It's Time for the Black Community to Get John Stossel's Attention.

Where are my post-racial friends when I need them?

Recently, Rand Paul, the son of congressman and former presidential candidate Ron Paul, said that, while he supported the portion of the Civil Rights Act that banned discrimination in public places and institutions, he also thought that private businesses should be permitted to discriminate, by race.

Even before most of us could fully digest Paul’s misguided, Tea Party-pandering comments, along came John Stossel. Stossel, the former ABC News correspondent and current Fox News Channel contributor, rushed to Paul’s defense and went a huge, racially backward step further when he said it was “time to repeal” that part of the Civil Rights Act that mandates that all citizens – regardless of race – should have access to public accommodations, even in privately owned businesses.

Stossel’s outrageous position was that businesses should have “the right to be racist.” In fact, in a follow-up interview on his new network, he added that, “It’s time now to repeal the (Civil Rights Act's) Public Accommodations section because private businesses ought to get to discriminate."

It’s not just unsettling that a person running for one of the very highest political offices in the United States(Paul), and a person who happens to work for the most-watched cable news channel(Stossel) have, in the same week, become comfortable with publicly espousing their racial insensitivity. No, the most unsettling part of all of this is that the issues have been dispassionately discussed on the nation’s broadcast media outlets, if at all, as if they were merely a topic in a high school debating class.

This was two extraordinarily high-profile Americans talking casually about bringing back “Jim Crow,” and no one seemed to be very much concerned about it – especially not black people.

Perhaps we shouldn’t have expected much better from Stossel. This, after all, is the same guy who wrote a column a year-and-a-half ago, in which he liberally quoted noted black apologist Shelby Steele in saying that white “preoccupation with guilt and compensation, such as Affirmative Action, is actually a subtle form of racism.” Indeed, Stossel latched right onto Steele’s premise that, in this country, there is such a thing as “black privilege” that facilitates even the meager levels of black political and economic success, far beyond the levels to which our talent and hard work entitle us.

That’s the same John Stossel who just, two months ago, criticized black professional baseball players who took a public stand against the disproportionately low percentage of African Americans in major league baseball and their inability to receive contracts commensurate with those given to their white peers.

Stossel, one of the world’s most visible non-athletes, went on to say about black professional ballplayers who were dumped from major league baseball rosters this year, “They’re unemployed because they asked for more money than their skills warrant.” He offered no opinion, curiously, on the dramatic and systematic decline in the percentage of African-American players in major league baseball over the past 30 years, money notwithstanding.

The saddest part of all this is that because Stossel works in a highly competitive broadcast news industry, non-Fox television and cable news coverage of his negative, race-baiting message will be far more difficult to find than "Rand Paul" stories.

Even though Stossel’s comments were much more harmful and mean-spirited than Paul’s, a Google search shows 206 million results for “Rand Paul, Civil Rights Act,” and just 31,500 for a search of the topic “John Stossel, Civil Rights Act."

It has also been interesting to measure, online, what the response from our “national black Civil Rights” leaders has been. Ben Jealous, president of the NAACP, has moved right into the fray, launching an online campaign to invite Rand Paul to participate in a public debate with him on the history and significance of the Civil Rights Act. Google showed 504,000 results for “Rand Paul/NAACP” topics, but again, only 14,400 for “John Stossel/NAACP.” The National Urban League, by comparison, has been decidedly late out of the gate on this issue, with only 54,000 results for its interaction with Rand Paul, and only 3,920 for Urban League/Stossel-related news.

I’d like to believe that Rand Paul will break down and agree to debate the NAACP President, but I’m getting the feeling that his “handlers” have already lost confidence in his ability to defend himself, publicly, on this and other issues. The first clue in that regard was hearing that, over the past week, Paul had cancelled a previously scheduled appearance on "Meet the Press," becoming only the third person to have cancelled a "Meet the Press" interview in the show’s 62-year history.

Getting back to Stossel, there’s a movement to have FOX fire him for his remarks. Chances of that happening, in my opinion, are probably "slim" and "none." Stossel, who seemed to be floundering at FOX since his move from ABC has, for the first time, actually said something in his "anti-Civil Rights" statement that seems to resonate with the network’s primarily conservative, predominantly white, audience. It appears that the more he attacks the rights of blacks and other minorities, the more he says publicly what so many in the FOX audience wish they had the courage to say, the more job security he creates for himself.

The most curious part in all of this is how Stossel, who was born into a prominent Jewish family in Illinois, could have arrived in such a contentious position with regard to the Civil Rights Act. Even if he has absolutely no respect for black history or sensitivity to contemporary black-white disparities, I would think that Stossel would be keenly aware of the role that the Jewish community played in the Civil Rights movement and the drafting of the Civil Rights Act, itself.

Maybe Stossel, so caught up now in living the life of a high-profile, "mainstream," media personality, wants to forget that the Ku Klux Klan, historically, targeted not only blacks, but also Catholics and Jews.

Maybe now that he’s at FOX and integrally involved in "Tea Party world," Mr. Stossel has also conveniently forgotten that of the three men murdered by the Klan, in Philadelphia, Mississippi, in 1964, one, James Chaney was black, and two, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, were Jewish.

Stossel, no doubt, is trying really hard to forget that an estimated one-half of all white Freedom Riders were Jewish and that Jewish people were instrumental in drafting not only the 1964 Civil Rights Act but, also, the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

To be honest, the last time I paid any serious attention to John Stossel was during his now-infamous and very brief interview with World Wrestling Federation personality “Dr. D” David Schultz. Like it was yesterday, I recall Stossel making yet another ill-advised comment, this time saying to Schultz that many people in America believed that “professional wrestling is fake.”

Immediately after the words left Stossel’s mouth, Schultz hit him with an open-handed slap with his left, dropping the newsman to the ground. When Stossel popped back up, holding his head, and asked Schultz what he was trying to do, the wrestler popped him “upside the head” again, this time with a right-handed slap. Stossel dropped to the ground, once more, and, first, crawled, then ran, down the hallway, away from the wrestler. (If you don’t believe me, go on up to YouTube and view the video, yourself. It’s called “Wrestling is Fake”).

Now, I’m not generally a person who supports physical confrontation, but have you noticed that John Stossel hasn’t had very much to say about professional wrestlers since that incident?

Clearly, he needs at least a figurative slap from us on this Civil Rights issue--to get his attention, at least and, hopefully, to change his mind.



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