I swear, every time I hear Newt Gingrich speak, I think of Isabel Wilkerson's brilliant 2020 book about the eight fundamental beliefs that underpin a caste system. The pillar of “inherent superiority versus inherent inferiority” is what keeps Gingrich on television.
opinion columnist
LZ Granderson
LZ Granderson writes about culture, politics, sports, and living life in America.
Conservatives knew he was full of lies since his first campaign in 1974. Back then, Gingrich touted a campaign slogan: “Newt's family is like his family,” even though it was common knowledge that he was cheating on his wife.
“Jackie was a little scruffy,” said Gingrich's first press secretary. he told mother jones. Gingrich supposedly he told his campaign treasurer that his wife was not “pretty enough to be the president's wife.” And she also has cancer.”
So when Fox News' Sean Hannity wanted someone to criticize Vice President Kamala Harris's credibility, the natural choice was, of course,… Newt Gingrich. A man who faced ethics investigations and was forced to resign as Speaker of the House. A man who avoided paying more alimony and child support when he received a $4 million book advance. Yes, Fox News…America is dying to hear what Gingrich has to say about credibility.
“Kamala is hopeless because she is Kamala.” joked this month. “Anyone who watches her knows that the idea of her being president makes Biden look good, which is very difficult these days. We have to start with the idea that she has left imprinted on the country, permanently, that she is a very superficial, uneducated and uneducated person. Other than the strange laugh of her, there is no important part of her.”
Harris graduated from Howard University and has a law degree. His mother left India to come to the United States in 1958 to study biochemistry. His father is an economist who taught at Stanford. Both earned doctorates in their respective fields at Berkeley.
Gingrich called the vice president “uneducated” and “uneducable,” not for the sake of truth and honesty, but to protect the pillar of caste that would be threatened by the truth about Harris. The one identified in Wilkerson’s book, “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents,” as “inherent superiority versus inherent inferiority.”
Citing 1942 observations by Yale scholar Liston Pope, he wrote in the book: “A caste system has a way of seeping into each inhabitant, its codes absorbed like mineral springs, setting expectations of where one fits on the ladder. The factory worker who has no one else to “belittle” considers himself eminently superior to the Negro. “The colored man represents his last outpost against social oblivion.”
For 50 years, Gingrich's political positions have gravitated toward what polls said they should be. What has been constant is his willingness to degrade. That sharp tongue was something that became a hallmark early in his political career and was on full display when it came time to speak about welfare reform during the 1990s. His political debates were opportunities to use dehumanizing rhetoric. to refer to anyone he considered “less than.” And by proxy, Gingrich's supporters were also able to belittle those who needed help.
Even after leaving Congress amid scandal, and even after his well-documented mistreatment of women, Gingrich somehow still communicates to his audience: “We are inherently better.” And that's why he felt comfortable saying the nonsense he said about Harris. He knows he is lying, but his lies provide comfort to those who cling to that pillar of the caste system.
Ava DuVernay adapted “Caste” for the big screen in 2023 with the film “Origin,” which recently began streaming and hit the Top 3 on Hulu. She does a beautiful job of transforming Wilkerson's reports into a compelling narrative about our shared humanity: the joys and the pain. And she does so in a desperate search for understanding and healing, rather than showing trauma in a punitive tone.
During last season's movie commercial hurricane that was Barbenheimer, “Origin” didn't get the attention it deserved. In its second life, I'm glad it's finding more viewers.
Voters who watch this film very well might think about the upcoming election in a different way: by seeing the various ways in which caste continues to manifest itself in America and the eight pillars on which it stands.
Gingrich is a smart man. He has a doctorate in European history. He strategically chose his line of attack against Harris, not to criticize the Biden administration's policies, but to take advantage of the discomfort many people feel at the idea of a Black woman being president. And to shore up that “inherent inferiority” pillar of America’s caste system.
While none of the major parties would pass a purity test, there is only one party that continues to put a microphone in front of people like Gingrich… and it's not because the audience wants to hear the truth.
