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Bill O’Reilly asked Dr. Hill about President Obama’s new outreach initiative towards African-American communities. O’Reilly then looked at Dr. Hill and questioned how President Obama is going to reach out to these African-Americans, as he asked: “Are they going to be on Soul Train?” Now as hard as I tried not to let me laugh at this ‘Jim Crow Live on the Sunset Strip’ impersonation, because it was so racially pathetic and tastelessly insensitive—my laughter was eventually able to ease its way out, because watching old, conservative, White men trying to cash in their street credibility is always hilarious to me.

Then, O’Reilly tried to play it off by declaring that he is a huge fan of Soul Train and R&B music, especially The Mighty O’Jays, who O’Reilly claimed was one of his favorite groups. While Dr. Hill went into epileptic shock listening to O’Reilly’s proclaimed appreciation for a show that hasn’t been socially relevant in about 25 to 30 years.

Nevertheless, O’Reilly is what he is, and most of the time that’s not very much. In reality he probably knows as much about a Soul Train line as someone like me would know about catering a Ku Klux Klan rally. Then conservatives, including O’Reilly, have the nerve to question why so many African-Americans vote Democratic. Thankfully Dr. Hill schooled O’Reilly on the true entrails of the Obama outreach plan, which is to go into Black communities to communicate with the people on a social level and encourage everyday people and community leaders to make sure that they register to vote.

After that, somebody will probably throw on some Lil Wayne songs, and the First Lady Michele Obama, President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will all join with the rest of Democrats and do the world famous, Soul Train line. The House Republicans were asked to join in, but they all said what they usually say to President Obama—no!

While O’Reilly laughed it up calling Soul Train a very popular show, his ethnic insensitivity and his out-of-touch reality only helps to reaffirm the proverbial, political narrative of the old, rich, well-connected, Jim Crow beneficiary, conservative. He claims he’s not a racist, because he likes Herman Cain, but his views are based on often fear driven unfamiliarity with Blacks. It is the White American mindset that sells its house when an African-American family moves into the neighborhood.

O’Reilly’s Soul Train comment is very similar to the comment made by golfer Fuzzy Zoeller when he called Tiger Woods a little boy and asked the media not to serve fried chicken and collard greens for him. There’s nothing quite like watching proponents of the White-male-dominated-society throw a temper tantrum whenever it’s confronted by the color of minorities/outsiders who dare to challenge and or change the narrative of the established status quo’s dominant stranglehold on societal opportunities.

And furthermore, Bill O’Reilly may talk about R&B music and Soul Train when he’s using it to make fun of President Obama, but speaking as a viewer who watches The O’Reilly Factor regularly, it’s more than accurate to say that whenever O’Reilly has his ‘Culture Warrior’ segments on, his viewers will stand a better chance of seeing the dead, Osama Bin Laden photos than any chance they will probably have of seeing or hearing anything even remotely resembling Soul Train, R&B, or The Mighty O’Jays.

Neither Bill O’Reilly nor the Republican Party would recognize anything culturally significant about African-American experiences like Soul Train, even if Soul Train founder Don Cornelius tied them to an inner-city rail so one could bust a move and dance right over them. In fact, how about a 5 to 1 bet that O’Reilly wouldn’t know Don Cornelius from Don Corleone, if he was asked about it? It is to laugh, because in the end, people learn about what they want to know until change appears and gives them new material to reluctantly sort through. Even then there will always be die-hards waiting to be dragged kicking and screaming into the truth, into the new, and into the future.

Excerpts from the book The Fear of Being Challenged; I Am the Realacrat

“Every other night I see Bill O’Reilly promoting his icons of American culture, which are almost always White. I finally got to see Bill Cosby and Demond Wilson represented, because I was curious as to just how long it would take O’Reilly to show an African-American/minority entertainment icon; seeing as how I am bombarded with John Wayne and Clint Eastwood every other week. What is so special about John Wayne? You grew up on John Wayne. I grew up on John Wayne too, because he was the only game in town on the cowboy landscape; a landscape in which Native Americans were not even allowed to play Native Americans. Where are the Black cowboys in your culture warrior fan club? Oh, that’s right! Blacks couldn’t play cowboys back then either, because they couldn’t get the roles. Minorities as a whole were completely shut out of the process. Are these those highly touted good-old-days you conservatives like to hoist up all of the time O’Reilly?”

So to all of the Bill O’Reilly’s, Ann Coulter’s, Fuzzy Zoeller’s, and Rush Limbaugh’s, take it from a progressive, and just stick to what you know and what you do best, which is kissing Donald Trump’s ring every time he decides to drop it down the back of his trousers!

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