Racism overblown – or provoked?

Why do we hear so much about racism these days? True enough, this country saw a lot of it in the 1950s. But by the end of the century, the perception of it had declined, so that people didn’t tend to think about it. That is, until the Presidency of Barack Obama. Yesterday evening, a now-prominent Twitter influencer shared the likely reason: liberal newspapers blowing it out of proportion. Or do they have another, more ominous motive?

Newspapers mentioning racism more often

Once again, meet Kanekoa the Great, who gave Google the Twitter treatment back in February. Now he turns his attention to America’s largest daily newspapers. He charges that they have sharply increased their use of the word racism and phrases containing it. They also are selectively mentioning the race of those accused of murder, depending on the race of suspect and victim.

Beginning at 4:07 p.m. EDT yesterday, Kanekoa dropped a three-tweet thread:

Then at 6:51 p.m. EDT he dropped another:

This actually is a series of quotes and graphics from an article that appeared in The Tablet, shortly before the Election of 2020. Zach Goldberg, then a graduate student at Georgia State University, wrote the article and in fact cited more examples.

Reaction has been mostly positive, with replies scattered throughout these threads. This user brought up an appearance by Morgan Freeman on CBS’ Sixty Minutes, in which he decried “Black History Month.” In fact, Freeman asks Correspondent Mike Wallace, “Are you going to relegate my history to a month? What about yours?”

Likewise, this user shared this picture of Freeman:

saying,

How are we going to get rid of racism? Stop talking about it!

The text on the portrait refers to AZ Quotes – and in fact the quote shows up at this link.

When another user thanked Kanekoa for putting the issue into perspective, Kanekoa answered this way:

Still another user produced this segment, again featuring Morgan Freeman.

Here he tells Don Lemon exactly what he told Mike Wallace. Keep talking about racism, and it will continue.

Analysis

So why are so many in the legacy media talking about racism so often? (And why The New York Times and The Washington Post more than any others?) Kanekoa might not want to accuse them outright of intentionally increasing racial tensions. But in recent years, editors seem to be letting ideology, not profit (long-term or short), drive their decisions.

Understand: the source material of the second thread came out before the Election. So does this constitute election interference by the Times and the Post?

The first thread is more concerning because it describes things happening now. Kanekoa’s anchor tweet quotes this year-old article from The Washington Free Beacon. Notice: everything you can read in the Beacon and The Tablet is still happening. Worse, crime has significantly worsened, especially in America’s largest cities. This is partly due to prosecutors who won’t prosecute. But have these organs decided deliberately to provoke the attitudes that are leading to some of this crime? That’s something every one of those editors will have to answer for himself.

About the image

The featured image includes a portrait of Morgan Freeman by Volkmar Becher, who has released it into the public domain.