Muslims now Targets for U.S. Media Abuse

By William Doyle-Marshall
A violent and rather inhumane act – nigger breaking -- practice principally against enslaved Africans in the United States of America, is now believed to be used by American media networks frequently. And Muslims are now the latest victims.
Esteemed African American scholar author and playwright, Ishmael Reed, makes this disclosure in his latest book “Barak Obama and the Jim Crow Media -- The Return of the Nigger Breakers” which was launched in Toronto recently. The event was organized by A Different Book List and the publishers Baraka Books and hosted by Dr. George Elliott Clarke, award winning poet and scholar of the University of Toronto.
Professor Clarke cited Dr. Reed’s earlier work “Flight to Canada” as very instructive about North America’s propaganda of liberty and which the continent projects into the world particularly the United States. However Clarke disclosed that Canada too after supposedly being in Afghanistan in part to spread liberty and democracy is also engaged in spreading its own very self-serving propaganda.
Dr. Reed, the author of numerous Op-Ed pieces for leading U.S. publications refers to the U.S. media as a white owned enterprise with billions of dollars at their disposal. And their revenue stream is based upon holding “unpopular groups” to scorn and ridicule, a formula for ratings that dates to the early days of the mass media.
Since 911 and the worldwide hunt for terrorists, Muslims have now joined the league of communities that have tasted the wrath of the American media, Reed contends. Among ethnic groups, it’s the African Americans who have been the permanent 24/7 group that is subjected to the media take down, the scholar notes. “Mexican Americans, Chinese and Japanese Americans and Jewish Americans and even Italian Americans have taken turns being the targets of their abuse,” Dr. Reed alleges.
“The token black, Hispanic and Asian American commentators are those found non-threatening to the media’s white subscribers and submissive to the editorial line coming from the top. They are like the black servants in “Gone With the Wind” who remained loyal to their masters even the Union troops were approaching the city,” he continues.
That nigger breaking technique is now directed to the U.S. President Barak Obama. According to Dr. Reed. He believes the media has not been kind to the President and he makes the point in his book that over 800 minority journalists have lost their jobs over the last few years. With the disappearance of African Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanics and others from journalism, Dr. Reed is disturbed that the president is confronted with an ‘all white jury’.
“They always bring in an all white jury when the normal rules and procedures don’t work like they did in the O.J. (Simpson) trial, when they lost the criminal trial they brought in the media and whether he was guilty or not the media convicted O.J. They are not obliged to abide by the normal rules of the court, courthouse procedures. So they are doing the same thing. They couldn’t win the election somehow they probably consider it a fluke that he got over, now they are using all the power of the media to raise a mob against Barak Obama the same way that the media raised mobs against black men throughout history,” Dr. Reed argues.
As he constructs a case that the media do not embrace President Obama, Dr. Reed recalls attempts made to destroy him with Reverend Wright; by using Obama’s remark about white working-class people clinging to their guns and religion; by the Republican Party comparing and trying to link him to O.J., by linking him to all the black men involved in scandals. “They tried their best to dirty him and they began with the Clinton campaign. These people are supposed to be liberals, these people are not liberals. I mean the fact that they would try to portray him as somebody who is a drug addict and then even as a drug sales person, salesman; they tried to screw him all along,” Dr. Reed insists.
“Barak Obama and the Jim Crow Media -- The Return of the Nigger Breakers” is packed with pointed analysis about issues and concerns that illuminates a rather disturbing reality – racism is alive and well. With some cosmetic changes here and there especially within the boundaries of the Dominion of Canada, Muslims and other ethnic groups must be aware that resistance to change is an ongoing activity.
Now that the Republicans have regained control of the House of Representatives and they are trying to turn back some of the President’s policies especially in the area of health care, it is advisable that Americans read Dr. Reed’s critical offering about the one-sided and wicked relationship American media is pushing against the Chief.