A Brief History Of The Free Phones For Brown People Right Wing Myth

There's no need to dwell on this, but this is a topic I should briefly cover. I could have blogged about this in 2012. And it starts with this viral video a few weeks before Obama's reelection showing a black woman boasting about receiving an "Obama phone."

If there's a great example of "this didn't do the cause any favors," it can be this one. It was picked up by Tea Party republicans and the Mitt Romney campaign and used in a broad racist attack on Obama. There's so much right wing ammunition in a single video. We have a seemingly lower class black lady, at what appears to be a union rally for Obama 2012, boasting that Obama created a program that got her a free mobile phone. The implication to the right wing audience was, 'look at this uneducated brown lady! She got a free phone! Isn't she undeserving? Obama didn't give you a free phone! Laugh at her, but also get mad. Obama is giving free phones to undeserving brown people.'

This is absurd, of course. But at the time, I could see how this early meme worked on so many levels. Aside from the disgusting racism, the historical context is also important. Linux-based touchscreen phones arrived in the late 2000s (the iPhone 1 in 2007 and the first HTC Android phone in 2008). They were, and still are, seen as luxury items despite their ubiquity. Most Americans use them from elementary school to the grave. So a false narrative that the Federal government was giving pocket computers to poor people costing hundreds of dollars was potentially gasoline thrown onto the anti-Obama backlash.

Thankfully, it didn't. This video clip failed to move any polls. Mitt Romney was a poor candidate, and Obama had a generally content nation (compared to today, for sure). The truth of the "free phones" is a tiny, largely unknown Federal program called Lifeline, founded by the FCC in 1985 and updated in 2005. Today, the program doesn't distribute mobile phones. It might help someone acquire a used device. But more likely, for the few who apply and the fewer who are accepted, program participants get a subsidy for their monthly bill.

So it's old news, right? Forgotten? Not really. The lie of Democratic governments handing out free phones still exists in our political landscape. Bruce Blakeman, the Republican nominee for New York governor this year, has been saying over and over that Albany has been giving free phones to undocumented immigrants.

It is a major talking point for Blakeman. He said it just 2 minutes and 34 seconds into his debate against incumbent governor Kathy Hochul last week:

And it isn't true. The 'free phones for brown people' Republican talking point is both untrue, and doesn't land. It needs to be retired. Let's move on.