OPINION: …And, apparently, so is mainstream media.
Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
White supremacy (n):
1. “the belief [that the] white race is inherently superior to other races and that white people should have control over people of other races.” Example: Adolph Hitler
2. “the social, economic, and political systems that collectively enable white people to maintain power over people of other races.” Example: the New York Times
On March 29, 1895, The New York Times told the truth.
Sandwiched between two different articles on the obviously solved issue of police reform, the then-nearly-44-year-old paper published an article on the political climate in South Carolina. The article tackled the “hard problem” surrounding the state’s upcoming constitutional convention. The unnamed journalist focused specifically on the campaign to rewrite the document that governed post-Civil War South Carolina.
South Carolina’s 1868 Constitution was the literal definition of democracy.
Written by the only majority Black constitutional delegation in the history of the Western world, the revolutionary representatives imagined a state where “everyone is treated equally and has the right to participate equally in management, decision-making, etc.” At a time when most Northern states only allowed white men to vote, delegate W.J. Whipper proposed a crazy idea: universal suffrage, including Black men and all women. It invented the American education system as we know it (Or, as Michael Boulware Moore calls it, the “first, free, compulsory, statewide public school system in America”). And because the state was then 57% African American, the 1868 constitution guaranteed a democracy — or, “a government in which the supreme power is held by the people and used by them directly or indirectly through representation.”
Michael Harriot
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But the New York Times was not pro-Black, so it did not praise the S.C. constitution. And because it was not a Democratic or Republican newspaper, it did not condemn the bipartisan effort to repeal this testament to democracy. Instead, the paper presented the bipartisan effort to wrest control of the state’s political apparatus away from South Carolina’s Black majority as a political conundrum. “[T]here are about 120,000 negro voters and only 80,000 white voters in the State,” wrote the unnamed journalist. “Suppose they contrive some means of restricting negro suffrage without restricting white suffrage, which is what they are aiming at… It is a hard problem.”
While the Times simply presented a set of inarguable facts, the editors apparently could only come up with one way to adequately describe the proposed “white man’s convention.” The headline was neither hyperbolic nor did it attempt to appeal to both sides (To be fair, the Times had very few Twitter followers in 1895). Instead of melodramatic clickbait, the country’s most powerful media outlet used a five-word headline that objectively encapsulated the entire, pro-white, anti-Democratic movement:
“A Problem in ‘White Supremacy.’”
On Tuesday, October 23, 2024, the NY Times didn’t call Trump a white supremacist.
Following the previous day’s front-page, above-the-fold exposé that Kamala Harris goes to church, the Times published a groundbreaking A-1 story about how a 32-year-old unelected lawyer named Kamala Harris went to parties over a quarter-century ago. To be fair, the story about Harris going to parties over a quarter-century ago sits beneath a three-day-old headline about “Trump’s lifetime of scandals.”
And someday in the future, I suppose, there will be something about Hitler.
In an October 22 NY Times article, former Trump administration Chief of Staff John F. Kelly warns that “Trump would rule like a dictator.” According to Kelly’s bombshell interview with Michael S. Schmidt — which has yet to appear on the front page of the Times (or the Washington Post or Politico or Axios)– fascism is “a far-right authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement characterized by a dictatorial leader.” And, according to Kelly, Trump fits the bill.
“Certainly the former president is in the far-right area,” said Kelly. “He’s certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators — he has said that. So he certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure.” And if you think that sounds kinda Hitlerish, a scant 1308 words into the article, Schmidt and the Times bring up the genocidal, dictatorial white supremacist GOAT: “He commented more than once that, ‘You know, Hitler did some good things, too,” Kelly added.
Adolph Hitler was a white supremacist.
Few people would deny that the German Nazi party leader believed the white race was “inherently superior to other races and that white people should have control over people of other races.” However, for the past decade, the Times and every other mainstream news outlet has refrained from using the most accurate term to describe the Hitler stan running for president.
They are willing to explain that Trump “spreads his politics of grievance to nonwhite voters” which, of course, causes “allegations of racism.” Like his Nazi predecessor, he “long used degrading language toward immigrants” to “fan the flames of a racial fire.” It is bewildering why the institutions responsible for delivering an impartial set of facts can somehow absolve themselves from delivering an objective, inarguable truth.
Or maybe Hitler was just a populist and the First World War was a fight against“economic anxiety. In order to not call Donald Trump a white supremacist, you’d wouldn’t just have to ignore Gen. Kelly, you’d also have to overlook the things he wrote, the things he said, the things he did, his social agenda, his economic policies, his political team and the actual dictionary. But apparently, America’s media is willing to do that.
If Donald Trump is not a white supremacist, then white supremacy does not exist.
Journalism is not just a career, and the press is not just a business enterprise. There is a reason why freedom of the press is the First Amendment to the Constitution. This is why the New York Times is considered to be an institution. It’s why the Washington Post’s motto declares: “Democracy dies in darkness.” In America, the press is a social, political and economic necessity that provides citizens with the unadulterated truth.
And if they don’t, they are nothing more than “social, economic, and political systems that collectively enable white people to maintain power over people of other races.”
More than a century ago, the NY Times pledged “to give the news impartially, without fear or favor, regardless of party, sect, or interests involved.” But when it comes to Donald Trump, there is only one phrase that objectively encapsulated the media coverage of the pro-white, anti-Democratic Republican nominee for President:
The NY Times said it in 1895.
Michael Harriot is an economist, cultural critic and championship-level Spades player. His New York Times bestseller Black AF History: The Unwhitewashed Story of America is available everywhere books are sold.
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