Just in time for the election, CNN writer John Blake has taken to the front page of CNN’s website to remind us that everyone who doesn’t support President Obama is a horrible racist. More specifically, unless you support President Obama, you’re just like those who opposed the civil rights movement during Reconstruction. The piece repeats the same “Republicans are racist” trope we’ve heard for years. Blake argues that voter ID laws are “following the same script” as poll taxes. Later, opponents of Obamacare are compared to those who opposed providing healthcare for emancipated slaves. The Tea Party is called racist, and so on. What’s particularly insidious about this post is the way in which the arguments are presented. The proponents of the “Conservatives hate black people” theory are introduced as objective “writers” and “historians.” One of the writers, Nsenga Burton, has been caught lying in an attempt to slander a Christian college. Mark Naison, was a member of the Weathermen in the 1960s. Phillip Dray has praised unions for fighting against “the ideology of the free market.” None of these facts prevented CNN from passing them off as objective analysts. The same cannot be said for those who argue that conservatives are not racist. They are identified in the piece as “conservative” writers. Thomas Sowell, a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institute, is not given any academic credentials. Rather, he is introduced as a “conservative columnist.” It’s clear what CNN is trying to argue here. Those dastardly conservatives deny that they’re racist, but all the objective and smart people know better.
