A Very Dumb Question That An Experienced African American Journalist Never Should Have Asked In The First Place

On Friday, MSNBC's Mara Schiavocampo published an article entitled "CAN BLACK JOURNALISTS COVER OBAMA FAIRLY?." Let's skip over the fact that it is a completely outrageous and horrendously stupid question with a no-brainer obvious answer of "yes, they can because they are professionals." What exactly is the point of posing this question in the first place?

I imagine that African American journalists get othered enough in the workplace everyday without one of their own colleagues asking a pointless and polarizing question about their professionalism. And if Schiavocampo really wanted a provocative and interesting discussion, the question she should have asked "ARE WHITE JOURNALISTS COVERING OBAMA FAIRLY?" That is a question that really needs to be asked.

MSNBC'S Andrea Mitchell's coverage of Barack Obama's overseas trip was so biased, I wanted to kick in my television every time she was reporting. At one point she actually implied that Obama was engaging in illegal campaigning, she actually said the phrase "against the law." Salon's Joan Walsh struggles covering Obama without referring back to her candidate of choice, Hillary Clinton. Every racial incident, every time Michelle Obama gets bashed, she acts like she is sympathetic and then, she says well if Obama had stood up for sexism when Hillary was running..... Doesn't matter if Hillary is not part of the story or not, Walsh finds a way to bring her in.

Ryan Lizza of The New Yorker told a bald-faced lie with a completely straight face, that his magazine editor did not chose to run the "you have to be an idiot to think this would not be controversial" cartoon cover of Barack and Michelle Obama. Rachel Sklar of The Huffington Post wrote a completely bogus story of the Obama campaign barring New Yorker reporters from his recent overseas trip. A total falsehood. Not to mention the racist and sexist shenanigans of the entire Fake News Network.

Mara Schiavocampo is way off base here. Her question assumes that black people are a giant black monolith that thinks alike. This question is no different than the question, are all black people going to vote for Barack Obama? It assumes that black people have no judgment, no free will, that they are doing something wrong. These types of questions regardless of who is asking are flat-out wrong. These are not the kind of questions that white people ask each other and it is certainly not the questions that black people should be asking each other.