Is Pookie from the ‘hood advising Rick Santorum?

5th March 2012   ·   0 Comments

By Tonyaa Weathersbee
Guest Columnist

You know Republican hypocrisy and hatred for President Barack Obama has hit a new low when one of its candidates resorts to channeling Pookie from the ‘hood to get votes from white people.

That’s what Rick Santorum did the other day, when he berated the president in front of a crowd of Michigan Tea Party people for his push to get more Americans to pursue higher education.

“President Obama once said that he wants everybody in America to go to college,” Santorum said. “What a snob.”

“Not everyone is gifted in the same way … he wants to remake you in his image. I want to create jobs so that people can remake their children into their image, not his.”

Pookie might say the same thing, albeit a bit differently.

He’d accuse the Black people around him who strive to go to college or pursue some form of post-secondary education of thinking they’re better than him.

He’d call the Black youths who try to use proper grammar bourgeoisie.

And he’d berate them all for “acting white.”

It’s a safe bet that Santorum has never crossed paths with the likes of Pookie. Yet there he was, spreading the same kind of anti-intellectualism and anti-college talk that disproportionately impacts the economic chances of Black people who buy into it.

We know this because right now, while the national unemployment rate is around 8.3 percent, the Black unemployment rate, while lowest than it’s been since 2009, stands at 13.6 percent.

We know that a college education can make a dent in those numbers: Last summer, while national unemployment stood at around nine percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that college graduates had an unemployment rate of around 4.3 percent, while high school graduates had an unemployment rate of around 9.6 percent.

It also showed that high school dropouts—a statistic that is close to 70 percent for Black males in some urban areas—have an unemployment rate of 14.6 percent.

And we also know this because the Census Bureau tells us that a person who holds a bachelor’s degree can expect to earn almost $1 million more a year during their lifetime than a high school graduate, while someone who holds a master’s degree can expect to earn around $2.5 million more.

But now, according to Santorum, a guy who a few months ago claimed he didn’t want to make Black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money, but wanted to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money for themselves, the pursuit of a college education—the very thing that would counteract much of the economic misery that Blacks suffer – is rooted in snobbery, not in a desire for self-sufficiency.

The pursuit of college, according to him, is an exercise in elitism, not in having the intelligence to see where the job market is going and to prepare for it.

Not unexpectedly, Santorum and his handlers are trying to play down his comments. They told The Washington Post that he wasn’t criticizing Obama’s push to get more people into college, but rather a “mentality” that people who earn college degrees are better than those who don’t.

Sounds like something Pookie would agree with.

Then again, from Day One, Republicans have turned all the things that they would praise in a white president into scorn for Obama.

His articulateness is an attempt to deceive, not to communicate or inspire. His attempt to address students via television to urge them to do well in school was a foray into indoctrination, not encouragement.

And now, because Obama is championing education beyond high school, GOPers like Santorum see it as some sinister socialist plot, even when trends and reality say it’s common sense.

Perhaps the last part of what Santorum said speaks to what the Tea Party people really fear: That if they send their kids to college, they risk coming out acting like the black president.

Then there’s Pookie – who believes that Black people who go to college will come out acting white.

So it’s funny how Santorum and the ignoramuses who cheered him on thought they were being wise when they were really being Pookie.

In reverse, that is.

This article was originally published in the March 5, 2012 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper