Race and Unreason in L.A.
5th May 2016
David Cole deconstructs the L.A. Times.
Yet, as bad a paper as it is, the Times does possess one unique quality: a highly entertaining obsession with race. The Times can take any story, about any topic, and spin it to be racial. Accuracy and relevance are immaterial; all that matters is finding some way, any way, to cram some aspect of minority suffering or white devilry into every story. For example, last November, Times journalist and wise Latina Carolina Miranda felt the need to pause her review of a one-man Ben Vereen tribute show in order to remind her readers that the Republican Party “hadn’t historically had a warm relationship with African Americans.” Yes, “historically,” blacks never supported the party of Lincoln, emancipation, abolition, Reconstruction, antilynching laws, anti-Klan laws, and the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments.
If you’re not reading the Times, this is the kind of incisive reporting you’re missing out on.
Imagine my disappointment.
To the Times, “white privilege” is as much a part of L.A. as the smog. So how do L.A.’s privileged whites rank in the new study? First? Second? Third? Try fourth. In terms of household median net worth, whites in L.A. rank behind Japanese, Asian Indian, and Chinese households. In terms of median total value of assets, whites also come in fourth after Japanese, Asian Indians, and Chinese. That’s the face of “white privilege” in L.A.—totally not white. And the L.A. Times? Totally not interested.
Well, for Social Justice Warriors, Asians are ‘honorary white people’, so that’s not surprising. (Any ethnic group whose average IQ is higher than the average IQ of a Fashionable Minority are Virtual White People ipso facto, and possessors of ‘white privilege’ — which will certainly surprise the Japanese who were interned during WWII.)