Leftist corporate media are some of the loudest cheerleaders for the racial reparations movement. “Despite pockets of momentum in various cities, the fight for reparations is an uphill struggle,” The New York Times sympathetically reported earlier this month. “How Reparations for Black Americans Have Gained Steam” was the title of an analysis last month in The Washington Post, which regularly features op-eds and stories promoting racial reparations. “S.F.’s bold reparations plan should become a reality,” declared the San Francisco Chronicle on July 9.
Yet despite their many thousands of printed words on the subject, these zealous outlets are curiously quiet regarding one aspect of the racial reparations narrative: what they should do about their own often egregious complicity in the same historical racism they now claim requires remuneration. Though the story is not as well known, the very same outlets that demand that America’s governments, universities, and churches cough up billions of dollars to right historical wrongs are also responsible for grave racial injustices.
An Embarrassing Journalistic Heritage
The Washington Post, for example, was founded by racist Confederate sympathizer Stilson Hutchins, who in 1863 emphatically announced his opposition to slavery, asking, “Who wants Iowa covered with indolent blacks?”
During the “Red Summer” of 1919, black Americans in more than three dozen cities were subjected to racially motivated violence often spurred on by local newspapers. In Washington, D.C., white mobs attacked black people and businesses for four days. The Washington Post contributed to that violence, featuring the front-page headline “Mobilization
