Sarasota News Leader

11/23/2012

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Sarasota News Leader November 23, 2012 stant connections, so you don't really have to think too much." One example Deggans mentioned was former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Newt Gingrich's notorious labeling of Presi- dent Barack Obama as the "food stamp pres- ident." To further illustrate the way code words gain their meaning, Deggans referred to a book ti- tled, Why Americans Hate Welfare. It includes research by author Martin Gilens, who found that covers of news magazines published be- tween the 1960s and the 1990s more often than not associated images of black people with generic stories about poverty. Page 55 "What ends up happening is that the terms 'welfare' and 'poor black people getting some- thing for nothing' wind up getting associated with each other," he said. "What I talk about in the book are implicit messages. Messages … that are not out in the open that you think about consciously," De- ggans said. "The great achievement, I think, of the civil rights movement, is that it's cre- ated this social space in the mainstream now where open bigotry is frowned upon," he con- tinued. "Now … stereotyping is implicit. It's in the background; it's on the edges; it's in the margins; it's food stamp president." Deggans concluded this explanation by say- ing his goal in Race-Baiter is to take implicit Eric Deggans discusses his new book, Race-Baiter, with Joseph Segars and Elizabeth Segars.

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