Two by Ishmael Reed

"How the Media Uses Blacks to Chastise Blacks," The Colored Mind Doubles in counter punch

ITivo Don Imus as much as I can because his putrid racist offerings are said to represent the secret thinking of the Cognoscenti. Maybe that's why journalists like Jeff Greenfield and others admire him so much. He says what they think in private. [...]

Clarence Page and others are regularly blaming the victim. Harvard's Orlando Patterson is also brought in by the Neo Con op-ed editors at the Times to characterize the problems of African-Americans as self-inflicted, using the kind of argument that would be ripped to shreds in a freshman class room.

Even Bob Herbert, a liberal and the token black on the New York Times' Neo Con editorial page, has to take the brothers and sisters to the woodshed from time to time in order to maintain credibility with his employers. He too says that Gangsta Rap is the cause of society's woes. (David Brooks, who promotes some of the same ideas as David Duke, but has a more opaque writing style, even blamed the riots in France on Gangsta Rap). read more

Learning About Racism, Live on NPR and CNN, Ishmael Reed, "The Furor Over the "Colored Mind Doubles" in counter punch

Maybe if those who manage airport services and the presidents of the airline companies knew how it felt to sit in a place like the Phoenix airport as the sole black person, while watching CNN, surrounded by people, all of whom look like Bush supporters, they would end this service. At home
you can always change the channel. Here you're stuck.

Within an hour CNN broadcast stories about the alleged rape of a black college student by white members of the Duke University lacrosse team. The report was biased in favor of the white players. When a black man is suspected of a crime, the cable networks are pro prosecution. When whites are involved, like the kids who killed a homeless man in Florida, the kind, who are attacking the homeless all over the country, the suspects are given the benefit of the doubt by the media.

CNN ran the arrests of two black security guards who were the first suspects in the kidnapping of Valerie Holloway, even after they had been released! read more