When a Republican presidential candidate goes around talking about Barack Obama as the "food stamp president," eventually reporters are going to have to write about racism. But how they talk about the issue in instructive. In today's New York Times (1/18/12), Jim Rutenberg has a piece headlined "Risks for GOP in Attacks With Racial Themes," where we learn this about Newt Gingrich's food stamp rhetoric: Mr. Gingrich was clearly making the case that he is the candidate most able to take the fight to Mr. Obama in the fall, but he was also laying bare risks for his party when [...]
Feb
27
2009
Addressing the Roots of Media Racism
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In his online column (2/26/09) for the Maynard Institute, Journal-isms, Richard Prince reports on those who see the New York Post's recent cartoon of a chimpanzee shot-dead–so that now "they'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill"–as "an opportunity to examine the factors that led to the cartoon's appearance in the paper." Specifically, "the NAACP plans to focus on diversity in newspaper newsrooms," calling the incident "a reminder that when we get through with Fox and the New York Post, we need to focus on the newsrooms in the country": In December, an NAACP report pointed [...]
The Scott Sisters Are Free
The Scott sisters (Gladys and Jamie) were serving doublelife sentences in a Mississippi state prison over the supposed role they played in an armed robbery that amounted to $11. At the end of 2010 their sentences were suspended by Governor Haley Barbour, provided that Jamie receive a kidney donation from her sister. The sisters' ordeal, as columnist Richard Prince wrote back in November,came tonationalattention thanks largely to a November 2008 piece in the Black Commentator by Nancy Lockhart, which then spread throughout black-oriented blogs andtalk radio, as well as the alternative media (Prince cites a piece by James Ridgewayof Mother [...]