Ebony Magazine, The RNC And, Liberal Projectionism

When Ebony Magazines’s senior digital editor Jamilah Lemieux reduced RNC deputy press secretary Raffi Williams to his race (she called him white) and compared conservatives to a “house full of roaches,” she was demonstrating a toxic brand of reflexive scorn that too many blacks cast and most non-liberal blacks learn to live with.

After the incident played out on Twitter, RNC chairman Reince Priebus wrote a letter demanding an apology. Ebony Magazine has since apologized to Williams and the Republican National Committee. 

If you missed it, on Thursday Lemieux wrote a dismissive tweet about a new black conservative magazine that Dr. Ben Carson and radio host Armstrong Williams are launching with the Washington Times. The following conversation played out between Raffi Williams and Lemieux:

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What’s interesting here is not the small-mindedness you see reflected in Ms. Lemieux’s tweets. No. What’s interesting here is that a senior editor of digital for a prominent national magazine was so blinded by bigotry, that she didn’t notice that she was spewing her hate for the whole world to see. 

That is the terrible paradox of liberal projectionism. In the age of social media, liberals can no longer throw the racist rock and hide their hand.

Indeed, the prevailing wisdom ensconced deep inside the mind of a generation of Americans that Republican conservatives are persistently racist is–and has always been–a lie. It has become a socially accepted fact by the sheer frequency of its repetition. And liberals, and especially black liberals like Ms. Lemieux, have convinced themselves that they, not conservatives, are the undisputed purveyors of inclusiveness and diversity of thought. But in reality, liberals like Ms. Lemieux live in the world’s smallest bubble. Emotionally disconnected from mainstream America, liberals claim the mantel of inclusion while excluding opinions they don’t like. 

That a lot of liberals are hypocrites who project their own bigotry onto others is not news. But because of social media, instances like the one between Raffi Williams and Ms. Lemieux are making liberal bigotry news more often than not.

It is unfortunate, however, that the election of Barack Obama–and the “post-racial” America his election was supposed to usher in–also coincided with a rise in racial disharmony egged on by the very same people who claimed they wanted to move beyond race.