Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Isn't it nice that racism was completely eliminated in the '60s?

A few days ago, John Gibson of Fox basically intimated that people protesting the treatment of the Jena Six were the real racists in this story:
So, this is -- what they're worried about is a mirage of 1950s-style American segregation, racism from the South. They wanna fight the white devil. I -- you know, there's no -- you can't go fight the black devil. Black devils stalking their streets every night gunning down their own people -- can't go fight that. That would be snitchin'.

See? The problem isn't institutional racism that allows Louisiana schools to remain segregated, and the threat of lynching to those black students who dared to challenge said racism--the problem is black people are all gun-toting murdering thugs! And anyone who goes after the first problem, not the latter, is racist against white people.

But of course, Mr. Gibson staunchly denies the simple fact that racism is still a problem in America:
But I have been trying to point out the last couple of days that people have been loaded on buses to go to Jena to protest the racial injustice there -- you know -- and be told that slavery still exists and that segregation still exists across the country; that there are -- being told there are schools where principals allow white students to segregate themselves from black and won't let the black students sit under their tree. Tell -- they tell them that. I bet they can't find one other example of it. But they're being loaded on buses from cities where black people are being killed every day, at an astonishing rate, by black people, and no one's saying a word.

Again--racism doesn't exist, unless it's used to attack those white people who have to suffer the existence of black people in their cities, because (as we all know) black people are all gangsters.

And he played a clip from a news report of the Jena Six protests, interspersing it with his own brand of informative commentary:
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's not an isolated incident. Things like this happen all over the United States --

GIBSON: Where?!
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: -- whether they go reported or unreported --

GIBSON: Where?!
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: -- or publicized or not.

GIBSON: Where do they go?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So, it's our job to make everyone accountable for what's going on.

GIBSON: Where?!
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE #2: Racism is not confined just in Louisiana, and we have to confront it everywhere, but racists feel --

GIBSON: Where?!
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE #2: -- ashamed at being racist. That's not acceptable here.

GIBSON: Where?! Where is this going on? I'll tell you where it's going --

Such brilliant insight. He doesn't know of anywhere where racism exist, therefore racism doesn't exist!

Oh, wait.
No sooner did tens of thousands of African-American demonstrators depart the racially tense town of Jena, La., last week after protesting perceived injustices than white supremacists flooded in behind them.

First a neo-Nazi Web site posted the names, addresses and phone numbers of some of the six black teenagers and their families at the center of the Jena 6 case and urged followers to find them and "drag them out of the house," prompting an investigation by the FBI.

Then the leader of a white supremacist group in Mississippi published interviews that he conducted with the mayor of Jena and the white teenager who was attacked and beaten, allegedly by the six black youths. In those interviews, the mayor, Murphy McMillin, praised efforts by pro-white groups to organize counterdemonstrations; the teenager, Justin Barker, urged white readers to "realize what is going on, speak up and speak their mind."

Over the weekend, white extremist Web sites and blogs across the Internet filled with invective about the Jena 6 case, which has drawn scrutiny from civil rights leaders, three leading Democratic presidential candidates and hundreds of African-American Internet bloggers. They are concerned about allegations that blacks have been treated more harshly than whites in the criminal justice system of the town of 3,000, which is 85 percent white.

David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan leader, last week announced his support for Jena's white residents, who voted overwhelmingly for him when he ran unsuccessfully for Louisiana governor in 1991.

But of course, if John Gibson doesn't know about that, we can't really think that it exists, now can we?



And as an amusing aside, from that second article:
McMillin has insisted that his town is being unfairly portrayed as racist—an assertion the mayor repeated in an interview with Richard Barrett, the leader of the Nationalist Movement, a white supremacist group based in Learned, Miss., who asked McMillin to "set aside some place for those opposing the colored folks."

"I am not endorsing any demonstrations, but I do appreciate what you are trying to do," Barrett quoted McMillin as saying. "Your moral support means a lot."

Yep. He's not racist, but he really appreciates white supremacists.

No comments: