TELLING WRIGHT FROM WRONG:

Ugly racial litmus tests (Ruben Navarrette, October 25, 2009, San Diego Union Tribune)

Black conservatives Clarence Thomas, Shelby Steele, Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams and others know what it's like to be deemed inadequately black. So does Bill Cosby, who was raked over the coals by academics and other members of the African-American left for sharing uncomfortable truths about what ails the black community.

Another person who has done that effectively and has the bruises to show for it is my friend Juan Williams, a Fox News contributor and analyst for National Public Radio.

Recently, during an appearance on Fox's “The O'Reilly Factor,” Williams defended Rush Limbaugh's free-speech rights and criticized NFL owners for caving into racial intimidation tactics. Left-wing radio talk show host Warren Ballentine, who was also on the segment, disagreed with Williams and said that Limbaugh's comments were offensive to “real black people.” After Williams pushed back with another rebuttal, Ballentine — clearly out of ammunition — landed a cheap shot, telling Williams to “go back to the porch.”

The inference: That Williams is an Uncle Tom.

This isn't Williams' first rodeo. The arbitrators of blackness went after him in 2006 for his insightful book “Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America — And What We Can Do About It.” They did it again in 2007 when he defended Bill O'Reilly for an innocent comment that O'Reilly made on his radio show about how he had visited a restaurant in Harlem and “couldn't get over the fact that there was no difference” between the black-run establishment and others in New York City. Professor Boyce Watkins of Syracuse University responded by calling Williams a “happy Negro” during an appearance on CNN.

Lovely. Maybe besides the racial litmus test, there's some professional jealousy at work here since Williams has such a large audience.

Pity poor President Obama who had to use the Reverend Wright to prove he was "real black people," only to find that if you want to appeal to a broader constituency that's a bit too black

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 25, 2009 8:55 AM