CJ Pearson was the darling of Fox News back when he was an Obama-hating, 12-year-old African-American conservative. We lost track of him when he renounced conservatism and became more racially aware. But now he’s all grown up and back on Fox to push a viral, right-wing lie that UC Berkeley is, OMG, engaged in anti-white racism!
The propaganda message, sure to get the outrage juices going, was framed in the opening visual: “The Trouble With Schools.” Fox weekend friend, Will Cain, reported that “political division at American universities has reached a fever pitch” and referenced new polling which shows that half of college students don’t want to share a dorm room with somebody who voted for the opposite party in the 2020 election. The banner was sure to trigger: “Impact of Wokeness on College Campuses.”
Cain introduced Coreco Ja'Quan Pearson, otherwise known as CJ Pearson who, he informed us, is now at the University of Alabama where he is the president of “The Free Thinking Project.”
Pearson, who once said that Donald Trump “scares the crap out of me” is now a devoted Trump fan who speaks at Trump rallies (including a “Stop the Steal” event) and who “peacefully” protested at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. He also had an election fraud lawsuit named for him. (His name was misspelled)
Pearson castigated those who won’t communicate with those who have different opinions and proclaimed that the problem “isn’t them, it’s likely with you.” (Now that attitude is sure to win over a prospective roommate, amiright?)
Inadvertently revealing the purpose of the piece, Cain said, “Let’s just go ahead and take what started small and blow it up even bigger.” He continued the blow-up with the comment that UC students, in addition to not wanting to room with a political opponent, don’t want to room “with someone of a different race.” Cain added, “sounds like a story from the 1940s but now it’s in reverse.” (Reverse Jim Crow?!)
He informed us that UC Berkeley has an off-campus housing project with “house rules” stating that “white guests are not allowed in common spaces.” The visual for the “rules” looked like it originated in a document; but what the audience doesn’t know is that it’s from a cell-phone “screen grab” of supposed rules from the People of Color House – a screen grab that, surprise, surprise, made its way to Reddit where it generated all the requisite white grievance and racial resentment that you would imagine it would. From there, the shocking exposé quickly made its way around all the usual right wing outrage sites, including the Murdoch-owned “Outkick,” where it was framed as a “ban” against white people.
CJ, a recipient of the John Lewis award, proclaimed that this is “exact racism, it’s exactly the type of stuff that Martin Luther King Jr. worked against when he said that we should judge people by the content of their character and not the color of their skin.” He preached that if Blacks were so excluded there would be protests: “You would probably have Joe Biden himself rushing to UC Berkeley to condemn this for what it is, blatant and flagrant racism,” he said. He further defined racism as not just about targeting minorities: “It’s racism when it’s targeting anyone.”
Pearson asked when it became “trendy to hate white people because of the color of their skin, but it doesn’t make it any less wrong, any less unjust, and any less actually racist."
Pearson, who has already been exposed as a liar, lied again when he said, “The fact that UC Berkeley is doing this in the state of California doesn’t surprise me, it’s pretty much part of the course for a state like California, but thankfully, though, I go to the University of Alabama where something like that would never happen.” The banner provided a little more fuel for the outrage over alleged anti-white racism: “Off-campus UC Berkeley Student Housing Bans White People From Common Areas.”
When Pearson states that this alleged anti-white “racism” is being promoted by the University of California, he isn’t telling the truth. The “People of Color House” is part of the Berkeley Student Cooperative which provides affordable housing to students. A spokesperson for the school has stated that “Cal Housing Theme Programs do not discriminate on the basis of race, consistent with UC and campus policy.” She notes that because the house is privately owned, the school has no power over house policies. According to another school spokesperson, the “rules” are not official school/coop policy and that whites do live in the residence. Neither Cain nor Pearson mentioned this.
It's ironic – in a piece that bemoans a “fever pitch” of national division, particularly over race, Fox raises the temperature even higher!
Check out yet another installment of the ongoing Fox News white victimhood saga from the August 21, 2022 Fox & Friends.