid, too many African-Americans seem to feel they’ve sold out 
Cross-posted at Bookworm Room
It wouldn’t hurt rich kids to learn a good work ethic either.
From 1998-2000, I was press secretary for a Department of Labor in a mid-Atlantic state. The agency Secretary (an African-American Republican, by the way) made the Newt point over and over and over again…about the need (for ALL young citizens) to develop a work ethic–otherwise known as good habits–that values waking up on time, getting dressed, going to work, doing your job, going home, going to bed….and repeating that behavior every single work day.
When I have a bad day (or week…or month) in my current job, I think back to what my DoL boss said, and it refocuses me on the job.
My boss was right then…Newt is right now.
I started reading this thinking you were against Newt. I also thought Newt made a stand up statement.
Newt is dead on right.
We are becoming a nation of feral children who curse their mothers. Work ethic is a learned behavior best taught by age 12. What if the 99% studied “how to work” instead of “sociology” or “women’s studies”? These people would rather steal from my own labor than produce any of their own. There are many PhD’s who choose not to work…they are no better than the high school drop out.
Since when has hard “work” become a byword in this country?
This works. My son attended a dorm high school where the boys cleaned, including floors, did their own laundry, had rotating kitchen duty. It as their school. They were proud of it, they learned and today my son is an accomplkished businessman. We are an low income family and are proud of him. His younger siblings are following in his footsteps. Oh, and not a union in the place for staff at any level.
I have two young men who do yard work for me, Eric (black) and Juan (Spanish) both are good workers and I personally like them. Recently I asked them what they were going to do with their wages. Eric was saving his for a tattoo, Juan for a weed-eater, its a personal choice but a revealing one.
Back in 1984, I was hired as a temporary teacher for a small town (Alabama) school. The teacher I replaced was on maternity leave so I took over her classes. One set of classes were for advanced students and the other was an 8th grade general math class. The advanced students were pretty good and a couple of them were exceptional (one is now an Associate Professor of Cardio-Thoracic Surgery at Emory University’s medical school). The 8th graders were abysmal, innumerate and barely literate.
One day, that exceptional student dropped by the 8th grade class for clarification on an assignment. When he left, I said that he was a young man who was going places. The 8th graders derided him for “acting white.”
I asked the school’s vice principal (who was black) about the two groups and how they were so different. He said that the good students mostly come from two parent homes where education is valued. He said the other class’s students were from multi-generation welfare dependent single parent homes. The only reason they were still in school was that they couldn’t drop out until they were 16. According to the VP, their career ambition was to get on welfare themselves because it was the only life they knew and with their poor skills, welfare paid better than any job they were likely to find.
Having raised two stepsons through their teenaged years, I suggest that work skills and a work ethic is something everyone needs to learn. The need is even more pressing when no one the kids know actually works for a living.
The big drawback to being a registered republican is all these statements like the unemployed are just lazy people with poor work habits.
Granted we are supposed to be the Ebeneezer Scroogr party because the world contains more grifters than Tiny Tim’s.
But please. Try working in a car wash, or a fast food place and then let me know how easy these ooor trash low class jobs are and how these people just need better work habits. work your tail off , then put you off the clock.
and now, i find out from my kids its even hard to get those jobs.
We want to be self righteous, lets make sure there are jobs available so people can go get good work habits by having a job.
lets make sure there are jobs available so people can go get good work habits by having a job.
Not a bad idea, but isn’t that a bit late for them to start?
Quote:”… lets make sure there are jobs available …”
Price the lowest rung of the labor force, where you learn good job habits, out of reach, and you get how many more jobs made available? Hmmmm.
Increasing the minimum wage helps these jobs become more available exactly how?
I bused tables for 38 cents an hour and pumped gas for 75 cents an hour when the minimum wage was $1.25. It “didn’t apply to me” back then. But, I wanted to work and earn money for school. I mopped the classroom floors to pay HS tuition.
This is nothing new, but has been ‘outlawed’ by do-gooders. thanks. not.
tom