Vanguard News Network

Seattle Times

 

Editor:

 

The column by professional lobbyist-race-baiter David Sirota on May 12, 2008, “Exploiting the Race Chasm” is a new low for the Seattle Times.

 

This is what passes for news analysis in the New America. Democracy as minority rule. Jeremiah Wright’s extreme race hatred of Whites as normative and Patrick Buchanan denounced as a racist. Even mentioning the existence of the White Working Class is described as bigotry… and Sirota pretends that describing hard-working Whites as “hard-working” is the same as calling Blacks “sub-humans”. And for the first time in two generations, when there is open discussion of the White majority as a factor in an election, this race-baiter claims it means nothing but bigotry.

 

 

 

 

I put it to you that Sirota, and any newspaper that publishes him, is engaging in nothing but race baiting and racial hatred of the European-American majority in this country. I challenge you to substantiate Sirota’s claim that the mass media is filled with denunciations of Blacks as “sub-human” or stand exposed for what you are: Crude, anti-democratic racists.

 

Sirota’s racism is sickening, and he is published by the Seattle Times because you share his hatred of the European-American majority. You may not care that I point this out, but with every intensification of race-baiting against European-Americans, less people buy the Seattle Times. The 131 layoffs announced in April are a testimonial to your hatred of the European-American majority of this country, this state, and this city. We buy the newspapers and less of us are buying your newspaper.

 

The Seattle Times, a squalid hate rag, deserves to go bankrupt. And it will.

 

For now, you should apologize and never again run a column by the bigot and liar Sirota.

 

Sincerely,

 

James Joseph Sanchez, PhD
President, European-American Information Forum

 

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ARTICLE

 

 

 

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May 12, 2008

 

Syndicated columnist

 

Exploiting the Race Chasm

 

By David Sirota

 

Syndicated Columnist

 

When it comes to race, American politics is as polarized as a red-and-
blue election map. On one side are those who try to distract from the
issue; on the other side are those who work to sensationalize it. As
this campaign season shows, what unifies both is bigotry.

 

Take the reaction to my recent In These Times magazine article about
Barack Obama winning states with either very small or very large
black populations, but losing most states in the middle.

 

Those results, while troubling, aren’t surprising. In very white
states, racial themes are simply not part of the political dialogue,
and a black candidate therefore faces fewer inherent disadvantages.
In states with large black populations, race is a major political
force, but the African-American vote is big enough to offset a
racially motivated white vote. It is in the Race Chasm — the states
whose populations are more than 6 percent and less than 17 percent
black — where race is a political issue but the black vote is too
small to counter a racially motivated white vote.

 

The trend continued in the past few weeks, with Obama losing two
states in the Race Chasm (Pennsylvania and Indiana) and winning one
outside the Chasm (North Carolina). Nonetheless, the response to this
phenomenon by some in the intelligentsia has been willful ignorance.

 

The Atlantic Monthly’s Reihan Salam said the data are not driven by
race, but by Hillary Clinton’s “waitress-mom sensibility sell[ing]
well in these regions.” The New America Foundation’s Michael Lind
said the evidence does not reflect America’s historic black-white
divide, but instead Germanic and Scandinavian migration patterns (I’m
not kidding). This is typical behavior from the Establishment’s
“serious” thinkers. When confronted with race, they become ostriches
and shove their heads in the sand.

 

The news industry and politicians, on the other hand, are happy to
discuss and exploit race, whether by manufacturing controversy (think
Jeremiah Wright) or by promoting racists (think MSNBC hiring Pat
Buchanan, or Republican senators re-electing Trent Lott to a
leadership position). The media and political elites aren’t ostriches
— they behave like minstrel-show producers, portraying African
Americans as subhuman, alien and unimportant, except for their
entertainment value.

 

MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, for example, differentiated between “regular
people” and black people. Pundits refer separately to the “working
class” and to African Americans — as if they are mutually exclusive.
Hillary Clinton this week claimed, “Obama’s support among working,
hardworking Americans, white Americans, is weakening” — the
implication being that nonwhite Americans are lazy. These terms —
“regular,” “working class,” “hardworking” — have become euphemisms
for “whites,” who are subsequently billed as the only ones who matter.

 

Think I’m imagining that last part? Then you weren’t watching ABC’s
“Nightline” last week. The Jeremiah Wright brouhaha may be roiling
the black community, correspondent David Wright said, “but the real
question now is what do white voters think.” That’s right — according
to “Nightline,” painful questions in the black community aren’t “real.”

 

Such denigration happens all the time, and you can tell it is rooted
in bigotry because the black vote is — by any mathematical measure —
crucial. Political scientist Tom Schaller notes that if Clinton had
won slightly more African-American votes, she might be winning. And
black turnout for Democrats could decide general elections in many
key swing states. Yet, we are still told “the real question” is only
what white voters think.

 

Some will read this and go on pretending the Race Chasm doesn’t
exist, while others will keep insisting that the black vote is
irrelevant. Both sides will claim they aren’t prejudiced. But racism,
whether from ostriches or minstrel-show producers, is racism — and it will persist until we recognize it and reject it.