Source: CHRISTIAN MONTERROSA / Getty
For all of Donald Trump‘s complaining about the “fake news” media and how it’s always showing its bias against him by—oh, I don’t know—reporting the words that come out of his mouth, the truth is, media outlets are often protecting him far more than he deserves by failing to simply come right out and call him a racist when he’s demonstrably being racist.
On Wednesday, Trump participated in a panel discussion at the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) annual convention in Chicago, and, as many Black people predicted, it was a disaster. During the event, Trump stepped way outside of his Caucasian lane by whitesplaining to Black people that Kamala Harris isn’t really Black, saying, “I didn’t know she was Black,” and that “she happened to turn Black” before he asked, “Is she Indian or is she Black?”
Trump was arguing that Harris hid the Black part of her racial identity until she started running for office, which isn’t true, and even if it were, it is not Trump’s white-ass place to question it.
Unfortunately, the Washington Post took the exact wrong message from Trump’s racially antagonistic rant against Harris and thought it was appropriate to report on it under the headline, “Harris faces a pivotal moment as Trump questions her identity.”
I’m just saying that headline could only be the product of an extremely white perspective on what went down during Trump’s appearance at NABJ.
The Post eventually changed its headline to, “Trump’s attack on Harris’ racial identity moves contest into new phase,” which, honestly was still a cop-out of a headline as it fails to call a thing a thing.
I mean, it’s not like we’re expecting the Washington Post to publish a headline like, “Donald Trump proved he’s a racist-ass racist by being a racist-ass racist at NABJ,” but the publication doesn’t need to go so far out of its way not to call Trump racist when he demonstrably is.
In fact, Political affairs analyst and businessman David Rothkopf really hit the nail on the head.
“If journalists do not call racists racists, liars liars, and criminals criminals they are actively aiding the racists, liars, and criminals by minimizing or recasting and normalizing the indefensible. And it happens every day,” Rothkopf said in response to the Post’s headline, according to Raw Story.
That’s exactly it!
Anyway, while the Post did change the egregious original headline, it didn’t do so before folks on social media saw it and dragged the publication across social media. Check out the responses below.
