Last week, The New York Times did that thing it does and howled accusations of racism from its front page, accusing an NYPD officer of admitting to employing law enforcement tactics that target blacks and Hispanics. “Now,” the Greying Lady crowed, “a recording suggests that, in at least one precinct, a person’s skin color can be a deciding factor in who is stopped.”
The article was called “Recording points to race factor in stops by New York Police,” and straight from the headline it was a twisted crock of junk: A simple look at the conversation shows an incensed Deputy Inspector Christopher McCormack calling out a secretly wired Officer Pedro Serrano for attempting to put words into his mouth to make him appear to be a racist.
But this latest race-tinged lie is all old news now, and City Journal’s Heather Mac Donald already rode roughshod over the Times’ idiocy.
But speaking of old news, the whole Times-ginning-up-race-hate thing reminded us a couple of Times articles we’ve read over the years.
While the Greying Lady has, we would say, been a little hard on American blacks — publishing articles the likes of 1872’s “Troublesome negroes — Difficulties for the future — News from the seat of war — Miscellaneous Gossip” — they saved their true ire for the Chinese immigrants to our shores.
While articles like 1885’s “A CHINAMAN TO TAKE A WHITE WIFE” and “HOW CHINAMEN TREAT A BAD PLAY“ initially caused us to pause over our morning coffees, one article stirred such indignation in our breast that we could not turn away: An article entitled “THE SIMILARITY OF CHINAMEN.”
“Ten Chinamen yesterday disembarked on our shores from a Havana steamer in order to give trouble to the Federal authorities,” the Paper of Record began, continuing, “It is evident that the malignity of these Chinamen in looking so much like each other is likely to baffle the good intentions of Congress” — the latter phrase, “good intentions of Congress,” being one scarcely heard in the pages of the Times save, it seems, to smear the Chinese immigrant.
“Chinese names,” the reporter continues, incredibly, “do not afford much more clue than Chinese faces.”
After coming out against foreign people, faces and names, and after complaining that the money Chinese immigrants earn “washing the clothes of Americans” will “be spent in rioutous luxury in Canton instead of” in America, New York City’s third–best paper took a firm stance against immigration and in favor of self-deportation: “It is vain to hope for any sense of shame in the immigrant Chinaman,” it reads. “A man who will go to a country after being notified that he is not wanted will stick at nothing.”
After coming out in favor of enforcing existing immigration laws, however, the Times did have the decency to acknowledge the difficulty of their enforcement: “It is hard to see what can be done… No appraiser, even if he were selected for his proficiency in distinguishing Chinamen, could possibly tell ten newly smuggled Chinamen from ten Chinamen that had been imported when Chinamen were on the free list” of countries from which immigration is permitted.
In a rare instance of 123 years of consistency, the Greying Lady did come out emphatically against voter ID, though they cited practicality rather than racism: “It has been proposed that every Chinaman shall have his photograph attached to his certificate as a means of identification, but … Even if it were practical it would be useless,” the Times mourned. “If Chinamen cannot be told apart in the flesh still less can they be distinguished by photographs.”
The trouble with identification, the Times declared, is little different from voter fraud among black communities, where “in both cases the Caucasian mind has been unable to grapple successfully with the problem of making distinctions without differences.”
The Times did show an ounce of empathy, fretting over the troubles administrators must face in the immigrants’ native land, where they are forced to use “the color and cut of the barbarian’s hair and beard” to differentiate among their citizens. But as if they hadn’t been harsh enough in their reporting, The New York Times went one step further: “In view of the indistinguishableness of the Chinese immigrants,” it concluded, “it seems no device short of a numbered label padlocked into a certified Chinaman’s ear or nose will enable us to repel the invasion.”
Americans have heard quite a bit of righteous indignation from The New York Times over the past couple of centuries, and we at TheDC dare assume we will hear more before she runs out of billionaires willing to steward the old heiress as a vanity project.
But until the day the stewards take her off life support, we’re afraid the Greying Lady will continue to haunt the halls, pestering the young folk with her doddering conspiracies and off-color remarks in front of company.
We’ll put up with her for now. We know it can’t last.