Racism

On Wednesday's CNN Tonight, W. Kamau Bell claimed that white supremacy is the new ideology of the Republican Party: "If the Republican Party is a gumbo...the roux of that gumbo is white supremacy, and the core of that is the Ku Klux Klan." Bell later asserted that the Obama birther issue was when white supremacy supposedly became dominant in the GOP: "It came from the first four years of Barack…

All three networks on Wednesday night and Thursday morning skipped the latest racial controversy engulfing the Donald Trump campaign: The businessman’s son went on a pro-slavery radio show and the campaign issued media credential’s to the program’s host, James Edwards. 

The Washington Post's obsession over Donald Trump is a sight to behold — but not a pretty one. On Monday, following two week-earlier Trump-demonizing columns, one comparing the billionaire to medieval emperor Charlemagne, and another claiming that Trump's electoral progress thus far had helped her understand "exactly how Hitler could have come to power in Germany," the Post issued a house…

Well, at least they covered it. That’s the best that can be said about the New York Times story by Vivian Yee on the front of Wednesday’s Metro section about a racial hate-crime hoax at the University of Albany. Three black female students who initially blamed "white men" for racial attacks on a bus were instead charged themselves with misdemeanor assault against a white woman. But Yee did her…

As part of CBS’s hour-long special on Super Tuesday, Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan remarked that, sadly, she “believe[s] we are seeing a great political party shatter before our eyes” with the rise of Donald Trump. Moments after fellow panelist Jamelle Bouie of Slate blamed the rise of Trump on “the fruit of a lot of backlash politics, a lot of resentment, racially and otherwise,”…

Appearing as a guest on Tuesday's Legal View with Ashleigh Banfield, liberal CNN political commentator and Daily Beast editor-in-chief John Avlon tried to blame the KKK on the "conservative movement" and lectured conservative CNN political commentator and NewsBusters contributor Jeffrey Lord that "you need to own that cancer at the heart of the conservative movement right now because that is --…

Some people say that in the general election, they typically vote for “the lesser of two evils.” Since it’s still primary-and-caucus season, however, lefty pundit Marcotte had to choose the least of three supposed evils -- the main Republican presidential contenders -- to arrive at a favorite. In a Monday Salon piece, she explained why she’s “rooting for Donald Trump” to get the nomination. One…

Ever since it became obvious that no black actors were nominated to win a golden statue during the 88th Academy Awards ceremony on Sunday, the news networks and black entertainers hyped the controversy even though comedian Chris Rock was chosen to serve as master of ceremonies for the event. Nevertheless, one bizarre segment in the hours-long program appeared to address this issue, as Stacey…

Appearing as a guest on Monday's CNN Newsroom with Carol Costello to discuss Chris Rock's race-based monologue at the Oscars, after host Costello expressed that she "felt kind of sorry" for audience members who looked uncomfortable with the controversial jokes, liberal CNN political commentator Marc Lamont Hill provocatively referred to a "bunch of uncomfortable white people" in the audience as…

If Joe Scarborough were ever, as some have claimed, in the the tank for Donald Trump, he has officially climbed out as of this morning. On today's Morning Joe, reacting to the clip of Jake Tapper's interview, Scarborough called Trump's refusal to forthrightly reject the support of Klansman David Duke "disqualifying." A bit later, Joe and Mika Brzezinski said that if Trump fails today to clean up…

Hollywood is infamously liberal and the Oscars are always a night when they really let their political freak flags fly. Whether it’s activist films or actors lecturing to the American public during acceptance speeches, politics inevitably takes center stage, especially in an election year.

Comedian Chris Rock was under a lot of pressure to "speak truth to power" in his second turn as host of the 88th Annual Academy Awards. The lack of black actors and actresses nominated has dominated Oscar coverage again this year, with pledges from Will and Jada Pinkett Smith and Spike Lee to boycott and the Academy to change the racial makeup of its members. Rock reportedly even rewrote his…

Appearing as a guest on Sunday's CNN Newsroom with Fredricka Whitfield to discuss Donald Trump declining to condemn former KKK leader David Duke in a CNN appearance earlier in the day, Jason Johnson of TheRoot.com not only repeated a discredited claim that Louisiana Republican Rep. Steve Scalise spoke to a white supremacist group in Louisiana in 2002, but he even gave the impression that Scalise…

If New York magazine blogger Chait had expressed metaphorically his argument about the relationship between racism and the conservative movement, it might have gone something like this: Conservatism is a perfectly presentable, structurally sound wooden house, but a lot of conservatives are termites. In a Thursday post, Chait himself wrote, “While conservatism has [a] perfectly non-racist basis…