California Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom unwittingly found himself in a tense discussion Friday about racism and economic inequality with comedian turned conservative talk show personality Adam Carolla.
Gavin Newsom, hawking his book: “Citizenville: How to Take the Town Square Digital and Reinvent Government,” appeared on Adam Carolla’s show to discuss his first venture into printed media. Newsom was angling to talk up how internet technologies can help improve political participation by youths and other groups, but host Carolla had other ideas.
Adam Carolla, known for his underwhelming stint as the host of MTV’s “Loveline,” steered the conversation to a discussion about his apparently flawed and myopic perception of racial and economic inequality in America. He stated, with an authoritative tone suggesting he had actually researched the subject using universally accepted credible sources, that the number one reason for poverty, particularly among African-Americans and Hispanics, is that these groups do not adhere to the two-parent (male and female) family model and don’t value education as much as whites and Asians do.
“Yes they foreclosed on your home. That’s why you need to have a network, a community, friends, family members, money put away. Don’t have the kids,” Adam Carolla began.
“Think about it, Adam,” Gavin Newsom interrupted. “Half of African-Americans in the state of California, and roughly half of Latino families, have no access to a checking account or an ATM. Things we take for granted.”
“What’s wrong with them?” Adam Carolla countered, to which Newsom replied..they don’t have the resources to sock those things away.” Not satisfied, Carolla pressed on, asking “Why do we have them?” “A lot of different reasons,” Gavin Newsom retorted in a somewhat flustered tone as Adam Carolla began to talk over Newsom to assert his conservative viewpoint, namely that Blacks and Latinos are genetically flawed, lack family values, don’t save and don’t value education.
“I want to know why those two groups don’t have access. Are they flawed?” Adam Carolla baited.
Amazingly, Gavin Newsom indulged Adam Carolla in this buffoonery which only racists could find entertaining. Carolla fired off conservative/libertarian talking-points, while Newsom struggled to article with substance any significant liberal/progressive viewpoints. Sure, Newsom wanted to get back to the discussion of his book. But clearly Carolla wasn’t going to let that happen:
The reasons for America’s socio-economic inequality are numerous and complex, as Gavin Newsom rightly stated — we address some of these issues in our piece “An Alternative Wealth Gap Explanation.” But these reasons are also primarily race-based, gender-based and class-based, as undoubtedly Newsom knows. As one of the fresh-faced poster-boys for the future of the Democratic Party, Newsom should not have shied away from these arguments. His doing so reeks of political malfeasance, for how can a constituent support someone afraid to lead when challenged by such low hanging fruit and an obvious nutter?
Adam Carolla hosts “The Adam Carolla Show,” a talk show distributed as a podcast. He was the co-host and co-creator of the “The Man Show” and the co-creator and a regular performer on the television show “Crank Yankers.” He is a regular guest on Bill O’Reilly’s “The O’Reilly Factor.”
A racist that’s a regular on Faux News? Shocking.
I believe the problem was Newsom is a very intelligent fellow and it’s hard to disprove an argument that’s obviously true. There are historical backdrops to Latino/African poverty; Failure to pursue education, crime rates and unemployment. They’re systemic and ongoing. But you can’t alienate your base and give the wrong soundbite or you’re committing political career suicide.
It is them, consistently and continuously that have more problems than whites and asians. Adam brings up a good point, when you know what the problem is it becomes an answer of why and how do we fix it?
I think Newsom himself stumbled but overall Democrats do have ideas for working on or fixing the problems that were brought up. Republicans typically don’t. This is the kind of issue I would have spit back at a Republican. When do they ever have a plan for working on poverty and education? While it keeps getting worse in this country every year.
Now our educational incompetence has become threat to national security.
There are many reasons why Carolla’s arguments are patently false. Carolla, like others of his idealogical bent, usually cite no independent sources to back up their statements.
Carolla ignores ” widespread and institutionalized racism, redlining and predatory lending as the primary reason why minority wealth dropped so steeply after 2008. Many public figures have addressed this issue in the last few years.” From “An alternative wealth gap explanation” http://www.popdecay.us/2012/09/21/an-alternative-wealth-gap-explanation/13231
Also See “The Hidden Cost of Being African-American,” “Yes, we’re creating jobs, but how’s the pay?,” and “The Rich and the Rest of Us,” co-authored by Cornel West and Tavis Smiley.
“There are nearly 150 million poor and near poor people in America who are not responsible for the damage done by the Great Recession. Yet they pay the price. The poor did not create the de-industrialization of America, unmatched corporate profiteering and greed, more than a decade of foreign wars, and unregulated tax benefits for the wealthy. When the largest economic institutions in the world were brought to their collective knees, they went crawling to the government’s doorstep in search of salvation. The government obliged, allowing Wall Street to socialize its failure on the backs of Main Street Americans. The housing and jobs crisis they created fostered a poverty unseen in generations—not just in inner-city ghettos and barrios, but also in suburbs and rural areas crossing racial, age, and gender lines. Nearly one-third of the American middle class—mostly families with children—have fallen into poverty.” —Tavis Smiley and Cornel West, “The Rich and the Rest of Us”.
” Gavin Newsom retorted in a somewhat flustered tone as Adam Carolla began to talk over Newsom to assert his conservative viewpoint, namely that Blacks and Latinos are genetically flawed…”
To the contrary, Carolla asked hypothetically if they were genetically flawed–the point being that, because that is untrue, there must be some OTHER factor at play.
You should fix that.
Nice try Libel, but it’s very clear from Adam’s tone and assertive manner that he wasn’t asking a hypothetical, but held a firm opinion and wanted to get Gavin to agree with him.
That’s crazy. To think that he was literally trying to say “they are genetically flawed” after listening to him at all. Gavin brought something up and Carolla took him to task on it and was asking those questions obviously to prove his point.
Whoever wrote that obviously didnt listen to the podcast. It pretty much consisted of Adam asking difficult questions and Gavin newsome trying not to offend anyone. Anything in quotes that sounded racist was taken way out of context.
Carolla’s questions were not difficult. They were off-topic and asinine. He claimed his views were based in statistics which he did not/could not cite. His views ignored established authoritative opinion, yet he pressed on…because he thought he was right.
His questions, assumptions and assertions sounded racist because they were racist — they were ignorant negative generalizations of whole groups of people on the basis of race, with the underlying assumption being that whites inherently do things better or are better.
Posing his views as questions (“what’s wrong with blacks and latinos?”) does nothing to negate the racist nature of his line of questioning.
Of course, many people will see nothing wrong with Carolla’s comments. For those of you in this category, you either need a better education in American history or you just need to accept that you are racist. You may not hate minorities, but you definitely think negatively about them and would execute policies that would treat them differently than other groups if given the chance. That’s racist! Many conservatives and liberals fit in this category.
I love the fact that asking that men raise the children they create makes you “conservative”. Or is it being a white man with money and asking that?
Asking the question when you KNOW that your government undermines these communities daily with institutionalized racism, and has done so for hundreds of years, makes you conservative… and racist, whether you are Republican, Libertarian, or Democrat.
I think Carolla has a valid point and Newsom set him up perfectly. “Why these groups specifically and why not others like Asians or Jews?” Carolla does oversimplify the reasons and his solution – “study harder and work harder”.
But, perhaps we should call an audible on this and realize that what we are doing isn’t working. We are not getting our money’s worth or helping either community advance as they’d like to.
And why aren’t these communities up in arms and asking “we need better from you?” Perhaps they are, but the voices we see on the news are those of Jesse, Al, etc who seem to be playing the blame game.
Just my 2 cents.
by the way – great quote
“why do Armenians have them?”
Agreed. The system isn’t working for some groups and has for others. Why? Because some groups haven’t been allowed to play on a level playing field.
Solution? Stop sabotaging their advancement. The “successful” groups engaged in economic protectionism and crime to move up the socio-economic ladder. Now that they have “arrived,” their offspring pretend that their ancestors didn’t do that. Blacks were extremely successful in Antebellum America, but their efforts have repeatedly been sabotaged by institutionalized racism: Jim Crow, killing their leaders (MLK, Malcolm X, Medgar Evers), destroying their communities (Tulsa, Rosewood, etc.), eliminating their access to fresh produce, redlining, predatory lending, under funding /shutting down their public schools and privatizing them with charter schools (making tax funded school boards no longer accountable to tax payers), discriminating against Blacks and Latinos in school discipline (which sets the minority kids up for prison), racial profiling (which results in more minority arrests for less crime), intentionally destroying the family unit by targeting men of color for prison (then blaming these victims for not being around to take care of their kids), not showing Black role models in media, not funding Black businesses, promoting some Black leaders –Jesse and Al — while ignoring others (Barbara Lee, Maxine Waters, etc.)
Jesse and Al are playing the blame game…as they are paid to do by Coke and MSNBC. They have been neutered by the liberal machine, just as Carolla and other conservatives are paid to do.
The only solution is to stop playing their game and demand equality for every citizen in every neighborhood now.
This current trend of redistribution of wealth by privatizing things is merely an effort to steal what little assets these poor communities have left and hand it over to the wealthy. …and when they’re done with the Blacks,Latinos’ and the poor whites caught up in the trap, they are coming for the white Middle Class.
We should join the minorities in demanding that they get the same breaks we got: good paying jobs, easy credit, second chances, free/cheap land, great public school educations, friendly police, stable communities, taxation with representation, etc.
By helping our neighbors, we help ourselves. If we can’t do this, then we knowingly and willingly benefit from our government’s destabilizing their communities. …and we will reap what we have sown.
“Underwhelming stint”? Really? So it was so “underwhelming” that he went on to be millionaire, have a fan base in the 100,000+ range and have the most popular podcast in the world?
Newsome was the person who brought up blacks and hispanics…. But dont let the facts interfere with your article.