OK, I said it first but it's nice to see an august publication and columnist like New York Times' Charles Blow come to the same conclusion: Bill O'Reilly is a race hustler. 

In my post about O'Reilly's last jaw-dropping animosity-cloaked-in-concern trolling against African Americans, I questioned O'Reilly's comparison of blacks to Asians which led him to the condescending conclusion that if African Americans would just stop their slutty, shiftless behavior, they wouldn't have all the problems they're blaming on racism. Then, noting that O'Reilly has ignored Al Sharpton's efforts to address the same problems O'Reilly complains he and other "race hustlers" should be addressing instead of their "grievance," I wrote, "So who’s the race hustler now, O’Reilly?"

Blow also caught O'Reilly's rant and provided a more informed analysis.

First, Blow noted that that comparing Asian Americans to African Americans requires more context than O'Reilly provided:

A 2012 Pew Research report entitled “The Rise of Asian Americans” found:

“Large-scale immigration from Asia did not take off until the passage of the landmark Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. Over the decades, this modern wave of immigrants from Asia has increasingly become more skilled and educated. Today, recent arrivals from Asia are nearly twice as likely as those who came three decades ago to have a college degree, and many go into high-paying fields such as science, engineering, medicine and finance. This evolution has been spurred by changes in U.S. immigration policies and labor markets; by political liberalization and economic growth in the sending countries; and by the forces of globalization in an ever-more digitally interconnected world.”

Then Blow addressed O'Reilly's claim that there is no such thing as white privilege, that the lack of "personal responsibility" lies at the root of African American problems in the U.S.:

No, Mr. O’Reilly, it is statements like this one that make you the race hustler. The underlying logic is that blacks are possessed of some form of racial pathology or self-destructive racial impulses, that personal responsibility and systemic inequity are separate issues and not intersecting ones.

This is the false dichotomy that chokes to death any real accountability and honesty. Systemic anti-black bias doesn’t dictate personal behavior, but it can certainly influence and inform it. And personal behavior can reinforce people’s belief that their biases are justified. So goes the cycle.

But at the root of it, we can’t expect equality of outcome while acknowledging inequality of environments.

Only a man bathing in privilege would be blind to that.

Exactly.

(H/T Mediaite)