Race Issues

Historian Rick Perlstein, the author of three books (so far) on American movement conservatism from the mid-‘50s through the mid-‘70s, believes, in essence, that conservatives are tribalists whose central task is to promote hatred against other tribes. According to Perlstein, two recent news stories serve to illuminate that process, which, he suggests, involves an almost scientific-sounding…

Andrea Mitchell wondered if Chattanooga terrorist Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez's "small-town Tennessee" upbringing had anything to do with his slaughtering of four Marines. Mitchell interviewed a high school classmate of Abdulazeez on the Friday edition of her MSNBC program and asked, "Were guns a big part of activity – social or other activity?...Did he hunt? Did he shoot? I mean, was that just…

Bill Maher slammed CBS's Major Garrett in a Wednesday post on Twitter for his pointed question to President Obama during a press conference in the East Room: "#MajorGarrett is a huge asshole. If U wanna 'strike a nerve' with POTUS, why not just scream the N word? That shld [should] get his attention."

A white artist is making waves in the media for creating a reenactment of Michael Brown’s death as an art exhibit in Chicago. The exhibit opens on the heels of a federal judge dismissing four counts of wrongful-death lawsuits filed by Brown’s parents. More are still being filed, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

On Wednesday, CBS This Morning rushed to promote remarks made by President Obama at the NAACP’s annual conference in which he criticized the current state of the criminal justice system. 

The media instinct to trash all that is inspiring and noble was unmistakable in Monday morning's Today report on the new novel (Go Set a Watchman) by Harper Lee, the author of the widely celebrated, best-selling To Kill a Mockingbird, first published in 1960. Debate has raged over whether Lee, who is in very poor health and whose mental competence has been questioned, ever wanted her manuscript…

Liberal media types like Al Hunt haven't called Donald Trump a Hitler. Yet.  But Judy Woodruff's husband has branded Trump a modern-day version of an iconic personification of racism. On today's Morning Joe, Hunt declared that Trump is "George Corley Wallace, 40 years later."

Aamer Madhani at USA Today took the easy way out on Friday in covering the sharp increases in murders in many U.S. cities during the first half of this year. He quoted Milwaukee's police chief bemoaning "absurdly weak" gun laws. He noted that "the increased violence is disproportionately impacting poor and predominantly African-American and Latino neighborhoods." He found a university prof to…

On his The Nightly Show on Comedy Central, in the aftermath of the Charleston church massacre, host Larry Wilmore tried to deceive his audience into believing that Fox News hosts as well as former Senator Rick Santorum had been clinging to the possibility that the Charleston church massacre was motivated by religion, even after reporting surfaced that the gunman had expressed blatantly racist…

Amid mounting evidence of Bill Cosby’s depraved behavior, many have changed their minds about Cosby the person. Should they also reconsider, for very different reasons, their affection for his megahit sitcom, The Cosby Show? Lefty writer Chauncey DeVega thinks so. In a Sunday article for Salon, DeVega opined that the series “lied to its white viewers about the nature of racism, white supremacy,…

On Sunday’s Meet the Press, Chuck Todd used to tragic murders in Charleston, South Carolina to question Governor Nikki Haley about her support for voter ID laws in her state: “Do you see the issue differently now? Do you understand what some African-Americans believe these voter ID laws end up being a way to single them out or disenfranchise them?” 

Michael Lind, contributing editor to Politico and Salon columnist, had a very interesting way of showing his independence week patriotism this year- by dreaming about how great America would be without the south.

Hours after the Confederate flag was removed from the grounds of the South Carolina state house Friday morning, MSNBC interrupted its regular 2 p.m. ET hour programming to bring viewers “breaking news” coverage of the pole that held that flag also being removed. Correspondent Craig Melvin narrated: “We do not know precisely how long the process itself is going to take, nor do we know what’s going…

On July 10, following the removal of the Confederate battle flag from Capitol grounds in South Carolina, a panel discussed the historic event on MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell Reports. Guest host Craig Melvin brought Pulitzer Prize winning author Isabel Wilkerson to the program. He asked the author to put the removal of the flag into “historical perspective.” Wilkerson remarked that we are “witnessing…