In other news, Bill O’Reilly is still a racist blowhard who should spend less time talking and more time listening.
It’s frankly embarrassing that Bill O’Reilly could be so oblivious to the blatant subtext of his own words. But sadly, it’s the same logic that’s used to spook people about “illegal voters.” It’s not about people of color or women have political power, they say; it’s about people of color and women leaning largely toward the Left.
Respectfully, this is totally B.S.
I actually got an argument about this with a friend-of-a-friend, just a few months back. It started as a discussion about voter ID laws, which I explained had recently been used in places like North Carolina to suppress black votes. “You just want all the black people to vote because they vote Democrat!” the other guy said to me.
“No,” I replied. “I want black people to be able to vote because they’re US citizens with a right to vote.”
The other guy thought this was stupid.
(Of course, when the North Carolina GOP got caught in the act of voter suppression, even they argued that it wasn’t about race, but about stopping people from voting for the Democratic Party.)
The lesson that the Bill O’Reilly’s of the world should be taking away from this is: perhaps there’s a reason why POCs and women tend to vote liberal. Maybe, just maybe, it’s because conservative platforms are at best, unwelcoming to them, and at worst, actively oppress them? And maybe instead of dividing things up into race and party lines, maybe we need to be looking at what the best ways are to help people, in the ways that we both need and want to be helped, so that we can improve our society as a whole.
(This is not to say that the DNC is necessarily better at handling issues of race, gender, or privilege; but they do at least try to address them, which is more than I can say for the RNC.)
If Mr. O’Reilly actually wanted people to stop thinking “in terms of race,” then he would first need to abolish the White Establishment. “True meritocracy,” for those who desire it, is also impossible without first abolishing the white establishment. Because issues of race are rooted in the existence of “whiteness” as a concept, which creates tension with those who are deemed “other.”
tl;dr — Bill O’Reilly continues to be a loud-mouthed, narrow-minded idiot who refuses to examine his own pre-conceived notions about the world. Surprise?
