Jonathan Chait's article on racial issues angers Joan Walsh

[Larry the Cable Dude]

Jonathan Chait wrote an article on racial issues in the New York Magazine. It is very lengthy, so here is an excerpt:

"This bitter, irreconcilable enmity is not the racial harmony the optimists imagined the cultural breakthrough of an ­African- American president would usher in. On the other hand, it’s not exactly the sort of racial strife the pessimists, hardened by racial animosity, envisioned either, the splitting of white and black America into worlds of mutual incomprehension—as in the cases of the O.?J. Simpson trial, the L.A. riots, or Bernhard Goetz.

The Simpson episode actually provides a useful comparison. The racial divide was what made the episode so depressing: Blacks saw one thing, whites something completely different. Indeed, when Simpson was acquitted in 1995 of murder charges, whites across parties reacted in nearly equal measure: 56 percent of white Republicans objected to the verdict, as did 52 percent of white Democrats. Two decades later, the trial of George Zimmerman produced a very different reaction. This case also hinged on race—Zimmerman shot and killed Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teen from his neighborhood in Florida, and was acquitted of all charges. But here the gap in disapproval over the verdict between white Democrats and white Republicans was not 4 points but 43. Americans had split once again into mutually uncomprehending racial camps, but this time along political lines, not by race itself."

At one point Chait mentioned Joan Walsh of Salon.com:

"Does this sound like an exaggeration? Bill O’Reilly’s aggressive (and aggressively dumb) Super Bowl interview with the president included the question “Why do you feel it’s necessary to fundamentally transform the nation that has afforded you so much opportunity?” Salon’s Joan Walsh asserted, “O’Reilly and Ailes and their viewers see this president as unqualified and ungrateful, an affirmative-action baby who won’t thank us for all we’ve done for him and his cohort. The question was, of course, deeply condescending and borderline racist.” Yes, it’s possible that O’Reilly implied that the United States afforded Obama special opportunity owing to the color of his skin. But it’s at least as possible, and consistent with O’Reilly’s beliefs, that he merely believes the United States offers everybody opportunity."

This sparked a sharp response from Walsh, who lashed out against Chait's "epic fail":

http://www.salon.com/2014/04/07/jonathan_chaits_epic_race_fail_how_a_story_about_racism_and_obama_goes_horribly_wrong/

[JustAnotherGen]

1. I'm in agreement with Joan on this one

Even with the knowledge that Chait’s cover story predates his debate with Coates, I’m not sure what to make of an article that purports to seriously examine the role of race in politics in the age of Barack Obama, and then compares liberals’ claims of conservative racism to McCarthyism (specifically: “the poisonous waft of the debates over communism during the ­McCarthy years”). “Liberals dwell in a world of paranoia of a white racism that has seeped out of American history in the Obama years and lurks everywhere, mostly undetectable,” he claims.

Dear Liberals and Progressives - the majority of black Americans including myself vote for the Democratic Party these days because we see bigots and those mired by racial prejudice towards brown people on the right who wish to re-implement a system of Jim Crow (racism) in America. They wish to expand on the NEW Jim Crow and slavery by any other name.


And if it hurts some Republican's "widdle feewins" that I wrote that - oh well. Truth hurts huh?