I heard this article mentioned today on the Tavis Smiley Show. So, I thought I'd read it here and offer my thoughts--fresh:

Whitey Need Not Apply
by Patrick Buchanan

"Will race be an issue in this campaign?"

Hearing the cable talk-show host solemnly pose the question, I could not suppress a belly laugh.

For the anchor was fearful that some white folks might reject Obama because he is African-American -- even as a Rasmussen poll was reporting that Barack is beating McCain among black voters 94 to 1.

What, other than race, explains how Barack rolled up 90-10 margins among black voters while running against Hillary Clinton, wife of the man novelist Toni Morrison dubbed "our first black president"?

Lalita: Pat, what, other than race, can explain the supermajority of whites in the GOP? Pat? Until the Dixiecrats staged their mass exodus from the Democratic Party in the 1960's over legislation designed to end Jim Crow and began shaping the goals and aims of the GOP, we were Republican. Remember?

Indeed, so one-sided was the primary coverage in favor of Barack as the first African-American with a real chance to be president, even "Saturday Night Live" took to mocking the mainstream media.

As for black radio, on "The Tom Joyner Morning Show," "Michael Baisden Show" and "The Steve Harvey Morning Show," which together may reach 20 million folks, there is "little pretense of balance," writes Jim Rutenberg of The New York Times. "More often than not the Obama campaign is discussed as the home team."

Lalita: Pat misses the overwhelming early support Hillary Clinton enjoyed over Barack Obama. It wasn't until we began to get to know him better, that we began to take his candidacy seriously. That, and the terrible job the Clinton surrogates did in reining in their troublesome comments--comments many of us have heard in our own lives. Hillary Clinton was, early on, our "home girl."

Black Entertainment Television plans to carry Barack's speech to the Democratic convention live, but has no plans to carry McCain's. Barack's speech "is an historic occasion," says BET Chairman Debra L. Lee, "so that demands some special treatment from us."

Lalita: John McCain made his interests in speaking to the Black community clear. He was asked to attend Tavis Smiley's Republican debate at Morgan State. He, and three other frontrunners failed to show up. I get the whole "discomfort" thing, but Pat, I'm rarely in the majority anywhere I travel. Get used to it.

As the mainstream media have moved left and talk radio right, and cable is breaking down along political and ideological lines, there is something else afoot now -- the racial Balkanization of the newsroom.

Consider. On Sunday, 6,800 folks showed in Chicago for the 2008 quadrennial convention of UNITY: Journalists of Color. McCain declined an invitation. Bush had been booed at UNITY 2004, while John Kerry got a standing ovation. Featured speaker: Barack. Major concern of the journalists running the show: that their colleagues would lift theroof off the McCormick Place convention center when Barack arrived.

Lalita: Senator McCain has vowed to end Affirmative Action (note: not race or gender-based discrimination in the workplace--a very real, terrible occcurance), citing his disdain for "quotas." Senator McCain, there's a difference between Sunni's and Shi'a, Iran wasn't shown to be training members of Al Queda in Iraq, Iran doesn't borden Afghanistan--Iraq dues, and quotes have not been part of Affirmative Action since the Supreme Court struck them down in 1979.

Oh, and there's the little matter of your curiously vehement refusal to suppor the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. national holiday as a representative of your home state.

We, Negroes, have long and accurate memories, John.

Said Luis Villareal, a producer of NBC's "Dateline," "I don't think it's such a bad thing if for 15 minutes you take off your reporter hat and respond to (Obama) as a human being at an event where you're surrounded by people of color and you're here for a united cause."

And exactly what "cause" might the 10,000 members of UNITY be united behind? The hiring and advancement of journalists of color in all major news organizations in America.

Lalita: Yup, Pat. You're spot-on about the agenda of Unity. If you haven't been paying attention (which, as it happens, you haven't been), there has been a boom in men and women of color and white women in front of the camera and in the pundit play pen. This coincided with the emergence of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama as frontrunners. Another hint: when the topic of immigrations comes up, the top newscasters dust off their lonely Hispanic analyst or--barring that--charmingly, comedians.

For, as its emblem depicts, UNITY comprises four alliances: the Asian American Journalists Association, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, the Native American Journalists Association and the National Association of Black Journalists.

"A New Journalism for a Changing World" is UNITY's motto. And the title of its July 22 press release reveals what the "new journalism" is all about. "Aim of New UNITY Initiative Is More Diversity in Top Media Management."

"With more than 50 percent of the population projected to be people of color in less than a generation," says UNITY President Karen Lincoln Michel, "the nation's news organizations continue to generate dismal diversity numbers year after year. ... 'Ten by 2010' is a significant step in the right direction."

What is Ten by 2010?

UNITY is demanding that 10 major U.S. news organizations, by mid-2010, elevate to a senior management position in the newsroom at least one journalist of color and provide "customized training to help prepare them."

The journalist may be Asian, African-American, Native American or Hispanic, which rules out journalists of Irish, English, Polish, Italian, German or Jewish ancestry, since they are white.

Lalita: Pat, you are kidding, right? Something else you're failing to report is the fact that Blacks, Hispanics and women of all colors have been tuning into the news in droves. They've also been writing and calling news managers to ask why they're getting the news from people who don't look like them.

This, friend Pat, is the free market at work.

Is this what we have come to 50 years after the triumph of the civil rights movement? Flat-out demands, by American journalists, for the hiring and promotion of colleagues based on race and color?

Is there any evidence major news organizations in this country have engaged in systematic discrimination to keep out men or women of color this last half century? The reverse seems true. They have bent over backward to advance minority journalists.

And if journalists have been hired and promoted based on ability and merit, why in the 21st century should these criteria be thrown out as the standards for advancement -- in favor of race and color?

Isn't this what they did in the days of Jim Crow -- hire and promote based on race? What UNITY is calling for is a return to the old rules but with new beneficiaries -- blacks, Hispanics, Asians and Native Americans -- and new victims, all of whom will be white.

Lalita: I'm not for the exclusion of anybody on the basis of their race, gender, religion or any other protected class. I'd be willing to consider that Black, Asian, Native American and Hicpanic journalists just aren't as qualified for advancement or promotion as long as you're willing to consider that there may be systemmic, unintended barriers to their advancement...and be equally willing to address them.

On Sunday, McCain came out in favor of an Arizona civil rights initiative that would outlaw any state discrimination either for or against folks, based on race, gender or national origin. Barack said he was "disappointed" with McCain and told UNITY he favors affirmative action "when properly structured."

Lalita: There is very little wrong with Affirmative Action law. The problem is with the people who enforce it. I've been an AA officer and can tell you that managers and (listen up here) human resources staffers know very little about the law--what it does, what it provides for, what's illegal. I've had to tell HR staffer and manager over and other that quotas exist only in their own minds, that no one gets hired without being qualified and such. They frequently don't listen.

Eventually they get sued.

And I laugh evilly to myself.

The Arizona referendum banning preferential treatment based on race is also on the ballot in the swing state of Colorado. It won in California in 1996, in Washington in 2000 and in Michigan in the great Democratic sweep of 2006. It has never lost, and may just win McCain Colorado, and with it the nation.

Lalita: I think Senator McCain is playing to the fearful part of his base, plain and simple. Preferential treatment based on race is already illegal. The program to monitor and ensure that it stays that way is called "Affirmative Action."

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