Culture

“One July week in 1900 an obscure black laborer named Robert Charles drew national headlines when he shot twenty-seven whites—including seven policemen—in a series of encounters with the New Orleans police,” begins a summary of Carnival of Fury: Robert Charles and the New Orleans Race Riot of 1900 by William Ivy Hair, published in 2008. “An…

It is possible that contemporary America has seen three days as stunning, violent and racially charged as those that ended this week, but the nation certainly did not have the technology then to bring so much to the public so swiftly. Cellphone videos. Live transmissions via social media. 24-hour news cycles. For good measure, a…

With the exception of ABC-TV’s “Good Morning America,” according to the Rev. Al Sharpton, the broadcast network morning shows ignored Tuesday’s fatal shooting of 37-year-old Alton Sterling, an African American, by a Baton Rouge, La., police officer. On cable news, meanwhile, Tyler Cherry and Alex Kaplan of Media Matters for America reported that their analysis…

The news media, once criticized as giving Donald Trump free publicity for thinly veiled racist pronouncements, pounced so hard on a tweet sent Saturday by the GOP candidate that Trump quickly altered its controversial image and accused the media of being “dishonest.” “Donald Trump tweeted a meme Saturday that used dog-whistle anti-Semitism to announce that…

“Donald Trump’s support among African-American voters has plunged to a new low—and the New York Daily News wanted to make sure the Republican presidential candidate knew it,” Ed Mazza reported Wednesday for the Huffington Post. “According to the Quinnipiac University poll, just 1 percent of African-American voters supported Trump. That was well behind the 6…

The trade organization representing the black press called out Facebook Monday as the latest threat to its existence, declaring that because of its inscrutable choices about stories what to display, “Our readers are at the mercy of powers unheard and unseen as never before.” Denise Rolark-Barnes, chairperson of the National Newspaper Publishers Association, and Benjamin…

“Amid a renewed national conversation about race in the U.S., a new Pew Research Center survey finds profound differences between black and white Americans in views on racial discrimination, barriers to black progress and the prospects for change,” Pew reported on Monday. “Blacks, far more than whites, say black people are treated unfairly across different…

“CNN drew a fair share of criticism—and some shrugs—when it announced Thursday the hiring of recently fired Donald Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski as a political commentator,” Kelly McBride and Benjamin Mullin wrote Friday for the Poynter Institute. “The pushback from journalists was twofold. First, Lewandowski was recorded on video manhandling Breitbart journalist Michelle Fields…