Talk about playing the race card! [View All]

[EffieBlack]

Today, on ABC's This Week, George Stephanopoulos interviewed Rep. Charles Rangel, Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. Most of the interview focused on Rangel's thoughts on an economic stimulus package. But, at the end of the interview, George put up Rangel a poll showing African American voter support for Hillary Clinton v. Barack Obama and then asked him, "Are you concerned that African American voters are going in different directions in this election." Rangel responded, "Not at all. It just shows that blacks voter are just like all other Americans."

So, George Stephanopoulos, in the middle of an interview with the Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, not only felt it necessary to ask him about black voters, but his questioned assumed that it was somehow odd that all black voters were not voting the same way.

Immediately following the interview, the roundtable began assessing the primaries, whereupon we were treated to the spectavle of five white people, including George, sat around the table and launched into a discussion about how blacks and Latinos were going to vote this year and whom they were going to support - and read into the Nevada caucus results a conclusion that Latino voters were lining up with Clinton. It might have been helpful - or at least less ridiculous - if they had bothered to actually allow a black or Latino person to weigh in on the conversation. Apparently, they couldn't find any black people qualified to discuss minority voting in the presidential campaign - at least no one as qualitied as the Eastern European expert who was included in the panel discussion.

It's bad enough that black and brown folk must consistently endure having to watch white folks on television talking about us right in front of us as if they are such experts about how we think and vote that there is no need for us to actually participate in the discussions about us. But it's just as galling to see the likes of Stephanopoulos, George Will, Chris Matthews, Tim Russert and all manner of other white journalists and commentators day after day frame this presidential race in terms of race, bringing up race at every opportunity, but then accuse any black person who has the nerve to even mention race, much less try to have a rational discussion about it, of "playing the race card."

Let's call a spade a spade (yes, I meant to write that):

Every time the media raises the issue of race in this campaign, they are playing the race card.

Every time the media parks nothing but white people around a table to discuss black people without even bothering to let a black person participate in the conversation, they are playing the race card.

Every time the media tries to shut up any black person who tries to counter this arrogant display of self-entitlement by accusing them of "injecting race into the issue," they are playing the race card.


Well, I won't shut up about it. I'm going to call it out every chance I get.