Imagine that your predominate perception of African Americans is from the "gangsta culture" rappers, as well as other mass entertainment stereotypes. Then a major TV white TV personality points out how wrong those stereotypes are, based on his actual experience.
This busting of stereotypes would be a good thing, right? Wrong--not if you're Bill O'Reilly of Fox News, and not if the liberal side of the media, plus the purveyors of professional racial victimology, have their way. O'Reilly instead was dragged over flaming coals for presenting a positive viewpoint of just one experience with non-gangsta, non-stereotyped blacks.
Even worse, the man he said these positive things to is a noted black author, Juan Williams, whose credentials also include NPR. Williams says that their conversation was taken out of context--and the liberal lynch mob next falls on him, dismissing him contemptuously as a "Happy Negro."
Did O'Reilly, in looking back, not speak perfectly, so that every phrase, every sentence, could be dissected, parsed, and criticized? Sure thing. Instead of speaking like a well-oiled PR machine, he was speaking informally with someone he was comfortable with--a black author, let it be noted. And he was using his own grandmother as an example of how stereotypes, if not combated, lead to misunderstandings. O'Reilly clearly was, it seems, a thug, hell-bent on saying "wake up, black Americans are not all gangsta's or other negative stereotypes!"
And so it goes. Like Bill Cosby, these two men were attacked for, frankly, not hewing some sort of PC line. JoelleRose takes on this issue and others in the far left smear campaigns that this week unraveled when it was proven that they didn't have enough facts to even tat up a decent length of lint.
Williams' blistering editorial is worth a read, if only to hear what a black American male, the one who was part of the conversation, takes away from this experience. Hint: when it comes to the religion of victimology and far left mud-slinging, things aren't quite as black and white as they seem.
So imagine how totally astounded I was when I heard O'Reilly was attacked on the basis of that radio conversation as a "racist." He was slammed for saying he went to a restaurant in Harlem and had a good time. He was slammed for saying the audience at the concert was nicely dressed. The suggestion was that O'Reilly had racist preconceptions about the restaurant and the concert crowd.That twisted assumption led me to say publicly that the attacks on O'Reilly amounted to an effort to take what he said totally out of context in an attempt to brand him a racist by a liberal group that disagrees with much of his politics. But the out-of-context attacks on O'Reilly picked up speed and ended up on CNN, where one commentator branded me a "Happy Negro" for allowing O'Reilly to get by with making racist comments without objection.
This is so far from the truth of the conversation on the radio that it is beyond a matter of words being taken out of context. This is a pathetic cowardly, personal attack against me intended to damage my credibility and invalidate any support I offer to O'Reilly against the charges that he is a racist.
For the record, I am a black man who lives in a black neighborhood in a mostly black city, and is married to a black woman. I am also the author of several books and documentaries on the civil rights movement. And any viewer of the O'Reilly TV show knows that O'Reilly and I respect, even like, each other but are frequently at loud, finger-pointing odds over politics and people.
But this is an attempt to take down O'Reilly and dismiss anyone offering him support — me. This is along the lines of telling anyone who calls attention to the excesses of hip-hop culture a "self-hating" black man and skewering anyone who dares to say there is a crisis in black America because of the high dropout rates, high crime rates and high out-of-wedlock birth rates.That is what happened to another well-known Bill, Bill Cosby, after he spoke out about the self-destructive images and behavior in the black community.
Source: time.com
Tags: African Americans | America | Bill Cosby | Bill O'Reilly | gangsta culture | gangstas | Juan Williams | Liberal Media | Media | race | rappers | Snoop Dogg | Time | US
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