House Budget Chairman and former Vice President candidate Paul Ryan, R-Wi, has some explaining to do to African-Americans–and he will, following comments he made that basically implied Black people in the ghetto don’t work hard.
Last month, Ryan appeared on Bill Bennett’s Morning in America radio show and stated there is a “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 to value the culture of work.”
Now he’s have to clarify those comments with the Congressional Black Caucus.
Reports NBC:
After being criticized as racially insensitive for his comments on unemployment in “inner cities,” House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., will meet with the Congressional Black Caucus next week to discuss the issue of poverty, an aide for the CBC says.
“Congressman Ryan is a nice guy, and as such you know he has tried to frame the comments that he made about inner city folk as just sort of an inarticulate way of communicating,” CBC member Rep. Gwen Moore, D-Wis., said during a conference call with reporters today. “We want to challenge his assumptions about that and really raise with him a couple of very specific proposals.”
“We are happy that representative Ryan wants to engage in this conversation, and we’re not going to let him get away with sort of a sleight of hand on this,” she said. “We know how to crunch numbers as well.”
The comments were met condemnation from the CBC, with Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., calling them “a thinly veiled racial attack (that) cannot be tolerated.” Ryan later spoke to Lee by phone and admitted that he had been “inarticulate” during the interview.
The two sides are to meet April 30 in Washington D.C.
This isn’t the first time Ryan’s comments in the media were met with a cultural backlash. Following his and Mitt Romney’s defeat in the 2012 presidential election, he went on record detailing the amount of “urban voters” who swayed in Obama’s favor.
He also condoned rape to strengthen his defense against abortion in the days leading up to the election. Which, obviously didn’t sit well with female voters.
—
Photo: WENN
