CBS News has declared words and phrases like “blacklist” and “Black Monday” racist.
“Many headlines referred to the stock market plunge yesterday as ‘Black Monday,’ and that is just one of the subtle and not-so-subtle ways that racism has been braided into our everyday culture,” CBS This Morning co-anchor Tony Dokoupil announced on Tuesday.
The segment that followed attacked a number of other words and, of course, our Founding Fathers as racist, by way of a book — Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America — aimed at children as young as 12. The book is written by CBS News contributor Ibram X. Kendi and co-author Jason Reynolds.
Transcript courtesy of NewsBusters:
CO-ANCHOR MICHELLE MILLER: And speaking of the book, so many misconceptions and truly lies throughout the history of what children are taught about their history. I hate to put it that directly, but, you know, when you go back and you look at people like a Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, these founding fathers who were so revered, how do you re-teach that?
CBS NEWS CONTRIBUTOR AND AUTHOR IBRAM X. KENDI: Well, I think first and foremost you ask the question, what does it mean that a slave holder heralded the American philosophy of freedom? And so you sort of start there. And then I think young people can understand the contradictions. And I think that’s one of the things we’re trying to show them through this book.
…
CBS CO-ANCHOR ANTHONY MASON: Tony made reference to it in introducing you, even terms like “Black Monday,” “Black Sheep,” can be freighted with a negative connotation that sometimes we don’t even realize.
MILLER: Baked into the vocabulary.
MASON: Yeah.
[ONSCREEN GRAPHIC: Words With Negative Connotations: Black Monday, Black Sheep, Blackballing, Blackmail, Blacklisting]
KENDI: Yeah, and I don’t think we even realize when you have a skin color and regular color and we’re connoting both in a negative fashion. There are relationships between the two and I think we have to break not only the relationship, but those negative connotations.
Whoa, whoa, whoa…
Why doesn’t CBS News disclose all the words and terms where “black” is used as a positive?
For instance “in the black” means you’re making a profit. “Black Friday” is the best shopping day of the season for retailers because it puts them “in the black.”
“Black belt” is the highest achievement in a particular sport. “Black tie event” is shorthand for a top-shelf get together. American Express calls its most exclusive and elite credit card the “Black Card.”
CBS also didn’t bother to inform its viewers of all the ways in which “white” is used as a negative.
“Whiteout” is shorthand for a terrible winter storm.
“White as a sheet” describes someone’s who’s sick.
“White flight” is a pejorative for people who move to the suburbs.
“White feather” is a symbol of cowardice.
“Whitewash” is a negative term used to describe a dishonest cover-up.
Well, we all know why CBS failed to present any responsible context… Its motives are sinister.
In 1984, George Orwell warned of how outlawing words — and this can be done though social ostracism, which is how the media elite operate — is how you control speech; and if you control speech, you control the political debate, and if you control the political debate, you control the people.
A good example is how the media have disappeared the term “illegal immigrant” and replaced it with “undocumented immigrant.”
You see, “illegal immigrant” is too precise, too effective at describing a person in the country illegally.
And so, because the media and the left (but I repeat myself) want the country flooded with illegals, who they see as future Democrat voters, the fuzzy and misleading term “undocumented immigrant” was deliberately invented to make it sound as though someone who broke into our country illegally is simply an immigrant who misplaced their driver’s license.
Calling an “illegal immigrant” an “undocumented immigrant” is like calling a house burglar an “undocumented tenant.”
Another reason for these obscene attacks on our language is to keep changing the rules, and the sillier the better. This creates a Kafka-esque environment where everyone is frozen in fear of being called a racist. The goal is to bully us into silence and retreat.
Basically, CBS is launching a deliberate campaign of terror meant to chill and cripple debate, discussion, and the free flow of ideas… And this campaign is backed by the threat of being Scarlet Letter’d as a racist.
The fact a so-called news outlet is pushing this propaganda, the very institution that should be protecting speech, most especially precise speech, tells you just how far gone, dangerous, illiberal, and un-American this institution’s become.
But just don’t call them the enemy of the people, because that would be wrong.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.
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