Bill O'Reilly slams President Obama on the O'Reilly Factor |
Bill O'Reilly apparently thinks that the biggest problem facing the black community in the United States isn’t racism, it’s actually black people themselves.
In an epic rant on his Fox News show on Monday O’Reilly scolded President Obama and ‘race hustlers’ and ‘limousine liberals’ insisting that it’s time to stop with the ‘fake victimization’ and get the ‘gangsta culture’ which is promoted by rap and hip hop stars under control.
O’Reilly’s insistence that it’s all ‘fake victimization’ implies that black people’s experience of racism is largely illusory, a suggestion his critics bristle at.
O’Reilly continued: ‘The sad truth is that from the president on down, our leadership has no clue, no clue at all about how to solve problems within the black community.
‘And many are frightened to even broach the issue. That’s because race hustlers and the grievance industry have intimidated the so-called ‘conversation,’ turning any valid criticism of African-American culture into charges of racial bias.’
It’s not the first time O’Reilly has made controversial claims about the black community. Back in 2007 when he visited the famous Sylvia's Restaurant in Harlem he announced: ‘I couldn't get over the fact that there was no difference between Sylvia's restaurant and any other restaurant in New York City. I mean, it was exactly the same, even though it's run by blacks, primarily black patronship.’
‘There wasn't one person in Sylvia's who was screaming, 'M-Fer, I want more iced tea.' ...You know, I mean, everybody was - it was like going into an Italian restaurant in an all-white suburb in the sense of people were sitting there, and they were ordering and having fun. And there wasn't any kind of craziness at all.’
According to Bizpacreview, on his show on Monday night O’Reilly agreed that the profiling of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman on the night Martin was killed was wrong.
But O’Reilly continued, ‘Here’s the headline. Young black men commit homicides at a rate 10 times greater than whites and hispanics combined.’
‘The problem boils down to the disintegration of the African-American family,’ he insisted.
O’Reilly noted that black leaders from the president down have refused to address the fact that '73 percent of all black babies are born out of wedlock.’
‘White people don't force black people to have babies out of wedlock,' O'Reilly opined, overlooking the fact that they actually do in Texas, North Carolina, Arkansas and Kansas.
O'Reilly continued, 'That's a personal decision; a decision that has devastated millions of children and led to disaster both socially and economically.'
That fact, combined with the ‘gangsta culture,’ promoted by the rap and hip hop industry is ‘encouraging irresponsibility’ and ‘glorifying bad behavior,’ O’Reilly said. Critics would counter that rap and hip hop glorify crass materialism, expressing a desire for luxury goods otherwise missing from their material lives.
O’Reilly wasn’t having it. ‘In fact,’ he continued, ‘President Obama has welcomed some of the worst offenders in that cesspool to the White House when he should be condemning what these weasels are doing.’
Rapper Jay-Z and his wife Beyonce will be bemused to hear themselves called weasels from a cesspool, presumably.
But black people’s social problems have nothing to do with institutional racism or the long shadow of slavery, O’Reilly insisted. Their problems are the result of ‘Hollywood people and you derelict parents.’
It’s all your own fault, in other words.
‘It’s now time for the African-American leadership, including President Obama, to stop the nonsense,’ O’Reilly concluded. ‘Walk away from the world of victimization and grievance and lead the way out of this mess.’
On average, African-Americans enjoy 71.7 percent, or fewer than three-fourths, of the benefits and privileges offered to white Americans recent studies have shown. These include education, economics, health and social justice. O’Reilly had no comment on these figures.
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