Racist Anti-Obama Campaign No Longer Stealth: O'Reilly's Lynching Threat, Lies About Faith and More

Alternet.org
February 21, 2008

I've noticed a certain uptick in scaremongering stories and racist drivel about Barack Obama coming out of the wingnut media machine since he started to gain enough momentum that it looks like it's possible he'll be on the ballot come November. And while the wingnuts still hate McCain, they'll eventually get over it. What this uptick really says to me is that they're gearing up for the day that they no longer have Hillary Clinton to kick around anymore.

Consider the wingnuttosphere a test lab for the mainstream media and its anti-Democrat bias. They try out all kinds of wacky theories to see what will grab the attention of the mainstream media and get pushed out there as fact. So far, they've focused mostly on their favorite target, Hillary Clinton, but as Obama gains momentum, they're starting to hedge their bets and go after him. It's slow right now, because that sweet, sweet Clinton-hating is a hard habit to break, but eventually they'll have to give it up almost entirely, with only the occasional fix.

And when I saw that O RLY had magnanimously declined to lynch Michelle Obama over some comments of hers -- for the moment -- and that the Cornerites had put out the theory that Obama is the product of a secret breeding program of Communist Jewish women and black men (feel the moral panic! Black men with white women! Jewish intellectuals! Commieeeeees!), I knew it had started.

You thought the "Barack HUSSEIN Obama" and the madrassa things were the worst they had? They're just getting warmed up.

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Google This: Algorithmic Oppression

Imagine you've forgotten once again the difference between a gorilla and a chimpanzee, so you do a quick Google image search of “gorilla." But instead of finding images of adorable animals, photos of a Black couple pop up.

Is this just a glitch in the algorithm? Or, is Google an ad company, not an information company, that's replicating the discrimination of the world it operates in? How can this discrimination be addressed and who is accountable for it?

“These platforms are encoded with racism," says UCLA professor and best-selling author of Algorithms of Oppression, Dr. Safiya Noble. “The logic is racist and sexist because it would allow for these kinds of false, misleading, kinds of results to come to the fore…There are unfortunately thousands of examples now of harm that comes from algorithmic discrimination."

On At Liberty this week, Dr. Noble joined us to discuss what she calls “algorithmic oppression," and what needs to be done to end this kind of bias and dismantle systemic racism in software, predictive analytics, search platforms, surveillance systems, and other technologies.

What you can do:
Take the pledge: Systemic Equality Agenda
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