Citing a new Fox News poll, conservative political commentator
Bill O'Reilly said that race relations in America had grown worse under Barack Obama because the president has facilitated the "grievance industry."
O'Reilly criticized Obama for welcoming the "racial agitator Al Sharpton" to the White House on multiple occasions, during the
"Talking Points Memo" of his Dec. 12 program. He reminded his audience that he had predicted "the rioting in Ferguson, Missouri, would actually bring more bias against blacks."
The Fox Poll showed that 55 percent of Americans — and 65 percent of whites — agreed with the decision of the Ferguson grand jury not to indict white cop Darren Wilson in the Aug. 9 shooting death of black teenager Michael Brown.
Only 12 percent of blacks agreed with the jury's call.
"The bottom line," said O'Reilly, was that Brown attacked Wilson. "When that happens, you're not going to get an indictment against a law enforcement agent, no matter what happens afterward."
He contrasted reaction to the Ferguson outcome with widespread disagreement over a New York grand jury's decision not to indict Daniel Pantaleo, a white Staten Island, New York cop, in the July chokehold death of Eric Garner. In this case, 57 percent of Americans disagreed with the jury's decision.
"It was clear from that Eric Garner was not a threat to the police," said O'Reilly. "He was an annoyance, a low-level street hustler. The vast majority of Americans do not want violence in situations like that."
The O'Reilly Factor host argued that "if white society were prejudiced against black people, that poll result would have been a lot different, would it not?"
The survey also found that 62 percent of Americans believed relations between the races had gotten worse since Obama became president.
O'Reilly said the reason was that, "Under President Obama, the grievance industry has taken off. The racial agitator Al Sharpton has been to the White House scores of times. The president has legitimized Sharpton and other provocateurs" adding that most Americans take a negative view of the "grievance industry."
Recalling the "God damn America" sermon delivered soon after the September 11, 2001 al-Qaida attacks on the U.S. by Obama's
Chicago minister Jeremiah Wright, O'Reilly blamed "race hustlers" for poisoning the minds of "a substantial minority" of blacks, thereby further straining race relations.
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