Bruce’s Beat

Real journalists, the way we used to hear it explained, are called to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. They provide citizens with the useful and empowering information needed to comprehend the world and stand up for their own interests. BC‘s own Margaret Kimberley is a real journalist. Her June 23 Freedom Rider column, “RX For Black Hearts” highlighted the corrupt practices used by the drug company Nitromed to get its questionable product Bidil to market, including the claim that it is somehow better for African American patients. The column sparked the following email from an empowered reader:

Dear BC,

My cardiologist recently prescribed the medication Bidil for me. I am not African American. I take it three times a day and seem to experience an adverse reaction. The next time I see my physician I will be interested in discussing the information referenced by Ms. Kimberley in her Freedom Rider column “RX for Black Hearts” with him. Is there anything new you can tell me that I should relay to my doctor?

Dear Sir,

BC continues to be honored by the solid and continuing contribution that Margaret Kimberley makes to this publication. Next to the cover story, Freedom Rider generally draws more readers than any other BC feature.

Reader LL wrote:

I greatly appreciate your commentary on the WSJ’s willful ignorance concerning the issue of race. When one looks at Mr. Dawson’s findings and the regressive media’s attack on the black consensus, one has to conclude that 62%-80% of whites live in a bubble, created for the purpose of maintaining the status quo. The WSJ like many other publications wants to give its readers what they want – a colorblind society where individuals have no one else to blame but themselves.

Dear LL,

Willful ignorance, besides being an oxymoron, is hard work. Just ask your president.

The corporate media’s job is to create and sustain a civic narrative, an ongoing story about life in 21st Century America, that reinforces and justifies things the Way They Are. The Black Consensus is a standing repudiation of the validity of the tale they tell, and therefore a big problem. For the most part, corporate media acknowledge its existence only indirectly, going to ridiculous lengths to deny the obvious reasons for its existence.

For instance, at the beginning of the invasion of Iraq, when pollsters noted that African American sentiment, across lines of gender, class and generation was uniformly antiwar, sober establishment pundits advanced the ridiculous rationale that lopsided black antiwar sentiments were due to the fact that the war was identified with Bush, and black people hated anything that had to do with Bush. Amazing. We are presumed to have no historical memory, and exist in no historical context that might make us more doubtful than white Americans of the messianic premises and racist practices of Uncle Sam overseas. Such is the stuff of denial. Evidently, that is the distorted view from inside the bubble.

Reader GD writes:

Excellent analysis of the WSJ fool, Taranto. In Ira Katznelson’s new book, When Affirmative Action was White: an Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth Century America, he goes a long way toward clarifying some of the recent origins and workings of white privilege and black disadvantage. The author details the racist legislative imperatives that hampered Black wealth attainment while shoring up white wealth, through deliberate policies at the national, state and local levels. Congratulations again on this piece.

GD

Dear GD,

I have not yet read the book you cite. But from looking at reviews of it, I can see that the argument reviewers say the author makes is a valid one that has been made before. Institutionalized racism in this country has enabled many ostensibly race-neutral laws and programs in the public and private sectors to function in ways that replicated and reinforced white supremacy, that conferred whites unearned advantages and penalized not just individual African Americans, but whole communities, black people as a class.

Thanks for reading Black Commentator, and for bothering to write us. Maybe I’ll pick up the book.

bd

Some other readers wrote just to assure us that they are indeed out there. One whom we will not name writes:

The only fully truthful thing in the OpinionJournal.com article that prompted BC‘s response was his observation that BC is “harshly leftist” in outlook. We took it as a sort of compliment, as did some others.

Dear BC,

Great article. What exactly is a “harsh leftist” one wonders? A leftist who is actually a leftist as opposed to a marshmallow? I hope for the day when the white consensus embraces the black consensus and we have a decent humane world.

AD

Dear AD,

The white consensus embrace the black consensus? It’ll never happen.