Few movie stars have been more exalted than Tom Hanks. You’d never expect a guy with his nice-guy branding to get a strong slap in the face in the political arena. But Hanks penned a “guest essay” for The New York Times lecturing on racism, which opened him up for a shaming from the left.
On June 4, Hanks boasted about how he bores people at parties with his historical knowledge but lamented growing up in the schools of Oakland and never hearing a word about the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921. It was “systematically ignored, perhaps because it was regarded as too honest, too painful a lesson for our young white ears.”
He admitted they were taught about slavery and Harriet Tubman, Crispus Attucks, George Washington Carver, Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King Jr. and the Ku Klux Klan. It wasn’t a “whitewash.”
Hanks sounded like a liberal who makes documentaries for CNN: “When people hear about systemic racism in America, just the use of those words draws the ire of those white people who insist that since July 4, 1776, we have all been free, we were all created equally, that any American can become president and catch a cab in Midtown Manhattan no matter the color of our skin, that, yes, American progress toward justice for all can be slow but remains relentless. Tell that to the century-old survivors of Tulsa and their offspring.”
Talk about constructing a straw man! Almost no white American who reveres the Fourth of July and feels proud about our racial progress since the Civil War or the Civil Rights Act suggests our history was all sunshine and roses and racial harmony.
Then Hanks was lined up for the dunk tank. On June 13, NPR television critic Eric Deggans penned a piece for their website titled “Tom Hanks Is A Non-Racist. It’s Time For Him To Be Anti-Racist.” Deggans proclaimed that he liked Hanks and his work … but as a subhead warned, “He’s built a career playing righteous white men.”
Deggans wrote, “I know the toughest thing for some white Americans — especially those who consider themselves advocates against racism — is to admit how they were personally and specifically connected to the elevation of white culture over other cultures.” He complained Hanks has “built a sizable part of his career on stories about American white men ‘doing the right thing.'”
Somehow, making movies like “Saving Private Ryan” and “Apollo 13” and “Forrest Gump” is aggressively defined as a malignant whiteness-elevating conspiracy: “Baby boomer filmmakers have made fortunes amplifying ideas of white American exceptionalism and heroism.” Now Hanks needs to make amends and be an “anti-racist” and acknowledge Hollywood’s responsibility “now lies with helping dismantle and broaden the ideas they helped cement in the American mind.”
When conservatives mocked Deggans for hammering this “systemic racism” anvil — that it’s never enough for white people to be “non-racist”; you have to be “anti-racist” with soul-cleansing, leftist-pleasing activism — his NPR colleagues rallied around his sermon.
No one should expect NPR would allow an opposing point of view or an actual debate. Instead, on the June 15 edition of the hilariously titled “All Things Considered” newscast, they offered Deggans five minutes to expand on his Hanks-bashing thesis.
This underlines how NPR takes our tax dollars and uses them to enforce an ideological hard line that shames Hollywood and its liberal titans as insufficiently woke. NPR exists to “dismantle ideas” that whites in Hollywood “helped cement in the American mind.” Does that sound like journalism or activism comes first in “public broadcasting”?
Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Tim Graham, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
When conservatives mocked Deggans for hammering this “systemic racism” anvil — that it’s never enough for white people to be “non-racist”; you have to be “anti-racist” with soul-cleansing, leftist-pleasing activism — his NPR colleagues rallied around his sermon.
No one should expect NPR would allow an opposing point of view or an actual debate.
Typical of disgraceful, dishonorable Democrats.
Have you ever wondered why black people don’t have to be “anti-racist”??
Yusra Khogali, leader of the “anti-racist” Black Lives Matter movement, does not hide her hatred of white people in her comments on social media.
Maybe this is why i have yet to see his latest film, Greyhound, make it to DVD anywhere i can rent it, or check it out from my local library… CAUSE THE LEFT have blacklisted it…
If it’s any comfort to Tom Hanks, The Black Race is Racist and Intolerant as any Race composed of human beings can be. The Black Race Isn’t immune from having prejudices , witness Mayor Lightfoot giving Black races Reporters a Interview with her, only others of the Black Race need to attempt to interview her, ” No White Race need to even attempt to interview her she said publically, if this isn’t being Racist and Intolerant, no one of another Race can be charged with being a ” A Racist and Intolerant either…
From even friends i’ve had who were blacks, they seem to be MORE racist than whites have ever been. “You ain’t black enough. You’re too black.” and so on.
Hey television critic Eric Deggans, take NPR and go to communist Cuba permanently. Why is our Government funding the communist station known as NPR? Secondly, Tom Hanks is a leftist, a good friend of the communists Barack and Michelle and look what happens, the left is going after him (Tom Hanks). These communists eventually consume each other!
NPR was created when we had what, only 4 or so actual news channels/tv channels.. SINCE WE ARE NOW Upwards of 150+, WHY DO WE still need NPR?!?! Or Cspan, or PBS?
LET ALL 3 of them die off..
Deggans proclaimed that he liked Hanks and his work … but as a subhead warned, “He’s built a career playing righteous white men.”
Obviously Deggans was not born yet or never saw Bosom Buddies? I believe this is Hanks first real acting role in this sitcom where he and another guy become transvestites in order to get a cheaper rent in NYC.
I mean the guy went LGBTQfagget before it was vogue.
Gemme a break, Deggans.
Apparently Tom Banks has always appeared in the movies he’s appeared in as a character who delivered a inspirational message through the character whom he was supposed to be in that movie. Of course representing ” The White Race, the character which Tom Banks played wasn’t according to the Marxist. Democrat elite, able to play a inspiring character as any comrade of the Marxist Democrat party knows naturally since all people Of th White Race Are all Intolerant Racists and movie characters that Tom Banks hasn’t showed his true White character as a White Racist as he should have according to the the Marxist Democrat though police, this cannot be allowed and so Tom Banks must apologize for hiis past transgressions…
Mr. Deggans,
The extremely brief video clip of Ashli Babbitt’s murderer on January 6, 2021 appeared to me to be an African American man. Was this “anti-racist” enough for you? Do you know who that murderer is?
As Intersectionality slowly “progresses” to the realization that the ultimate minority is the individual, one consolation is that we can break out the popcorn and watch them devour each other in the perennial Intersectionalympics.
I may be native but I didn’t realize that Markist Democrat ate their own, but if this be the case, All the conservatives have to do is sit back and wait for them to devour each other, but now that it’s been brought up that Kamala Harris and. Joe Biden have been under attack lately by other Democrat elite.
I would think Tom Hanks is financially secure enough to tell these people to go pound sand!
MOST hollywood types, should be rich enough.. BUT MANY STILL get cowed by the woke mob..
I’m sure the predecessor to NPR was first heard by American soldiers stationed in the Pacific during WW2. On the radio waves they heard: “Oh you poor GI’s. Don’t you know that your President Roosevelt doesn’t care about you? Don’t you know about the lie your America is all about? Surrender and lay down your arms to the Imperial Nipponese army and you will be treated fairly and compassionately treated. This is Tokyo Rose playing you all your favorite songs.”
It certainly seems similar to tokyo rose, or Axis sally..
The hypocrites criticizing “white culture elevating itself over other cultures” IN COUNTRIES FOUNDED BY WHITES are not lecturing blacks about elevating black culture above others in Africa or East Indians elevating their culture above others in India or Chinese elevating Chinese culture above others when Xi announces they will become the world’s superpower. Only whites must bow and scrape to POC who messed up their own countries, abandon them and invade/immigrate to white countries where they start screaming about white racism and APPROPRIATING everything whites built.
As a # of folks have been saying for years, its just being used as an end run to eliminate whites, everywhere they can.