On Friday, CNN's flagship morning show, New Day, concluded another heavily biased week by devoting a segment to liberal author Isabel Wilkerson to promote her new book, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, in which she argued that racism began in the United States as people of different races began living in the same country.
CNN co-host Alisyn Camerota gushed over the book, calling it "so enlightening," after highlighting excerpts blaming racism for poor whites voting Republican, even at the risk of enacting policies that might kill them.
Picking up on Democrats who are frustrated that many poor whites reject the party's class warfare message and vote Republican, Camerota posed:
I just want to read a portion of your book because I think that it also speaks to something that you also hear Democrats say a lot which is "Why do working class white people vote for leaders -- politicians -- particularly Donald Trump -- who say that they're going to take away some of the very things and protections and safety net that these voters need -- like the Affordable Care Act, like environmental regulations?"
She then read from Wilkerson's book:
What they had not considered is that people voting this way were, in fact, voting their interests. Maintaining the caste system as it has always been was in their interests. And some were willing to accept short-term discomfort, forgo health insurance, risk contamination of the water and air, and even die to protect their long-term interest in the hierarchy as they had known it.
Camerota then approvingly reacted: "That's just really helpful insight."
After the liberal author -- and former New York Times reporter -- argued that poor white people are motivated by wanting to remain above blacks in what Wilkerson described as a "caste system," Camerota gushed: "Oh, my gosh, your book is just so -- it's so enlightening."
Over the course of the three-hour show, there were a total of five guests who came from a clear liberal background who appeared to discuss various issues, while no conservative guests were included on Friday's show at all.
Frequent guest and former South Carolina Democratic state legislator Bakari Sellers even made his second appearance of the week as he and fellow CNN contributor Errol Louis -- who has a history of running for office both as a Democrat and a Green -- appeared together in the first hour and discussed the diminishing public support for the Black Lives Matter movement as evidenced by recent polling.
In all, between Monday and Friday, there were 16 guests who have a clear history of being partisan Democrats or liberal activists, but only two unequivocally conservative guests -- Scott Jennings and Peter Navarro -- who appeared to make right-leaning arguments. And the only other two right-leaning guests -- Mike Taylor and Matt Lewis -- made appearances to mostly side with Democrats.
By contrast, during the 2016 presidential campaign, the same show typically included substantially more of a mixture of conservative and liberal guests and contributors.
Roughly four years ago -- between Monday, August 29, and Friday, September 2, 2016 -- New Day segments featured 20 liberals and 16 pro-Trump conservatives. The show also had five right-leaning guests who were critical of Trump, so there was still a leftward slant to the show even then.
But, by contrast, CNN's New Day now rarely includes conservative guests or contributors as if they were nearly banned from the show, illustrating just how far to the left the news network has swung in the last few years.
Friday's episode was sponsored by Advance Auto Parts. Let them know how you feel about such heavily biased journalism.
Below is a transcript of the relevant portion of the Friday, September 4, New Day on CNN:
7:56 a.m. Eastern
ALISYN CAMEROTA: You know, I just want to read a portion of your book because I think that it also speaks to something that you also hear Democrats say a lot which is "Why -- why do working class white people vote for leaders -- politicians -- particularly Donald Trump -- who say that they're going to take away some of the very things and protections and safety net that these voters need -- like the Affordable Care Act, like environmental regulations?" And so your book addresses it -- it says: "What they had not considered is that people voting this way were, in fact, voting their interests. Maintaining the caste system as it has always been was in their interests. And some were willing to accept short-term discomfort, forgo health insurance, risk contamination of the water and air, and even die to protect their long-term interest in the hierarchy as they had known it." That's just really helpful insight.
ISABEL WILKERSON, AUTHOR: Well, when you look at a society on the basis of inherited hierarchy -- something that none of us created. None of us alive created the world that the colonists devised … (audio gap) ... that were created. We realized that you then gain an investment and their position in a hierarchy that we don't even talk about. I talk about this, in some ways, it's like an old house and you don't see the studs and the joints and the beams that hold the whole house up, and yet they are there to keep the structure in place. So it's almost an invisible structure that we've inherited.
We're not necessarily aware of it -- we don't have a name for it -- and yet, when you have an investment in that hierarchy -- and especially if you have very little -- if you have less to rely on to make sure that you to be secure -- to have less education and less in the way of job security. You might find that you would be even more reliant on the -- what I would call "inherited ranking" that comes from a caste system such as ours. And so the less you have to rely on in other ways to feel better and more secure, the more you will rely on inherited ranking, which is what I'm calling a caste system.
CAMEROTA: Oh, my gosh, your book is just so -- it's so enlightening. Go ahead, Jim.
JIM SCIUTTO: No, I was just going to say, part of your story you tell here is a deliberate effort to maintain that caste system, and I wonder if you see elements of that in efforts to suppress the vote in this election -- deliberate efforts, taking people off voter rolls, making it more difficult, etc. Is that an iteration of this?
