At his Iowa campaign stop Thursday, Dec. 1, Republican GOP candidate, Newt Gingrich began his speech with two “facts.” The first “fact” stated that “really poor children, in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of work ethic [and] they have nobody around them that works” and “they have no habit of ‘I do this, and you give me cash’ unless it’s illegal.” The second “fact” stated that every first generation person he knows started work early, further explaining his past proclamation that poor children in schools should be employed as janitors in order to teach them a good work ethic and get them working at an early age. These statements have added to the firestorm of controversy to his past statements in November that child labor laws preventing children from working are “truly stupid.”

First of all, these are not facts, they are assumptions.  He’s pointing the prejudice finger at the most vulnerable, precious group in our country at an extremely touchy time of economic struggle and evidently, these facts that he’s stating against them are not only void but completely untrue. Studies show that three in four poor adults do in fact work. Sure, some could agree that some teenagers and adults alike are lazy and expect their money to be handed to them. Hence the word ‘some’ – not all of them are. And on a side note, lazy people are not merely poor people. Richer people are prone to be just as lethargic as anyone else can be and if any child is surrounded by bad work ethic, it could very well be a child born to a rich family.

Children are not the blame for poverty and should not be made the brunt of this country’s economic struggle. Children received the official brunt of poverty when they faced physical and emotional abuse, long hours for an extremely low to no pay and were put in danger everyday to make money for their family at the wake of the Industrial Revolution and to call that acceptable is truly unethical and callous. These children were 6 to 12 years old. There’s a reason they put child labor laws into place.

It is obvious that Gingrich should check his “facts” before he points the finger at anyone else. Not all poor children are surrounded by poor work ethic and do, in fact, have parents that work tirelessly just to make ends meet then sadly, there are some that don’t. It’s a shame that someone so well off would be so blind to point the finger at a population that is simply different than he is and a generation that may have a harder time making ends meet than he does. It could also be true that someone’s gain in money could affect their work ethic as well.