Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Legal Commentary Blogs -> Discriminations

Legal Commentary

: Discriminations

Pure Racialism In The New York Times

The headline of an article by Jim Rutenberg on the front page of the New York Times this morning is ?Black Radio on Obama Is Left?s Answer to Limbaugh.? The article reflects as pure an example of racialism ? an ideology that regards race as the fundamental building block of personal identity and social reality ? that I recall seeing in the mainstream press.

It begins:

ATLANTA ? Warren Ballentine, one of black talk radio?s new stars, was on a tear against Senator John McCain as he broadcast from the Greenbriar Mall here last week, blithely dismissing Mr. McCain?s kind words about Senator Barack Obama at the recent N.A.A.C.P. national convention.

?He came out talking about how good of a race Barack Obama was running, and how proud he was of Barack,? Mr. Ballentine said. ?You know he went back home and said, ?I can?t believe I spoke in front of all those Negroes today!? ?
....
Rush Limbaugh, meet your black liberal counterprogramming.

What I find both remarkable and offensive here is the easy and unexamined assumption that ?black? is the counterpoint to ? actually, opposite of ? ?conservative.? Let me state what should be obvious but isn?t, at least to reporters and editors at the New York Times: the ?answer? or ?counterprogramming? to conservative talk radio is liberal or leftist talk radio; ?black radio? is the counterpoint to ?white radio,? not conservative radio.

To assume otherwise, as the NYT does, is to assume, falsely, that all blacks are on the left (unless it wants to argue that ?black radio? does not really represent blacks, an argument I haven?t read in its pages). It is also to assume, also falsely, that conservative talk radio supports McCain because he is white, not because he is more conservative than Obama, and that it opposes Obama because he is black.

I also think it?s revealing that, in the excerpts quoted, Warren Ballantine, ?one of black talk radio?s new stars,? stretches to accuse McCain of racism ? not, mind, you on the basis of anything he?s said, which has only been complimentary of Obama, but on the basis of what we ?know? he says in private.

By contrast, when conservative talk radio criticizes Obama in areas that might be regarded as similar, it quotes what he actually said ? bitter, clinging whites; what his long-time mentor/pastor/substitute father actually said ? ?greedy whites? running the United States of AmeriKKKa; what his wife actually said ? America is ?just downright mean,? and she became proud of it only recently.

Do Ballantine and the New York Times believe there is a ?black? position on, say, Iraq? On bailing out failing banks? Indeed, as I demonstrated here by citing a number of opinion surveys, there is not even a reliably identifiable ?black? view of racial preference policies.

Is ?black radio? fundamentally black or fundamentally liberal? Would it be supporting, say, Condi Rice or Colin Powell as uniformly if one of them were the Republican nominee and some white, any white, were the Democrat? I doubt it. And that suggests, at least to me, that ?black radio? is a pretty good analog to black interest groups and black voters: a wholly owned subsidiary of the liberal left and its dominant institution, the Democratic Party.

Seen in this light, maybe the New York Times view that ?black,? as least as blacks are represented institutionally and politically, really is the opposite of ?conservative.?

Full post as published by Discriminations on July 27, 2008 (boomark / email).