Filed under: News, Politics, Race and Civil Rights
FOX News commentator Juan Williams has been in the news quite a bit lately. It started when he was fired from NPR last week for going on to FOX and saying that Muslims on airplanes make him nervous. Apparently, in Juan's world, every Muslim he meets may want to blow him up. I've always wondered how Juan would feel if a white woman said that she believes that every black man she meets (including Juan) wants to mug her. I should probably stop speculating, since Juan may actually agree with that statement.
Fox News took the interesting step of rewarding Juan for his racist rant by giving him a three-year contract reportedly worth a cool $2 million. Apparently, racism pays in an allegedly post-racial society. FOX proves the value of racism every day with their record ratings and massive profitability. A small fraction of that dough trickles down to Juan, one of the few black men in America willing to stand up for the network that has rejuvenated racial terrorism in our country.
This week, Juan earned his paycheck by fighting for his boss in public. Williams seemed to take offense to the fact that FOX News is often accused of racism, so as their latest black spokesperson (along with the less-than-intellectual Jesse Lee Peterson), he had this to say:
"At NPR ... they don't know this: A third of the audience for Bill O'Reilly's show is made up of people of color," Williams said. "At NPR, they think, 'Oh, these people who watch Fox don't appreciate diversity of opinion, they're not smart people. They're not informed people. Oh, yeah? I'll tell you what: They're informed...." Williams said NPR "just doesn't understand the Fox audience."
"Just consider the idea that Fox allows me the opportunity to sit in for Bill O'Reilly on their No. 1 show. That's the franchise. That's the moneymaker. If that show falls in the toilet, it's bad for the whole lineup. And yet Fox allows a black guy with a Hispanic name to sit in the big chair and host the show."
Juan's comment likely made his bosses quite comfortable, and I'm sure he'll get a bonus for being the good little cheerleader. The problem with Juan's remarks is that he's missing the point entirely. Even as far back as slavery, there have always been black people who've gained the favor of even the most racist whites. We can relate this to the difference between the house slave and the field slave. The house slave was loved by his master: He would be allowed to spend time with the children, he would sleep in nice quarters and he would even be treated like a member of the family. Malcolm X explains the processquite well in this video.
The thing about being the house slave, though, is that while he was treated well, he was never quite an equal. He was more like a family pet than a serious member of the family. Like the family pet, if the house slave ever took an independent stance, which threatened his master's agenda, he would be "put to sleep."
An added point that Williams might also want to remember is that diversity goes deeper than what you look like. Actually, diversity is more readily reflected by differences in viewpoints. Condoleeza Rice was a favorite of the racially problematic Bush Administration, because she positioned herself as Bush's greatest weapon against charges of racism and sexism. The truth, however, was that Condoleeza Rice was simply Dick Cheney with black skin and female body parts. She was a political horse that Bush would gladly ride in to the land of racial exoneration.
Like Condi was for Bush, Juan is a political mascot for FOX News. As long as he helps FOX to promote their racially questionable agenda (which he is doing with his comments), he will be taken care of. Additionally, while he is accepted in to the FOX News household, he will never be treated as an equal to individuals like Sean Hannity and O'Reilly, who would laugh at the amount of money that Juan is being paid by Fox. In other words, he is a second-tier player in the FOX News organization, and if he were to take a strong, independent stance in favor of African-American issues, his career would surely be "put to sleep."
As I said three years ago on CNN (this angered O'Reilly when I said it), Juan Williams saying that FOX News and Bill O'Reilly aren't racist is like Hugh Hefner getting a stripper to come on television to say that he's not a sexist. This racism/sexism game has been played in America for hundreds of years, so Juan is simply continuing that tradition. His words have about as much credibility as Tiger Woods claiming a commitment to celibacy.
Dr. Boyce Watkins is the founder of the Your Black World Coalition and a Scholarship in Action Resident of the Institute for Black Public Policy. To have Dr. Boyce commentary delivered to your email, please click here.