(Update added)
Imagine if members of a racist anti-Semitic white supremacist group, one of them armed with a nightstick, had been filmed at a polling station intimidating voters on the day of the 2004 presidential election. Imagine that this led to charges, but those charges were suddenly dropped by Bush’s Justice Department even though it had already won a default judgement in the case. And then imagine that two officials claimed that this was due to institutional anti-black prejudice within the Justice Department. Do you suppose the BBC would have made quite a big deal about all of that? Catholic Pope, defecating bears, swimming fish etc – damn right, the BBC would’ve been all over it, making sure that the whole affair got maximum exposure. It would’ve filtered down from BBC news to round-table discussion programmes, topical comedy shows and phone-ins. Oh boy, would we have known about it.
And yet the BBC continues to ignore the New Black Panther story. It’s not part of the BBC’s desired narrative, a narrative driven by hatred of the American right. We’ve been banging on about the Panther story here since polling day 2008 (in the comments and on the blog) but every new revelation that has emerged in the States has been met with silence by the BBC.
A Biased BBC reader emailed me to say that back in June he suggested to the BBC’s Americana programme that they have on as a guest the first of the Justice Department whistleblowers, J Christian Adams. Americana replied that it was “possibly something we could get to before the midterms”. Now a second employee (this one a Clinton appointee with ACLU bona fides) has testified before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and still nothing from the Beeb. The simple fact is that BBC U.S. correspondents just don’t like reporting on this sort of thing. It goes against their instincts, doesn’t get their juices flowing like a negative story about Republicans. “Nothing to see. Nothing to see. Nothing to see. Look everybody – a witch! And Stephen Colbert!”
This story can only get bigger and I think that the BBC will finally have to report it – reluctantly and with much anguish. As with similar controversies, those who rely on the BBC for their news will be last to know (if they get to know at all) and will receive but a fraction of the full picture. But once again the BBC will have done its job as gatekeeper, restricting the impact of the story on public consciousness by limiting its time in the spotlight.
In the comments on the open thread David Preiser points out that even The Washington Post had the story on its front page today. I’m amused by this from the Post’s article:
“the dispute became a major issue in conservative circles. It has been slow to gain traction among the general public…”
I wonder why that might be, MSM? As David L. Riddick pointed out in July, The Washington Post claimed it had ignored the story due to “limited staffing“. What feeble excuse will the BBC try?
Update September 27. The original version incorrectly identified both Department of Justice officials as former employees. Christopher Coates, who testified last week, is still employed by Justice having been transferred from his previous job as voting chief at the department’s Civil Rights Division to his current position within the South Carolina attorney’s office. He has whistleblower protection for his testimony.
Here’s a segment on the story from The O’Reilly Factor (h/t John Anderson).
Great post DB!
I wonder if the MSM journolista club had anything to do with it? Black racists? That is impossible in the beeboid hive mind, it dillutes and spoils a keystone BBC narrative that only white people can be racist, this is one of the most effective social modification tools and in the leftists arsenal and a key method of silencing debate.
Dont agree with socialist policies such as mass immigration? RACIST! Dont agree with giving one section of society more breaks than others based on skin colour? RACIST! Dont agree that chronic underachievement in blacks is due to white people? RACIST! Dont agree that people should be given jobs and allowed racially segregated groups based on skin colour? RACIST!
The BBC interpretation of racism has nothing to do with real racism, it is a powerful political tool and one which they will never give up.
That makes them the racists, according to Jo Brand. It’s all about political power.
Cassandra, I agree with you. And it is now so serious that I find myself saying out loud, we are white, we are successful and we are better than most races on this earth. The inferior might not want to hear it, the socialists might not like to hear it, but one can’t escape the truth forever.
It’s not race: it’s culture.
“It’s not race: it’s culture.”
An interesting finding is that culture also shapes biology. New York Times science writer Nicholas Wade has an interesting book called ‘Before the Dawn’ discussing this. Also, ‘The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution’ by Greg Cochran & Henry Harpending discusses how agriculture and state rights can impose different selection pressures.
UC Davis economist Gregory Clark has an interesting series of papers about this in the context of the industrial revolution, quoted here by Prof Steve Hsu:
“In my recent book, A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World I argue two things. First that all societies remained in a state I label the “Malthusian economy” up until the onset of the Industrial Revolution around 1800. In that state crucially the economic laws governing all human societies before 1800 were those that govern all animal societies. Second that was thus subject to natural selection throughout the Malthusian era, even after the arrival of settled agrarian societies with the Neolithic Revolution.
The Darwinian struggle that shaped human nature did not end with the Neolithic Revolution but continued right up until the Industrial Revolution. But the arrival of settled agriculture and stable property rights set natural selection on a very different course. It created an accelerated period of evolution, rewarding with reproductive success a new repertoire of human behaviors – patience, self-control, passivity, and hard work – which consequently spread widely.
And we see in England, from at least 1250, that the kind of people who succeeded in the economic system – who accumulated assets, got skills, got literacy – increased their representation in each generation. Through the long agrarian passage leading up to the Industrial Revolution man was becoming biologically more adapted to the modern economic world. Modern people are thus in part a creation of the market economies that emerged with the Neolithic Revolution. Just as people shaped economies, the pre-industrial economy shaped people. This has left the people of long settled agrarian societies substantially different now from our hunter gatherer ancestors, in terms of culture, and likely also in terms of biology.”
http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2010/07/social-darwinism-21st-century-edition.html
“we are white, we are successful and we are better than most races on this earth. The inferior might not want to hear it” – not interested in this kind of kind of thing and not what this blog post is about.
Sorry, not sure what it is that I’ve posted that you object to. Are you ashamed of our successful civilisation? Until you don’t cringe when someone like me says such things, then I’m afraid our culture and our race will be on the road to extinction.
Mate, if you cant work out what is wrong with what you said then you got problems.
Mailman
I am immensely proud of my race, its vast achievements and contributions to advancing world civilisation. My race is the equal of any in the world, I will not be made to be ashamed of my race nor will I allow anyone to force me into accepting other races as superior.
My culture IS superior to many other cultures and I make no appologies for the history of my race and culture.
This debate has been stifled and manipulated and perverted by those with a secret agenda, we need to examine these things in great detail and all of us needs to take part in it.
There is no such thing as stasis in nature, we all progress, its how we progress and what social values we cherish and protect, do we dilute our own culture with inferior cultures in order to avoid being seen as superior? The aim of denying us our history and shared identity in order to change us is a Marxist trait, they destroy the old to build their version of the new society.
My instinctive sympathies lay with John in Cheshire because I can see his point and can understand his fears but I believe that our race can evolve not by some kind of racial purity(which we have never had)but by protecting and nurturing the best of who we are and what we are capable of, over time we have spread our genes and our culture to the earths far corners and we have a unique duty to ensure that our culture and historical memory and contribution are not wasted,insulted,denigrated and lost.
As a race we are equal NOT inferior, race is not an obstacle to first world enlightenment, my race is equal to any in the world given equal treatment and goals and conditions.
My first world culture is superior to third world culture, not because it was built by my race but because it is how humanity must progress. I am no better or worse than a Chinese or and African or an Asian, we come from our mothers womb equal, the cultural conditions in which we grow make us all, it is a bond only the strongest minds can break.
I am not a racist, I believe my race has a sacred gift to make to humanity, the gift of first world culture. I am proud of my races vast achievements but that does not mean my race is superior to any other.
My culture is superior and that has been a battle my ancestors fought and won on my behalf and it was not easy.
This is where the BBC are so wrong and so dangerous, they seek to destroy our cultrual legacy in order to make lesser cultures seem more legitimate than they are.
I am superior to no nobody I am equal to anyone on this earth and I demand equal and fair treatment based on merit and in a homeland of my own where my culture is dominant.
John In Cheshire – I think Cassandra had a pretty good stab at answering you. David Preiser did so too, but more succinctly.
“we are better than most races on this earth. The inferior might not want to hear it” Only most? Which races are superior and which inferior, then? In fact, don’t bother answering that. I can’t believe this thread has veered so close to Godwin already.
Are you ashamed of our successful civilisation?
I’m quite certain that the answer from everyone here is a resounding “Hell, no.”
Defenders of the indefensible not included.
And black culture produces such amazing athletes.
The Holocaust wasn’t much evidence of aryan racial superiority in my book, quite the opposite I’d say. The acheivements of western civilisation are definitely something to take huge pride in, but demeaning racial groups on the basis of these achievements is the antithesis of western values.
Nice one, DB.
Racism is still a problem in America, but a diminishing one, and anti-Black prejudice is not, by itself, responsible for many of the problems facing African-Americans today. When I was a girl we still had areas of legal segregation in my country, and in my middle-age we have elected a man of mixed African and European heritage as our president – it is quite an achievement for a society.
European culture has nothing to do with skin color, and the myriad benefits of Western civilization; democracy, human rights, intellectual rigor, capitalism, etc, are open to anyone who wishes to embrace them, for example, note the number of classical musicians from Asia and elsewhere.
Not all cultures are equal, but all human beings are born so.
I wish the BBC gave air time to those thoughts.
“not all cultures are equal, but all human beings are born so.”
Creationists may think this, but it isn’t really correct. As University of Chicago geneticist & Lanny Ebenstein wrote in Nature, there is group diversity due to diverse evolutionary paths.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v461/n7265/full/461726a.html
As Steve Hsu suggests:
“Rather than rely on the scientifically unsupported claim that we are all equal, it would be better to emphasize that we all have inalienable human rights regardless of our abilities or genetic makeup.”
http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2007/01/metric-on-space-of-genomes-and.html
It’s all gone very correct in here all of a sudden. Oo..er, missus.
People get fidgety at the mention of the word “race”. Of course it used to mean people of a particular culture, before racists began looking for physiological distinctions which they then held to be more substantive and more definitive of “race”.
Put together the word “race”, in which some (such as the BBC, with its cartoon black and white world, based on the above-mentioned type of distinction) fervently believe, with the word “superior” and people immediately feel extremely uncomfortable. The spectre of the doctrine of racial superiority haunts us. It is only an individual opinion that has been expressed here but it is against the spirit of the age to go around proclaiming this one or that one superior. “I’ve heard you say many times that you’re better than no one and no one is better than you” (Bob Dylan’s “To Ramona”) is more the thing.
Just remember this – now you can’t say you didn’t know.
The army of BBC staff we pay for in America try to suggest that the right is a seething mass of hatred – some of it race-hatred against Obama.
If there was real hatred from the right out there – where is the video of it ? If the BBC had examples they would be on a permanent loop.
If you really want to see hatred – look at the LEFT in America. Look at Obama’s terrorist buddies, look at the preacher whose church he attended for 20 years, look at the other religious leaders he espoused.
And right now here is an example of pure hatred from a leftie radio jock. Don’t tell me the BBC crew don’t know about him – he is a Huffington Post contributor. Why isn’t this piece of filth on permanent loop at the BBC, showing the evil on the left :
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2010/09/25/libtalker-mike-malloy-liz-cheney-go-plan-your-fathers-funeral
Thank you for this. The BBC censors all news of ugliness on the Left, and either pushes false stories or just suggests there’s ugliness lurking under the surface when there is none to be seen from the non-Left.
Watch what you say and be careful what you think, only the correct thoughts must be presented and all bad thoughts and words must be eliminated from your vocabulary. We(the BBC)control what you see and hear we control the verbal and the cerebral, you have just entered the twighlight zone.
Fight back against the machine, think what you want and say what you want and believe whatever you want to believe.
Yes, the BBC is a pathetic outfit. Same with the atrocious assault on the Sweden Democrat candidate, stabbed amid shouts of ‘f—ing Christian.’ He’s an Arab immigrant, but not a Muslim, so not a lot of sympathy out there in left/lib land.
But we have our own expat blog out here in Jakarta, Ross’s Right Angle, so we’ll cover it tonight.
That’s why blog freedom is so important, until the media ceases to be biased.
One of the dozen (at least) Beeboids covering the US scene has done a full report on Stephen Colbert’s appearance before a Congressional committee. Never mind how shameful it is for the Democrats to use the House of Congress to promote an anti-Fox News/Tea Party rally. The BBC News Online sub-editor introduces it this way:
Satirist Stephen Colbert, who plays a conservative pundit on the US’s Comedy Central television channel, has testified before a US Congressional committee in support of illegal immigrant farm workers. The BBC’s Paul Adams asks what he was up to.
Sounds like an interview or something, no? Nope, it’s Adams asking himself, and telling you what he thinks.
He does grasp that there’s some connection to to Colbert’s appearance and the upcoming anti-Fox News/Tea Party rally, and how important it is for the haters….sorry….Stewart and Colbert fans to make a big turnout. But he can’t quite figure it out. Or just doesn’t want to admit it because it permanently destroys any facade of objectivity (“we attack both sides”) that Jon Stewart has maintained until now. The Beeboids love him, so don’t really like to see him lose that all-important mantle of impartiality. Stewart is about to reveal himself as a political operative, which is going to harm his media capital in the long run. So Adams metaphorically scratches his head and pretends he can’t quite put his finger on it.
Their “competing” rallies in Washington on 30 October (Mr Colbert’s to “March to Keep Fear Alive” and Mr Stewart’s “Rally to Restore Sanity”) represent a riposte to Mr Beck’s “Restoring Honour” rally in front of the Lincoln memorial last month.
While its precise purpose remains unclear, the timing, a few days before the mid-terms, suggests a political agenda of sorts.
Perhaps even the two stars have yet to figure it out.
Yeah, right. What a crock. Adams is either lying or is too slow-witted and uninformed to deserve his job as a BBC US correspondent. Not only does the BBC use your license fee to promote the policies of the leader of a foreign country, but now they’re even using it to carry water for His disciples.
And of course there’s a round of our new game: Spot the Missing Issue and reason Colbert’s appearance was scheduled on that day.
(Hint: DB has it in the main post.)
Where’s Mardell?:
“Black Panthers Case: A Travesty of Justice, Says Former DOJ Chief”
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.7473/pub_detail.asp
This interview puts the story in context. Plus – it features the estimable tough-cookie Megyn Kelly.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2010/09/25/oreilly_black_panther_polling_place_story_explodes.html
Michelle Obama with Mama Farrakhan…
Just sayin’.