Bill O'Reilly has been on a jag about race relations in America ever since President Obama was elected into the Oval Office. In recent months his attacks on black America have reached a crescendo with his insane notions of what drives poverty in America. On Monday night Megyn Kelly joined Bill to debate the theory of white privilege in America. In Bill's world, there is no such thing as white privilege and the essence of poverty in black America are absentee fathers and teenage girls having sex and making babies. Megyn Kelly backed up the data that supports the "white privilege" theory and schooled him on it.
O'REILLY: So do you believe in the white privilege theory?
KELLY: It's got a lot of evidence behind it. If you look at the statistics, Bill, they're alarming. And I did a little research before the segment. Just to tick off a few for your viewers. Black unemployment rate in Ferguson is three times the white unemployment rate. Black men between the ages of 16 and 24 have an almost 50 percent unemployment rate, for whites, it's 16 percent. In the United States, a black child is almost four times as likely to live in a poor neighborhood as a white child is. 20 percent of white kids are in single parent homes. 52 percent of black kids are. The incarceration rate is six times higher for blacks than it is for whites.
There is segregated housing in Ferguson. There's underperforming schools. Both of those correlate strongly with low prospects in life. And this area, St. Louis, has a noticeably disadvantaged situation when it comes to folks who are born poor getting out of poverty over the course of their life. Places like Seattle, you got a real shot at it. Places like St. Louis, not so much. All of that, and not to mention in 2008, the Bureau of Justice stats came out with this figure: blacks are almost three times as likely as whites to be subjected to force or threatened with it by police. All of that explains the numbers by Pew that show that just 18 percent of blacks are confident in this Michael Brown investigation. 52 percent of whites are. 65 percent of blacks say the cops went too far. 33 percent of whites do. Those numbers are all correlated, Bill. They are all correlated.
Snap! Anyone with a brain understands how deep racism runs in the veins of America no matter how many denials white conservatives utter.
Bill then switched tactics and praised what he calls the "Asian success" stories to defend his theory Kelly easily swatted away.
"It all comes down to family, culture, personal responsibility,” O'Reilly continued, contrasting black culture with what he called the "Asian success story." “All of these things which we don’t hear anything, or much about, and this is what drives the poverty.”"It's not just family culture," Kelly countered.
"The black population feels forgotten, Bill. That's why they feel resentful," she added. "They don't believe the justice system is gonna give them a fair shake, they don't believe the economic system is gonna give them a fair shake. President Obama made all sorts of promises that didn't come through, their Democratic governor in Missouri made all sorts of promises that didn't come true. They have very few people to trust."
Karoli also made a good observation about Kelly's tactics:
Megyn Kelly took Bill O'Reilly through the statistics on disparities between blacks and whites in this country in what appeared to be an effort to get him to understand that there really are differences -- in unemployment, poverty, education and more.
Not so fast, Megyn. Because Fox News just can't make the case without also using it to pound on the President. Toward the end of her conversation, with no irony whatsoever, she said "President Obama made all sorts of promises that didn't come true. Their Democratic governor in Missouri made all sorts of promises that didn't come true. They have very few people to trust."
I see what you did there, Megyn. No mention of the majority Republican legislature in Missouri? No mention of the failure to expand Medicaid, an option that would have helped many of Ferguson's citizens rise a little bit higher toward the rungs of success?
White privilege is getting to go on national television and pretend like you care about the issues in the black community while dumping on the black president.
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