Barack Obama and the Jim Crow Media: The Return of the Nigger Breakers By Ishmael Reed

Mr. Reed, tell us how you really feel, LOL! Dag, Ismael Reed is bringing the pain. I don't have a problem with the title but given the current political climate he might be mistaken for a tea bagger rather than a brilliant cultural critic and novelist. GI

See also:

• "Precious"--again: Jared Ball interviews Ishmael Reed

• What Obama would have us ignore.

Featured books

Barack Obama and the Jim Crow Media

The Return of the Nigger Breakers

By Ishmael Reed

Available April 15, 2010

For Ishmael Reed, Barack Obama is being tormented, like Michelangelo’s St. Anthony, but by modern reincarnations of the demonic spirits used to break slaves. They were the “Nigger Breakers”—men like Edward Covey, who was handed the job of breaking Frederick Douglass. Now the media play that role, with their whip being a custom-made yardstick that they never used to measure other politicians.

“Isn’t it ironic,” writes Reed: “A media that scolded the Jim Crow South in the 1960s now finds itself hosting the bird…. In terms of its attempt to build a media that “looks like America,” the media are as white as a KKK picnic.”

Read more @Baraka Books

barack obama, Ishmael Reed, media