The BBC continues its ‘Altered States’ series of reports to convince you that the US has somehow become more divided and racist since the election of a black President in 2008. It wouldn’t be called ‘Altered’ if it wasn’t somehow different from before, right? The last installment also featured race and pushed a “Racist US” Narrative. I won’t go so far as to say the reference to the movie was deliberate because of the ugly, base, primitive nature of the proto-human to which the star reverted, and the BBC is making a subtle accusation that whites who will vote for the eventual Republican candidate want to turn back the clock to the days of Jim Crow laws, lynching, and real oppression of minorities. I’m sure the BBC editor in charge just thought it was a cute turn of phrase. But you can all draw your own conclusions.
The latest installment by digital media Beeboid Franz Strasser uses the racially divided city of St. Louis, Missouri to help paint that picture. The rich whites get the south side, while the devastated blacks suffer and are left to rot in the north. This selectively-portrayed microcosm is supposed to reinforce the notion that the US is racially divided, laying the groundwork for the idea that opposition to a black President is based on racism, rather than genuine, honest opposition to His policies. The city is clearly racially divided, and I don’t mean to denigrate the plight of African-Americans in this obviously failed city. I’m concerned here only about the biased reporting.
Strasser has previous on dishonest reporting for the BBC. His first series of reports were about immigration in the US (middle of pg. 4 of the open thread). The dishonesty lay in the fact that the word “illegal” was censored from every single report, even while he was reporting from two ‘Sanctuary Cities’, which openly flout immigration law and harbor illegals. It was especially dishonest to omit the term because this report was conceived and produced when the illegal immigration issue was at the top of the news cycle. This latest report for the ‘Altered States’ series is no different.
Spot the Missing Political Party.
The Democratic Party has dominated St. Louis for more than 60 years. There hasn’t been a Republican mayor since 1949. All the policies which have contributed to the current sad state of affairs in the city have been enacted by Democrats. Yet Strasser fails to mention the political scene. If this had been a Republican-controlled city, you know the BBC would have made sure to point that out.
The first black Alderman (the Board of Aldermen is the equivalent of the City Council in other cities) was elected in 1943. Today, no fewer than 13 of the 28 Aldermen are African-American, including the Board President. Now, does this sound like a city where whites oppress blacks and keep them down? It sounds more like Democrats and Democrat policies failing them than anything else. Yet the BBC doesn’t want you to know any of this, as it doesn’t help the “Divided, Racist US/Racist Republicans” Narrative they want to create in your minds in this re-election year.
(Coincidentally, another Democrat-controlled city and home base of the Community-Organizer-in-Chief, Chicago, also has the Alderman system. Funny how that works, no?)
As it happens, the Tea Party movement, which the BBC often portrayed as racist, and US President editor Mark Mardell believes to be driven by crypto-racism, began in St. Louis, when a white woman started her own little protest against high taxes forced on the region by Democrats. This was weeks before Rick Santelli’s famous rant which gave the movement its name. Strasser missed an opportunity for race-baiting there because he, like all of his ill-informed colleagues at the BBC, simply didn’t know. Of course, everyone here knows of the BBC’s ignorance on the Tea Party movement.
In any case, there’s something else Strasser left out of his sad tale of one city divided. While showing you street after street of empty, boarded-up houses and dead commercial blocks, he deliberately left out the fact that those buildings are empty because the African-American population has been leaving the area in search of better schools. They left to seek out a better life for themselves and for their children, because the Democrat-controlled city has failed them repeatedly for decades. Instead, you’re left with a racially-charged story without a single mention of the politics which led to the situation, with no information whatsoever given to help you understand it.
As always, don’t trust the BBC on US issues. Especially, it seems, when it comes to one of their themed series of reports.
