South Carolina Lt. Governor Compares Poor People to Stray Animals

Update: Bauer has issued what some are calling an apology. He has referred to poor people as domesticated animals rather than stray ones. "I never intended to tie people to animals," he told CNN, then added, "If you have a cat, if you take it in your house and feed it and love it, what happens when you go out of town?" This is not an apology -- keep the pressure on Andre Bauer.

***

South Carolina Lt. Governor Andre Bauer, who may very well be the Republican nominee for this fall's gubernatorial election, has made startlingly hateful and ignorant comments about people living in poverty in his state. That's a lot of people -- according to 2008 data from the Census Bureau, 15.7 percent of the population, or about 800,000 South Carolinians, live in poverty.

Speaking at a town hall meeting on Friday, Bauer told lawmakers and voters, "My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed. You're facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don't think too much further than that. And so what you've got to do is you've got to curtail that type of behavior. They don't know any better." Demand an apology from Andre Bauer for these insensitive remarks and ask the SC GOP to disavow them.

He didn't stop there. He added that the state should cut off public assistance to residents who fail drug tests or who don't attend parent-teacher conferences or PTA meetings. He suggested that the state tell people on public assistance: "'Look, if you receive goods or services from the government, then you owe something back.'" Bauer thinks that using drugs and missing PTA meetings are products of laziness, refusing to believe that addiction is not a choice and that parents may have valid reasons for being unable to attend optional PTA meetings (lack of transportation and childcare, second shift jobs, etc.).

Bauer, who is currently fund-raising for a November run for governor, displayed a remarkable and willful ignorance of the causes and effects of poverty when he blamed the poor for institutional obstacles, rather than blame institutional obstacles for the rampant poverty in his state. Unfortunately, as with Rep. Joe Wilson's fund-raising success after he shouted "You lie!" during President Obama's speech to Congress last year, Bauer might reap political rewards from his remarks. Let's make sure he doesn't.

For anyone still unconvinced of his inability to govern all South Carolinians and to lead a statewide education system, Bauer said, "I can show you a bar graph where free and reduced lunch has the worst test scores in the state of South Carolina. You show me the school that has the highest free and reduced lunch, and I'll show you the worst test scores, folks. ... You go to a school where there's an active participation of parents, and guess what? They have the highest test scores. So what do you do? You say, 'Look folks, if you receive goods or services from the government and you don't attend a parent-teacher conference, bam, you lose your benefits.'" In the state, 58 percent of students receive free or reduced-price lunch. Bauer mistakenly associates getting free lunches with low test scores. In reality, the causal relationship is between poverty and low test scores and the free and reduced-price lunches are simply a symptom of poverty. There are many reasons why students living in poverty get worse test scores than wealthy or middle-class students: poorly-funded schools with less experienced teachers, unstable households, inability to pay for enrichment activities, low expectations, less educated parents; all of these are the effects of living in poverty, not matters of choice that can be remedied in a PTA meeting.

While not explicitly racist, Bauer's scorn is disproportionally directed at minorities. The majority of people in South Carolina living in poverty are black or Hispanic despite the fact that blacks and Hispanics make up less than a third of the state population. There is a history of conservative white politicians making similar statements that use "poverty" as a euphemism for "minority" in order to conjure up racist sentiments for political gain under the pretense of criticizing social programs. It's time for this to stop. Let Bauer know now that his behavior is unacceptable.

Bauer has already responded to those offended by his comments. However, he refuses to backtrack. "Yes, I believe government is 'breeding a culture of dependency'," he wrote on his website Saturday. "I feel strongly that we can and should help our neighbors who are truly needy. ... However, there's a big difference between being truly needy and truly lazy."

Photo credit: The Palmetto Scoop