FOX News, Right-Wing Media Propagate Racism 2.0

Roger Ailes, president FOX News

Many people on the right like to think that with a black president in the White House, racism is dead. They even have prominent spokespeople like Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain, who beat their chest and say, "How can America be racist if a black person is the Tea Party's leading candidate for president?"

Racism exists in 2011, but in a different form from the racism that existed in the 1960s. Back then racism was blatant -- whites only lunch counters, segregated drinking fountains, and black people completely barred from high-level jobs.

However, because racism was out in the open, it was much easier to challenge by direct action such as protests, boycotts and marching. Forty years later we have made a lot of progress, but there are still many racial disparities. Structural racism exists, but in a more subtle and amorphous form.

Right wingers fail to see these disparities. So I ask them, if you think America doesn't have racial problems, let's look at this from a scatological approach. Let's analyze America by its by products.

And what do we have? An ineffective criminal justice system that is predominately black and brown, black unemployment at twice the unemployment rate of white people and consistent evidence of police brutality and extra judicial killings mainly focused on black people.

What we are dealing with in the 21st century is what I would call Racism 2.0. Racism 2.0 is much more difficult to analyze and fight. At times it is like boxing a ghost, an enemy you can't see or lay a finger on.

With Racism 2.0 we do not have blatantly segregated neighborhoods, but we have redlining, where black home buyers are steered into black neighborhoods, or given loans with higher interest rates than whites. There are also incidents where white homeowners refuse to sell their homes to people of color to make sure the neighborhood's complexion doesn't change.

Racism 2.0 is seen in white flight, where wealthy and middle-class whites move to the suburbs, ostensibly for better schools, but also to get away from the colored folks. It is also seen in public education where wealthier whites take their kids out of the state-funded school system and enroll them in private Christian academies. Then these same people refuse to vote for funding increases to public schools, because they claim they don't have children in the system.

And most importantly it's seen in the right-wing media, which is full of race-baiting stories. Last year, the White Right, as activist Tim Wise likes to call them, spent hours of air time running stories about the New Black Panther Party and alleged voter intimidation.

After months of hype, the story was eventually debunked when a Bush appointee said that the right-wing's accusations about the Justice Department's failure to look into incidents of vote intimidation against white people were false.

The main culprit of Racism 2.0 is FOX News. The brain child of Roger Alies, who cut his teeth running dirty tricks for Richard Nixon, FOX News is a primary distributor of neo-racist propaganda. With Barack Obama, a black man with a Muslim name, in the White House, FOX News has made its viewers feel they are under siege. FOX realizes that is audience is about 90 percent white (figures backed by Nielsen), and they make sure they fine tune their message to fit the tastes of their audience, who are scared about the nation's changing demographics.

But in 2011, it is politically incorrect to say that you don't like black people and even FOX realizes this. So instead they use a series of code words to imply animosity. These phrases include implying Obama is a Muslim, using his middle name, Hussein, and implying he has foreign values, as mentioned by Newt Gingrich and Mike Huckabee.

And then there are phrases that skate as close to outright racism as you can get. FOX commentator Eric Bolling recently said Obama should have been dealing with the tornado victims instead of "drinking 40s." (He was actually drinking Guinness while he was in Ireland.)

Now anyone familiar with urban media realizes that 40-ounce malt liquor is associated with inner city black people and was heavily marketed towards this group. It has also been embraced by the hip hop community.

And not surprisingly FOX News tried to turn rapper Common's appearance at a White House poetry reading into an example of Obama associating with a gangster and thug. By the way, Common is an intelligent rapper, who is also a vegetarian and has campaigned for gay rights and animals rights. He has also appeared on Sesame Street and in Gap ads. Yeah, real dangerous.

As the great comedian Dave Chappelle once said, "I am a connoisseur of racism." And I think that applies to black people in general, we know it when we see it, even it comes in version 2.0.

Senatorial Candidate Urges White People to 'Take Our Country Back'

The Tea Party loves to argue that they are not racist. They claim they are simple (literally) Americans who are unhappy with the direction the country is going. Although these same people seemed to be loudly silent when President George W. Bush was shredding the Bill of Rights, running up the deficit and pursing two questionable foreign wars.

But here is one more piece of glaring evidence that shows the true motivation of the Teabbagers. Consider Glenn Miller Jr., who is running for Senate in Missouri. Miller, a convicted felon and white supremacist, made headlines when several stations ran his racist ads, and then realized their error and pulled them.

Miller's ads are the standard racist garbage with talk about white people being outnumbered by the "coons and mud people," but what is revealing is his other choice of words. His call to action is for God-fearing white folks to "take our country back." Where have we heard that before?

You can check out the ad below and compare it to statements from Tea Partyers. You can't make this stuff up !

Tea Party message:

Tea Bagger Hate Has Always Been in Plain View

Latest racial attacks are not surprising

Are people surprised that Tea Baggers directed spittle and insults at Democratic legislators? News reports say that Rep. John Lewis, a veteran of the Civil Rights movement, was called the n-word and Rep. Barney Frank was called a faggot. In another incident, Rep. Emanuel Carver was spat on.

It is only the natural progression of tension that have been building for the last 12 months. We saw this during the Town Hall rallies when flabby, ageing Americans almost came to blows over health care. Were those red-faced protesters at the Town Hall rallies actually happy with America's profit-driven health care system, which rewards executives for denying sick people treatment? Actually, many of those protesters were directed by PR companies and lobbyists, who were bankrolled by health insurance companies.

Tea Baggers, who seem to be mainly frustrated middle-aged white people have been whipped into a rage by AM radio and FOX News, the great miscommunicator. Before that there were books written by propagandist such as Ann Coulter which advocated the execution for liberals. FOX News also runs the nightly rantings of the deranged Glenn Beck, as he warns about plots to take away guns, ban fishing and destroy the government -- all the time offering no credible evidence

Tea Baggers are upset at the state of the economy, the shrinking middle class and the fact that neither of the parities seems to speak for them. The GOP, under President George W. Bush, enacted policies that left America awash in red ink. These findings are backed by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office. Writing in the Huffington Post Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) said, "The Bush tax cuts for wealthy individuals and corporations have led to the largest concentration of wealth since the Great Depression. His devastating and unnecessary war in Iraq was done without evidence linking the country to those who attacked us on Sept. 11, 2001. And the Medicare prescription drug act that Bush signed into law intentionally prohibited Medicare from negotiating prescription drug prices, costing us billions every year. Each of these programs was not paid for and exacerbated the deficit problems our country already faced."

The real problem is the lack of diversity in the American political system. Both parties tend to favor the corporate agenda, because they take money from the same companies. The Tea Party wants a more libertarian and fiscally responsible GOP, but that would never happen because they would never get elected. Liberals are unhappy at President Obama's agenda, because they think it's too centrist.

The GOP has struggled to maintain the votes of middle class and blue-collar Americans by sprinkling in wedge issues such as gay marriage, abortion and race. And that is where the Tea Bagger anger comes from. Yeah, the economy is in a mess, so it must be the fault of the black guy who has only been in charges for less than two years, forget about eight years of GOP policies. If the mortgage industry crashed it must because of bad loans given to blacks and Mexicans, not shady financing by Wall Street bankers. And the black guy int the White House only got their because of affirmative action and isn't a "real American."

When you have people like Sean Hannity, Beck and Rush Limbaugh throwing around racial epithets, it's not surprising that we have signs like "Monkey See, Monkey Do," "Obama's an illegal alien," and much worse at Tea Party rallies. The atmosphere around these rallies has been widely reported by the media, in spite of the fervent denials of members of the Tea Party.

If they actually studied the issues and watched real news stations, other than FOX News, Tea Baggers would figure out that the Democrats' policies are actually more in line with helping working people. According to an article by Tom Dickinson in Rolling Stone, "A recent poll found that only two percent of Tea Partyers are aware that the president enacted the largest middle-class tax cut in history. A staggering 44 percent, by contrast, believe that Obama has increased their taxes — and only 16 percent blame the current economic catastrophe on Bush, who ran up record deficits by slashing taxes for the wealthy."

Tea Party members are mad because they have been screwed over by the Republican party. They are just not bright enough to figure out where to direct their anger, and spit.

Surprise, Surprise A Racist Teabbager

The Teabbaggers have tried to strenously claim they are not racists, even though their rallies are a as devoid of brown faces as a J. Crew ad. But they seem to suffer the same problem as the Republican party who spawned them.

As much as they deny their problems with black people, the evidence keeps shooting them in the foot. Dale Robertson, a Teabbagers based out of Houston, is pictured with a sign that uses the N-word. On top of that, he didn't even spell the word correctly.

You can't make this stuff up. Teabbaggers responding by booting Robertson out of the party. Well, that is something.

http://washingtonindependent.com/73036/n-word-sign-dogs-would-be-tea-party-leader

poll by twiigs.com