On The War Room with Quinn & Rose, Jim Quinn said: “You know, if you were a slave in the old South, what did you get as a slave? You got free room and board, you got free money, and you got rewarded for having children because that was just, you know, tomorrow’s slave. … Can I ask a question? How’s that different from welfare? You get a free house, you get free food, and you get rewarded for having children. Oh, wait a minute, hold on a second. There is a difference: The slave had to work for it.”
No, Virginia, electing a black president does not mean that racism magically goes away.
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I’m sorry but I dont see the racism in that. He stated facts about how slavery worked, and compared it to welfare. Also implying that the slaves were a lil better than the welfare people.
I don’t neccessarily agree and I wouldn’t say the same thing. But I just don’t see how this is racist.
maybe someone can make it a lil clear for me in the comments.
Wow. What does he mean by “you got free money”?
Haley — how about the idea of slaves getting “free room and board” and “free food” and getting “rewarded for having kids.” No, they got forced to work, they were owned as pieces of property, raped, beaten, forced to bear children and utterly dehumanized. The first instance of racism comes by talking about how slavery was just a grand old time for the slaves and that getting a group shack to live in in forceful exchange for doing your master’s bidding is somehow the same thing as free room and board. The second instance of racism is in the comparison which heavily implies that only black people are on welfare. The third is when he heavily implies that people who are on welfare are lazy bums who don’t work (actually, many people on welfare are in fact forced to work long hours, hours away from their homes) and that they have children for the purpose of stealing more money from us Good White Taxpayers. Even though you actually lose money in the end when you have a child when on welfare, because the utterly minuscule increase in benefits you get do not even remotely pay for that child.
don’t respond to Haley.
Haley, first of all, camparing slavery positively with anything is wrong.
Second, the whole argument is constructed with the assumption that black folks are a class of economic dependents — he sets up the slave relationship as beneficial to the slave, when in fact it was lifelong kidnapping, assault and forced labor. No right-winger would ever construct the Soviet Gulags as mutually beneficial like that, even though that was also a capture- and forced-labor situation.
Third, he’s trying to take the sting out of one of history’s worst outrages, which only serves racists by whitewashing the historical arguments that discredit them. Slavery minimization is like holocaust minimization.
And that’s only three of the many ways it’s a racist position.
Frankly, I’m only being this nice about it because I assume you’re some kid and don’t know any better. If you disabuse me of that notion, the moderators will probably ban you.
Is Haley a “lil” troll? It makes me too sad to think otherwise, that someone could really believe Quinn’s ideas are not racist.
I tend to think (hope) Haley’s comment is sarcastic, but on the off chance it’s not:
It’s racist because it makes it seem like slaves had it good. It utterly minimizes and fails to acknowledge a horrifyingly brutal and yes, dehumanizing, experience that African Americans were subjected to by the United States government.
It suggests that being “encouraged to have more children” was a positive aspect of slavery when in actuality having children meant the prospect of being forcibly separated from them, having them sold to someone far away, and watching them endure torture on a daily basis. Not to mention the pregnancies that resulted from the rape of slave women by white men.
The comment shows a willful ingnorance of the indescribable pain suffered by the African American community during slavery. It makes light of it, thereby treating the people who went through it as less important and less human than other people.
Clearly, we need to start beating and raping welfare recipients, so that they will learn how much better it was to be a slave than on welfare.
Haley is Asshole of the Day, Jr.!
If being a slave is so great, then why doesn’t Jim Quinn volunteer himself to be one?
WTF? Cheesus Fucking Christ.
Nitpicking points: 1, slaves didn’t get any money. 2, women didn’t get rewarded for having children, they had their children sold out from under them. They begat those children for the most part by being raped, repeatedly. 3, “room and board” for a slave were usually little better than a hovel and the bare minimum of food.
Larger point: “Jim Quinn, Asshole of the Day” doesn’t quite cut it. Jim Quinn, Worst Person in the World, might do. Maybe. That dude needs a ball-and-gag so he will stop spreading his venom and hatred far and wide.
See, this is why I have my “Kick in the Balls” card, which certifies me to go up to people like Jim Quinn, say “I’m sorry, sir, that statement was just too damn racist. I’m going to have to kick you in the balls”, and then kick them in the balls.
#1: Jim Quinn, is that you?
Slaves got free money? If that had been the case, i assure you that people would have been lining up to join. As far as modern day, the majority of people receiving food stamps, Section 8 vouchers and TANF (Temporary Aid to Needy Families, what “welfare” is called now) are white. Why? Because the majority of PEOPLE in the country are white. Concurrently, the majority of people below the poverty line are white, the majority of rich people are white, the majority of nearly everything is white. The sky is also blue.
As a side note, the percentage of poverty-stricken people in rural areas is somewhat higher than in urban areas.
Its also racist because of the strong implication that the majority of welfare recipients are black. That is simply flatly false. The overwhelming majority of people on welfare are white. The association of “welfare” with “black” is racist in the extreme.
If only there were some sort of time travel machine, by which this Jim Quinn person would have to travel back to the South in the early 1800s and be a slave for … how long? … a month? a year? 5 years? 10 years?
Maybe he could gain some sort of understanding about how slavery was pretty f******, g**d*** horrendous, horrible, and obscene. How it resulted in people treating other people just about as badly as people can be treated.
Then. Maybe. He’d stop trying to compare slavery to any U.S. government program (psst, welfare, as he posits it, ended in the Clinton era).
The fact that I grew up listening to Jim Quinn with my father and *didn’t* turn into a raving right-wing nutbag as an adult pretty much speaks volumes for my mother’s influence on me. While I’m pretty sure Quinn’s just gotten more and more out there as time has gone on, I can’t believe I listened to that crap as a kid and managed to not wind up parroting it right back at people.
Someone please craft a coherent response so I can think in full sentences about this, then e-mail him.
quinn@warroom.com
“Clearly, we need to start beating and raping welfare recipients, so that they will learn how much better it was to be a slave than on welfare.”
I’m pretty sure that this already happens, so I’m not finding the embedded humor/sarcasm here. Just sayin’.
No shortage of stupidity all around. Somehow people are reacting to the possible racist comment (inaccurate comparison but not racist in my opinion) but happily ignore the point. For many (but not all), welfare is a multigenerational free ride (food, housing, money) that is a disincentive to work). Walk the walk before you start talking and stop jumping up and down. It’s just a fact that I have seen time and time. Answer the question, stay on point, and stop ranting that everything is racist. It’s not. To say so detracts from the problem, alienates people, too often is not true and will nullify arguments when it is true. No one needs taht.
Somehow people are reacting to the possible racist comment (inaccurate comparison but not racist in my opinion) but happily ignore the point.
What point? Frankly, to suggest that a point can be salvaged out of that clusterfuck of racist ignorance is to give Quinn far more credit than he deserves.
WTF has Quinn been smoking??!!!!
Slaves receiving free money?!!!!?!!!
WTH DID QUINN AND THOSE WHO SUPPORT HIM LEARN THEIR US HISTORY FROM……WATCHING GONE WITH THE WIND WHILE DRUNK AND HIGH??!!!!
No wonder the US is considered the educational laughing stock of the world!!! :(
Wrong, wrong, wrong. Just completely, verifiably false. TANF has a 5-year lifetime limit, so what you claim is simply impossible unless somewhere in the US there’s a strain of lazy poor people with a 5-year generational span.
What this Quinn guy is basically saying is that slaves were each alotted a nice apartment, great eats, and a salary, all for free!! As an added bonus, they got “rewarded” for “having children.” Since no specifics are mentioned with this last thing, we have to assume that the children just magically appear, perhaps by stork, and the reward is probably something nice like a life-size gingerbread house. The only thing the “slaves” were required to do in return was….nothing! Oops! I mean, “work for it.” All this really means is that the slaves were so grateful for their free “room and board” and so forth, that they just couldn’t wait to get out there in the cotton fields and really show their masters some appreciation! YESSSS! Sweet deal!
Bizarro world is what we live in.
alright alright alright.. I’m not a troll, and I’m not saying that slavery was good and i’m not supporting that Quinn guy. I don’t even know who he is.
For some reason it just didn’t come off as racist to me when I first read it. But maybe that was because it was too early in the morning.
I apologize. Really. I didn’t mean to offend anybody. I guess I read it but didn’t really ‘read it’ enough for it to click in with the ‘free food’ and stuff.
So sorry again. But I really did mean it when I asked for someone to explain. I wasn’t trying to attack you with that question or something.
Thanks for the explanation. I see it now. I saw it even before i read the explanation just when I read the quote now.
Sorry if I upset anybody. I didn’t mean to.. :(
Thanks.
Haley
Walk the walk before you start talking and stop jumping up and down.
It’s the ignorance aerobics!
Seriously, long-term living on welfare is one of the most miserable, degrading and humiliating experiences a person in the Western world can go through. It does not keep you above the poverty line. There is no more incentive to work than having no money to eat or leave the house, and going slowly mad from malnutrition, red tape and boredom.
Yes, “free food” and “rewards!” The delicious free food and sweet birth incentives were probably why the slave population in many colonies had to be constantly replaced by a huge influx of people kidnapped from Africa each year! Because having the majority of new slaves die within a year and having a birth rate that’s a tiny fraction of the death toll sure says happy-and-healthy-well-cared-for-workforce to me!
I am astonished whenever I realize that there exist people who don’t have “slavery” set to a default “bad!” in their heads. Isn’t that like, not-being-evil 101? Isn’t that like, the *bare minimum* for not being a terrible person?
Oh my f***ing god.
I think people are missing his point.
He quoted Frances Rice saying that the Democratic party is the party of slavery, secession, segregation and socialism in the preceding paragraph. He’s implying in the quote in the opening post that socialism, in the form of welfare, is akin to slavery. He uses the rhetorical device that the benefits are analogous to do so.
This is completely unsurprising, given the themes of the show:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Quinn#Quinn.27s_laws
Yeah. Wow.
Not surprising.
Quinn’s laws/Guide to the Quinn and Rose Show
Haley, if you didn’t get why what he said was not only WRONG, but also disgusting and out-right racist, you’re a fucking moron.
Ok guys, Haley apologized. Let’s lay off her and move on.
Why, Jill? It was one of the most idiotic things I’ve ever heard.
SLAVERY IS BAD PEOPLE. If you don’t realize that from the get-go, maybe you need to start at dictionary.com
Yeah, it was idiotic, and Haley said as much. She apologized. She said she gets it now. We’ve all said some supremely idiotic things online (well, maybe you haven’t, but I sure have). I’m not sure what the point is in saying “Haley, if you didn’t get why what he said was not only WRONG, but also disgusting and out-right racist, you’re a fucking moron” after she’s already said that she does now understand why it was wrong and disgusting and out-right racist, and she’s apologized for her previous comment that said otherwise.
I guess I just don’t see the purpose.
I don’t know. I’ve said some stupid things, sure, but “slavery … is bad … really?” is fucking moronic.
Maybe now she’ll actually … I don’t know, open a book and try and educate herself. If she didn’t know that SLAVERY IS BAD ALWAYS BAD NO MATTER HOW YOU LOOK AT IT, I wonder what else she “doesn’t know” that’s plainly obvious.
I mean, really now. I’m getting tired of coddling the out-right ignorant.
Y’know, there are those who are called on their moments of stupidity, see their errors, apologize, and try not to repeat them in the future.
Then there are those who get called on their moments of stupidity and keep… pounding it… into… the ground in the hopes that someone’ll jump on and help pound.
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