At a town hall event in Racine, WI on Wednesday, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) had to deal with the aftermath of his ‘inarticulate’ comments about ‘inner-city men’ that were made over a week ago. During an interview on Bill Bennett’s ‘Morning In America’ on March 12th, Ryan made the following comment when discussing the cause of poverty in this country:
“We have got this tailspin of culture, in our inner cities in particular, of men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working or learning the value and the culture of work, and so there is a real culture problem here that has to be dealt with…you need to get involved, you need to get involved yourself, whether through a good mentor program or some religious charity, whatever it is to make a difference. And that’s how we resuscitate our culture.”
Immediately after his radio interview, Ryan faced an avalanche of criticism for his thinly-veiled racist comments. The next day, Ryan gave a non-apology, stating that his comments were ‘inarticulate’ and that he didn’t mean to implicate one section of society. He also said that the ‘broader point’ he was trying to make was still valid.
However, on Wednesday evening, those chickens came home to roost. Ryan probably thought he was on safe ground going to a town hall event in his home district. He likely figured that there would only be old, white people there. And, for the most part, he was right. The vast majority appeared to be white senior citizens. At the same time, an older African-American gentleman, Alfonso Gardner, was in attendance. He stood up and confronted Ryan on his comments.
Video of the confrontation, courtesy of Think Progress:
While it is difficult to make out on the video due to the echo in the gymnasium, Gardner told Ryan that the Congressman “said what you meant.” He also pointed out that inner-city is a code word for black. Ryan tried to deny that there was any racist intent in his comments and that he just tripped over his words. He further accused Gardner of not knowing what he was talking about and basing his accusation on a false premise.
“There is nothing whatsoever about race in my comments at all…I think when we throw these charges around, it should be based on something.”
Ryan just took the route all conservatives take when confronted with saying something racist. He essentially stated that Gardner was the one being racist for seeing racism in Ryan’s racist comments. That is an age-old Republican trick.
While Ryan tried to dismiss his comments as being misconstrued, the bigger issue here for Ryan is that this controversy isn’t going away anytime soon. And that spells doom for his 2016 aspirations. From this point forward, he has to deal with the stigma of his racist views and comments. During the GOP primary, he will have to answer questions about those comments time and time again. His non-apology didn’t do anything to squelch this. For the GOP, their ‘whiz kid’ is now damaged goods.
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