All week, Bill O’Reilly has “discussed” African American anguish over the Trayvon Martin killing and George Zimmerman verdict with a series of race-baiting attacks, whitesplained solutions and condescending lectures targeting the black community. But last night, during what was supposed to be a segment of balance with an African American expert on the subject, O’Reilly dropped his “I’m just asking the tough questions” mask and, perhaps inadvertently, revealed without doubt his contempt and lack of genuine interest in the community.
The moment came near the end of O’Reilly’s patronizing segment with R. L’heureux Lewis-McCoy, Ph.D., a professor at City College of New York. Unlike O’Reilly, Lewis-McCoy is an actual expert in the field. He’s a professor of sociology and black studies. But he should have known what kind of “no spin” he was in for when O’Reilly opened the discussion by describing the topic as, “the grievance industry and some civil rights organization not dealing with the core problems in the African American community.”
Dr. Lewis-McCoy was respectful and a true gentleman throughout the interview. O’Reilly, on the other hand was disdainful and asked such loaded questions as, “When was the last time you saw a major civil rights organization trying to discourage African American women from getting pregnant out of wedlock?” Apparently, when he says he’s “looking out for you,” O'Reilly means his ultra-white audience and not the large sector of America that’s African American.
O’Reilly’s scornful tone and attitude spoke volumes about his anti-black agenda. But at the end, he made his views of poor African Americans explicit:
(Employers are) not gonna hire these people because they can’t do the job. The key to it is education. And education has to be encouraged in the home. If the home is drug addled, chaotic, no supervision, there’s not gonna be any education. That’s it, Doctor.
Lewis-McCoy tried to argue that O’Reilly was painting a false picture of the African Community. Saying that “there’s education happening all the time,” Lewis-McCoy invited O’Reilly to visit poor neighborhoods with him: “Come with me. Do you want to come? We’ll go to Harlem. We’ll go to Washington Heights. And we’ll look at the ways in which people are trying to get educated.”
But O’Reilly, could not be bothered to spend any time actually visiting and investigating any of the neighborhoods he can’t stop scolding and criticizing. “I taught in a poor school. I know what’s going on,” he said dismissively.
Yeah, O’Reilly taught school for two years, more than 30 years ago. Why bother to get any new information now, even if he, in his own words, “couldn’t get over” how well behaved the patrons at Sylvia’s restaurant in Harlem were in 2007 and how, “”There wasn’t one person in Sylvia’s who was screaming, ‘M-Fer, I want more iced tea.’” Oh, and by the way? That dinner at Sylvia’s was with “race hustler” Al Sharpton whom O’Reilly described at the time as a “very, very interesting guy.” O’Reilly treated Sharpton to dinner because “he’s made himself available to us and I felt that I wanted to take him up there.”
But why remember that good news or possibly upset some decades-old opinions when O’Reilly’s got his own racial grievance industry going right there on Fox News?
Which is it Bill-blacks don’t have jobs and turn to crime to make up for that, or they are living high on the hog and should thank YOU everyday for YOUR generosity and shut up when you and the white power structure try to take away their civil liberties and right to vote?
The only way Bill would go to any of these neighborhoods is if his limo driver takes a wrong turn, and the guy would be fired later that day.
Bill doesn’t understand that his errogance and white supremacy attitude aren’t so welcome outside his white gated communities.
ya see … the problem iz this – no matter how hard ya scrub a black man he’ll just never turn white!!!!!
