After several days of deciding what I should post about first in my blog, I have decided to write about a subject that has been nagging at me for months now. Bill O'Reilly's offensive generalizations of the African American community.
He appears to go out of his way to promote negative social stereotypes of African Americans under the pretext that he is trying to help educate African Americans about their "situation". I am just about fed up with it!
The first time I noticed he had a distorted perception of "Black" America was in an interview he had with Tavis Smiley. Tavis Smiley is a writer for the AP, a regular on the Tom Joyner Morning Show, and former host of BET Tonight.
Bill was doing his best to try and coerce Tavis Smiley into admitting that African Americans are failures or lagging behind in our pursuit of the American Dream, because we come from single parent families, mostly headed by females. Tavis did not buy into this and reiterated several times that acheivement is tough for all children that come from single parent families.
His next attempt at pushing his anti-African American agenda was when he had a segment on his show were he wanted to badger a young African American Activist about statements that were made by Bill Cosby at a NAACP gala to celebrate the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education. Cosby expressed his opinion that "poor" African American parents are not taking the reigns when it comes to pushing their children to achieve in school and become successful, productive contributors to American Society.
Of course the statements drew lots of attention. Which was probably Cosby's intention. Though, he may not have intended to draw the attention of extremists with hidden agendas. Cosby made his comments at an NAACP function. Most NAACP functions get very little press. I doubt if there were very many "poor" Black's there. Probably about as many as can afford 500 hundred dollar sneakers, let alone two hundred dollars for hooked on phonics.
Bill also has a problem with most (probably all) hip hop artists. Specifically he has taken it upon his self to personally attack artists like Ludacris, 50 Cent, Nelly, and most recently Jay-Z. As part of his plan to affect their careers he has planned boycotts, and decided to harass BET about some of these artists music videos they play. O'Reilly calling the videos "soft porn".
Here's my message to Bill O'Reilly:
Until I see the African American woman you're married to, the African American orphans you've adopted, or the African American community you work in deligently to try and improve the lives of the residents, I will take your continued assaults on African Americans as just that. You may believe that you are helping, but you are not! Your show airs on a network, despite your denial, that has certain political and social lean. Masked deep within that lean is a cyst that festers with sick separatist ideology that finds justification for it's existence in these types of stories.
