Journalist and correspondent Juan Williams speaking at Chautauqua Institution in 2007 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So, I was browsing Andrew Sullivan‘s Dish today when I came across a post about Fox News commentator Juan Williams‘ Wall Street Journal piece
about the Trayvon Martin tragedy.

Apparently, Juan is utterly confused about why African-Americans never protest black-on-black violence.

Ta-Nehisi Coates at The Atlantic  takes Williams apart:

Why Don’t Black People Protest ‘Black-on-Black Violence’?

As Coates correctly points out,

This is an interesting question. It’s also one that Juan Williams, who’s been writing about race for almost three decades, should be able to answer. Moreover, Williams is an award-winning journalist. Should he not know the answer, it would suit him to do his job and find out.

No matter.

What follows are a number of videos of just such protests happening in the last decade around the country.

Example:

http://cdn.abclocal.go.com/static/flash/embeddedPlayer/swf/otvEmLoader.swf?version=&station=wls&section=&mediaId=7416989&cdnRoot=http://cdn.abclocal.go.com&webRoot=http://abclocal.go.com&configPath=/util/&site=

Either way you look at it, Williams should be ashamed of himself.

If he simply failed to check the resources available at his fingertips, he’s a embarrassment as a journalist.

If he was making assertions he knew would bring comfort to the elderly white Americans who make us the vast majority of Fox News viewers, then he’s a hack following the well-worn script of the far right:

In the world of many Republicans, racism evaporated in 1964 with the Civil Rights Act.

The only REAL racism in America is that practiced by the half-dozen members of the New Black Panther Party, which explains why Fox devotes countless hours to covering their shenanigans.

Like all right-wing meme hacks, Williams never lets facts get in the way of a good story.

-Chris

Related articles

• TNC, Trayvon, and Juan (newyorker.com)
• The Trayvon Martin case shows US politics is rule by the dog whistle (newstatesman.com)