Sometimes the dog whistles on Fox News are very loud indeed; anyway, this exchange seems to epitomize the mission of Fox News
Now of course while it seems that O'Reilly and his guest, Professor Marc Lamont Hill, an occasional guest on his show, have the ability to have a mutual laugh and tease exchange over this, the fact of the matter is that O'Reilly's aside points to a deep racism on his part, just as it likely points to a deep racism on the part of an audience that not only lets him get away with this but actively cheers him on.
And of course, the racism that this jokey aside represents has is not without some serious consequences.
For example, we well know that Black Males Still Take the Biggest Hit from Discrimination
It's a well known fact that if a young black male is driving a luxurious vehicle and taking precaution on the road, most police consider him suspicious and pull him over. Since it's against the law for an officer to pull over a vehicle without probable cause, when they spot a "suspicious" vehicle they stop the driver for a traffic violation.
This is racial profiling and it has been going on since the early 80's. Most of this discrimination originated from the stereotype that young Black males are the major culprits of America's drug trade. Some states such as Florida even distributed guidelines to the police which described the "characteristics" of drug dealers. In 1985, the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles told officers to be suspicious of rental cars, drivers wearing a surplus of gold and who don't fit the vehicle, and ethnic groups who are known to be associated with the drug trade. You can find this list of "characteristics" on their web site.
It is ironic that the stereotype of drug dealers is that they are people of color. According to the Physician Leadership on National Drug Policy (PLNLP), 50% of heroin users are educated Whites and 60% of cocaine users are White.
There is also i
ncreased evidence of the links between being a young, poor Black male and experiencing feelings of depression and hopelessness. For example,
a recent study, “Taking It Like a Man: Masculine Role Norms as Moderators of the Racial Discrimination–Depressive Symptoms Association Among African-American Men,” published online in the American Journal of Public Health lays out the following:
Enduring subtle, insidious acts of racial discrimination is enough to depress anyone, but African-American men who believe that they should respond to stress with stoicism and emotional control experience more depression symptoms, according to new findings from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Of course, none of this matters in the racist fantasy world of Fox News in which white conservative are always the victims and everyone else, especially scary looking young Black males are always the villains. And young Black males are still scary even when they have the letters PhD attached to their names.