On Saturday’s broadcast of “Melissa Harris-Perry” on MSNBC, executive director of the Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles Alfonso Aguilar referred to Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), a candidate for House Speaker, as a “hard worker.”
Host Melissa Harris-Perry interjected Aguilar to say he needs to be “super careful” using the term “hard worker” because hard work is a slave working in the cotton fields, or a mom without healthcare who Republicans call “failures” who are “sucking off the system.”
“I just want to pause on one thing, because I don’t disagree with you that I actually think Mr. Ryan is a great choice for this role. I want us to be super-careful when we use the language ‘hard worker’ because I actually keep an image of folks working in cotton fields on my office wall because it is a reminder about what hard work looks like. I feel you that he’s a hard worker. I do. In the context of relative privilege, and I just want to point out, when you talk about work life balance and being a hard worker, the moms who don’t have healthcare who are working but we don’t call them hard workers. We call them failures, we call them people who are sucking off the system. No, really, y’all do. That is really what you guys do.”
Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.