Gingrich: Whites ‘Don’t Understand Being Black in America’
Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker who is informally advising Donald J. Trump and being vetted as a possible Republican vice-presidential nominee, said on Friday that whites in America can’t fathom “being black in America.”
Mr. Gingrich made the comments in a Facebook Live chat with the Democratic commentator Van Jones, who is black, after 12 officers were shot in Dallas at a rally protesting the deaths of black men by the police in Louisiana and Minnesota.
“It took me a long time, and a number of people talking to me through the years, to get a sense of this,” Mr. Gingrich said. “If you are a normal, white American, the truth is you don’t understand being black in America and you instinctively underestimate the level of discrimination and the level of additional risk.”
He added there were “everyday” dangers that white people did not face. “It is more dangerous to be black in America,” he said. “It is more dangerous in that they are substantially more likely to end up in a situation where the police don’t respect you and you could easily get killed.”
This week, Mr. Gingrich took credit for helping Mr. Trump craft a Twitter post that invoked a sticker book with characters from the Disney movie “Frozen,” with a six-pointed star, to mock people who criticized the candidate for posting an image on Twitter that was criticized as anti-Semitic. Mr. Trump has been accused throughout the campaign of making racially charged statements about Hispanics and Muslims.
But on Friday, Mr. Gingrich joined other prominent Republicans in broadly stating that white people and black people had fundamentally different experiences.
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