Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., just days after participating in a rally with Newt Gingrich, said that the Republican candidate suggested that inner city students get janitorial jobs because Gingrich wants poor black children to look like “servants.”
“What [Gingrich] is talking about is stratifying people,” Clyburn, chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, told Andrea Mitchell yesterday. “He is saying that the poor children in their schools ought to be the janitors in their schools so that other people in the schools who are not so poor can see them as their servants.”
Clyburn added that “most African Americans understand what he is saying. And we are not going to stand for it.”
Gingrich and Clyburn both spoke at a homeownership rally in South Carolina last week, but Clyburn has been very critical of Gingrich in the past. “[Gingrich] will say almost anything” to win a political victory, Clyburn said last month.
