Ishmael Reed: Barack Obama and the Jim Crow Media: The Return of the Nigger Breakers

During the final days of December 2009, Deborah Howell, former ombudswoman for The Washington Post , died. Her comment that the Post ’s Op-Ed page was “too white and too male,” could have been said of the rest of the media, even those headed by feminists, like The Nation magazine. A Christmas party photo reprinted by media hawk, Richard Prince, showed only one black staff member at the “progressive” Huffington Post , headed by the telegenic feminist and Obama critic, Arianna Huffington.

Despite the conclusion of several media studies that I cited in this book, Howard Kurtz, Imus buddy and supporter of National Public Radio’s notorious black pathology show, Ghetto 101 , continued to embrace the myth that the press coverage of Barack Obama had sent the presidency into the “stratosphere” only for him to “fall to earth.” What “stratosphere?” During the campaign it was noted that The Associated Press was in the pocket of Senator John McCain, and given the negative analysis of Obama’s administration made by Ben Feller of that agency, printed in early January, they still were.

The coverage from the campaign through the first year of the administration hadn’t changed at Fox News either. For these and other media organizations, Obama’s position was always terrestrial, including his position at MSNBC, which, regardless of the presence of two progressives, Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann, allows conservatives like Joe Scarborough, and hard core white nationalist, Pat Buchanan, and Mika Brzezinski and their guests to denigrate the president for three hours at a time some mornings.

The idea that Obama had fallen from on high to earth was endorsed by the panelists, which included Bill Press, the media’s idea of a “progressive.” This is the Bill Press, who, according to Lydia Chavez in her book The Color Bind: California’s Campaign to End Affirmative Action opposed Affirmative Action in California. After an exchange about Proposition 209, the proposition that ended Affirmative Action, with a representative from the NAACP, Press told her, “you’re nothing,” according to the book.

Appearing on the December 27 program, Chris Stirewalt, a reporter for The Washington Examiner , said that in the conflict between the White House and Fox News, it was the White House “that got burned,” an opinion that was contradicted in a report from Media Matters .

He also joined the parade of white commentators who used scandals involving black celebrities to symbolize the end of an era or a decade. His nomination was Michael Jackson who, for him, “symbolized a decayed, corrupted society,” not the Army Corps of Engineers, whose negligence was cited by a judge during 2009 as being responsible for the flooding in the aftermath of Katrina, which caused widespread suffering, displacement, billions of dollars in property damage and the near extinction of the fabulous city of New Orleans. Not the large banks, and investment firms, whose crimes were tucked away on the business pages, or the drug companies who settled class action suits which held them responsible for putting toxic dangerous products on the market. Their profits exceeded the cost of the class action suits, so that poisoning people becomes just the cost of doing business. No, for this man, it was MJ, a performer who gave millions to charities located all over the world.

The rest of Kurtz’s all-white media jury agreed with Stirewalt about Jackson, even though Jackson had been acquitted in a case where a child, who lied under oath in a previous case, was found to have been manipulated by his mother, who, in 2006, was convicted of welfare fraud, a story ignored by the media. The 2006 case was based upon a 1993 charge brought against Jackson by another child manipulated by a parent, whose mental problems were apparent to anybody who studied the case. In 2009, the year of Jackson’s death, the parent committed suicide, another story ignored by the media.

Barack Obama gave his administration a B plus, a grade that some might consider modest, since it was the consensus among economists that his administration had saved the country from a depression. I’d give him an A minus because I understand the shackles placed upon him and his administration in a country where the most powerful weapons and the money are in the hands of whites. Though African-American celebrities and organizations might criticize him for ignoring the deepening depression now being experienced by African-American communities, where in some cities, the unemployment rate is at thirty-five percent, as a result of banks denying blacks access to capital, the decline of manufacturing jobs, as a result of the Bush-Clinton policies, and the swindling of black homeowners by criminal banks, whose crimes are ignored by a mainstream and progressive media that have gone bonkers over MJ, Tiger, Michael Vick, Chris Brown and O.J., whose case has led to mass hysteria, were Obama to behave like a black president, his doing so would expose him to more racist attacks than the ones he is now experiencing; it would cripple his administration. Though Obama sometimes reminds one of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X, he might resemble Booker T. Washington more than the other two. Wearing the mask. Scolding African officials for their corruption, following a meeting during which he was able to increase the commitment to Africa by five billion dollars. When he answers critics who question his commitment to black employment by suggesting that economic recovery for all will lead to black employment, he sounds like Booker T. Washington.

I am disturbed by the collateral damage that is occurring in Afghanistan, but I am convinced that were Al Qaeda to get a hold of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons there would be massive casualties. This is a group that wishes to restrict the rights of women by using the most extreme measures and whose leader has made racist comments about blacks living in Africa, calling African women “prostitutes” according to Chinweizu, who, along with other important African intellectuals, is alarmed by the spreading influence of Islam on the continent. This is an anti-Art group that destroyed thousands of years of Buddhist art.

What is the attitude toward blacks held by Al Qaeda? They bombed the embassy in Kenya, causing hundreds of African casualties and really didn’t care about anybody’s race when they bombed the World Trade Center. If Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab had succeeded in blowing up a plane over Detroit there might have been a large number of African-American casualties, yet I’m aware that it was the disease of white supremacy, rampant among Western nations, that led to the creation of groups like Al Qaeda in the first place. How many more people will have to be humiliated, racially profiled, and murdered for the maintenance of white supremacy?

Obama as president has made another contribution. His presence as the leader of the executive department has smoked out the virulent racism that has been covered by euphemism and code words like “busing,” “political correctness,” “welfare” and “crime.” All one has to do is to read the vicious blogs about the president’s family, the tea party signs, witness the joker who called Mr. Obama a liar during his address to Congress. He has ripped the mask off of “conservatism” and found the contorted ugly face of racism behind it. Even those who felt the sunrays of post-racism have been chilled by the president being likened to a witch doctor and a chimp (by Aussies at The New York Post who are referred to in a similar manner by the British) and his children being referred to as whores. When they refer to an African-American pioneer it’s Jackie Robinson (but ignore the part where he used to beat up white officers who called him a “nigger”), but in comparison to the achievement of President Obama, who, according to one historian, might be the most powerful black person in history, regardless of the limitations placed upon his presidency by the Jim Crow media, and a Republican Party, whose members believe that cooperating with Obama might get them called “nigger lovers” back home, Robinson’s integrating baseball seems modest.