Newspaper headline calls Obama 'The N***er in the White House'
theGRIO REPORT - "The N*gger in the White House" - that's the headline for a recent articled published in the WestView News, a newspaper servicing residents of New York's Lower West Side...
“The N*gger in the White House” that’s the headline for a recent articled published in the WestView News, a newspaper servicing residents of New York’s Lower West Side.
The racially insensitive headline was in reference to President Obama and is printed above an opinion piece written by author and journalist James Lincoln Collier. In the article, Collier actually writes in support of Obama and calls out far-right voters who “hate Obama because he is black.”
“The simple truth is that there is still in America an irreducible measure of racism,” Collier writes.
“America’s increasing tolerance of far-right opinion has made racism more acceptable,” he adds.
However, many readers thought the headline was a cheap and vulgar way to bring shock value to a story and criticized the author and editor for publishing such an offensive headline.
In a statement released by the publication’s editor/publisher George Capsis, Collier “wanted to use the word” to “shock us into accepting that there are people who believe and use this outrageous word,” according to the New York Post.
Instead, while his mission may have been to entice readers and attract supporters of Obama, Collier fell to a terrible decision that instead brought him much negative backlash.
In a separate op-ed posted on the same page, directly below Collier’s, one African-American columnist penned a piece titled, “The Headline Offends Me.”
The article, written by Alvin Hall writes: “The decision to use the headline feels misguided to me. I don’t see how its use benefits anyone, but I do feel all too clearly how it deeply offends me.”
Follow Lilly Workneh on Twitter @Lilly_Works.
