Race Issues

Just as you would expect, the 2016 BET Awards were full of Black Lives Matter references and reminders to register to vote and then get out the vote for Hillary Clinton. After the opening of the award ceremony featured Beyoncé and her back-up dancers marching into the auditorium to a Martin Luther King, Jr. speech, actor and producer Terence J went on to say, “Your vote is your voice,” and…

Concluding his Real Time show on Friday, HBO comedian Bill Maher called on President Barack Obama to go on an "apology tour" around the world to "drive Republicans nuts" and, presumably if Donald Trump loses the presidential election, to send a message that America is "back on our meds." On one of his most anti-America rants, Maher asserted that America "did some bad s***" in its history and has…

NPR's Asma Khalid made it clear in a series of posts on Twitter during the evening/early morning after the Brexit vote that she opposed the United Kingdom's exit from the European Union. Khalid initially expressed her shock after the British television network ITV projected that there was an 80 percent probability that 'Leave' would win. She later spotlighted a British Muslim's Tweet that…

Despite its own embarrassing poll result – that nine out of ten native Americans have no hostility to the Washington Redskins team name – The Washington Post is staunchly standing by its censorious liberal position. On Wednesday, they posted a staff editorial titled “Mr. Snyder’s losing battle with the next generation: Sidwell Friends bans Washington football team apparel.” So Sidwell Friends  –…

On Wednesday night’s episode of NBC’s The Night Shift, “Three-Two-One,” a riot breaks out in response to a verdict about to be rendered on a 45-year-old white man charged with shooting and killing a black man as he waited roadside for a tow truck. The accused man’s story was one of self-defense but the Black Lives Matter crowd of protesters isn’t having any of it. The hospital staff at San…

With developments including the Democratic sit-in on the House floor and Sen. Chris Murphy’s yeah-he-went-there allegation that “Republicans have decided to sell weapons to ISIS,” it’s been a busy and highly theatrical week among anti-gun forces. Michael Tomasky thinks the tide on gun issues is turning in favor of liberals, but expects they won’t win decisively until there’s “a tragedy” -- a…

The highly anticipated fourth season of Netflix’s Orange is the New Black launched last Friday and I have to believe that true fans of the show were not disappointed. The story remains true to life in a minimum security prison, as you might imagine it to be, and managed to get all the way to the twelfth episode (out of thirteen) before politics entered. 

On Lifetime’s UnReal, a scripted drama about the behind-the-scenes making of a reality dating show, the recurring storyline of contestant Beth Ann (Lindsay Musil) being used as the chosen racist, white supremacist continues.

According to Huffington Post, the Grand Old Party will become the Dead Old Party at the 2016 Republican convention in Cleveland. Cause of death? Support for presumptive nominee Donald Trump.

On Wednesday, comedian and Daily Show correspondent Hasan Minhaj spoke at the 72nd Radio and Television Correspondents Association Dinner attended by both politicians and the media. After using jokes to call all conservatives, the GOP and Fox News employees blood-loving racists, Minhaj—in all seriousness—accused Congress of being complicit in the deaths of “thousands of Americans” for the sake of…

In “Insurgent,” last night's episode of Lifetime’s UnReal, racial tensions once again rear their ugly head - in a completely cynical, manufactured way, of course. 

When liberals call Republicans “deniers,” it typically has to do with climate change. Jonathan Chait alleges big-time GOP denial on a non-scientific matter. “Republican voting support is increasingly coterminous with white racial resentment even as conservatives firmly believe in their own racial innocence,” wrote Chait in a Tuesday post. “Conservatives deny the existence of racism in the…

Lifetime’s second season of UnReal premiered this week and it is an all-too-real, sad commentary on our culture. The scripted drama shows a behind-the-scenes look at the cutthroat making of a The Bachelor-type reality dating show called Everlasting where producers go to extremes to manipulate cast members for ratings.

Conservative Paul Ryan and liberal Lithwick agree that Donald Trump’s recent digs at Gonzalo Curiel were racist, but disagree about their significance. Ryan considers the attacks peculiar to Trump, while Lithwick sees them as of a piece with the Republican party’s “wider assault on the judiciary in the Obama era.” Lithwick even wondered rhetorically, “Do Trump’s smears of Judge Curiel differ all…