Jack Cashill's Race-Baiting Takes

The WND columnist is unleashing his inner Colin Flaherty and assuming that all black people are criminals -- and he has a new book that seeks to absolve white people of guilt for fleeing cities in the 1960s.

By Terry Krepel
Posted 6/10/2024

Cashill took a break from obsessing over Barack Obama to write a book on a different subject. Joseph Farah gushed over him and his book in his June 29 column:

Longtime WND columnist and author Jack Cashill is a lot like me. We can reminisce about the Jersey Shore, those "Wildwood Days" growing up, or comparing Newark and Paterson for hours on end. We're kindred spirits, raised by different mothers and fathers in a not-so-different universe at approximately the same time and place.

[...]

I've admired Jack much over the years. I wish I had told him that more often. I think I will after just having read his latest exquisite book, "Untenable: The True Story of White Ethnic Flight from America's Cities." This a very serious book – in fact the first of its kind – on the subject of "white flight" written from the perspective of those forced to flee.

Yes, I suppose some white people left cities because of racism – probably a distinct minority. Others, like the Cashill family, left with regret because they loved Newark.

"By the end of the 1960s," Cashill recalls, "the state had razed many of our homes, mine included. A lethal riot had scorched the neighborhood. My friends and their families had scattered to the winds, and a twenty-foot-deep trench as wide as a tennis court forever severed the north end of Pigs (short for Pigtails Alley) from the south. To the degree anyone beyond our world noticed, it was to scold us for our own displacement."

[...]

"There is no understanding what really happened to Newark and other troubled cities without knowing a little about the white ethnics who inhabited those cities and their attachment to the neighborhoods they lived in," writes Cashill. "Almost to a person, they or their kin came to America for the very quality now sadly absent into many cities: freedom, security, the rule of law, opportunity."

Again, Cashill points out some timely common sense.

"Of course, too, white ethnics were not the only ones to 'flee,'" hel writes. "Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians left the cities for much the same reasons urban whites did, but only whites were shamed for leaving, thus the word 'white' is in the book's title."

Do you want to read a truthful telling about the continuing epic horror story of our once-great cities? You will get it in Cashill's book, his 17th, by the way.

The page for Cashill's book on the WND superstore page notes that the Media Research Center chief Brent Bozell contributed a blurb: “A startlingly honest and poignant look at ‘white flight’ from the white perspective. A necessary and overdue corrective.” It was published by the Simon & Schuster-distributed right-wing imprint Post Hill Press, which notoriously published a memoir by one of the (white) Louisville police officers who killed (black) Breonna Taylor (which S&S distanced itself from).

Given that Cashill has been obsessed not only with attacking Obama but also in trying to lionize (white) people like George Zimmerman and Derek Chauvin and denigrating the (black) people they killed -- Trayvon Martin and George Floyd, respectively -- it appears that his goal with this book is to try and absolve white people who fled major cities in the 1960s of racism as black people began to assert their rights.

Another indication of Cashill's pro-white focus comes in who else is championing it -- specifically, the white nationalist organization VDARE, which made it the subject of its book club for July, as James Kirkpatrick explained in a July 7 blog post:

During my time within Conservatism Inc., there were a number of honorable exceptions to the ”movement”’s usual pattern of marking time and making a living while America burns. Jack Cashill is one of those exceptions. And on July 4, Independence Day, he has a new book coming out that will hopefully make a major impact on the debate surrounding race in the United States. 

Untenable: The True Story of White Ethnic Flight from America's Cities tells the story of white flight from the white perspective, explaining why Americans left their communities and the untold wealth and social capital that they had built up over generations in order to escape the ”Great Society.” It's a story that we are all living with today. For those of us who grew up in the suburbs, it's a story that literally shaped our entire lives.

It would be hard for Cashill to escape that kind of endorsement. And Cashill is not escaping it -- rather, he embraced it, taking part in a podcast about the book for VDARE, a snippet of which is here.

Post Hill Press has not seen fit to send ConWebWatch a review copy, but we may have gotten a preview of its attitude in Cashill's June 7 column, in which he rehashed the canard that the Community Reinvestment Act -- created in the 1970s to spur investment in low-income areas that had been denied it in the past due to discrimination and redlining -- caused the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis. He weirdly framed the CRA as "reparations," and complained: "When the bubble finally burst in 2008, no one wanted to address the moral/cultural factors that contributed to it. There was nary a word about the cultural embrace of credit, the breakdown in the family, the media support for profligates, or the government imposition of race and gender quotas on lenders." In other words, he's implying that black people are not sufficiently moral or capable of maintaining a house and mortgage. In fact, the vast majority of subprime lending was done by mortgage companies and other financial institutions that weren't subject to assessments under the CRA.

Cashill's book doesn't seem to be explicitly racist, but given the company he keeps and his past defense of white people killing black people, we can safely assume that it is very much racist-adjacent.

When a local library in New York state scheduled, then canceled, a presentation on his, book Cashill spent his Aug. 9 column playing victim:

On Aug. 8, I received an email from the library, the very length of which sounded alarm bells. Fredonia is a small, friendly town. They buffer the bad news there with pleasantries.

"I hope this letter finds you well," the email from library director Graham Tedesco-Blair began. My distrust of guys with hyphenated names was about to be confirmed.

Tedesco-Blair, of course, appreciated my "willingness to engage," but, you know, "after careful consideration and consultation with our stakeholders, we regret to inform you that we must disinvite you from the scheduled library appearance on September 9th."

"Doublethink," wrote George Orwell, "means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them."

Tedesco-Blair's explanation of why I was being canceled is a doublethink classic. "We believe that the diversity of perspectives is crucial in creating a rich and informative dialogue at our library events," he begins.

"Recent developments have led us to re-evaluate the suitability of your views and opinions for our diverse audience," he continues, "as well as the potential impact they might have on the inclusive and welcoming atmosphere we strive to foster within our library community."

Tedesco-Blair champions "diversity" by enforcing homogeneity and "inclusivity" by excluding genuinely diverse opinions. Is he aware how mad this sounds?

As best I can interpret Tedesco-Blair's jabberwocky, diverse "perspectives" may be suitable for a general audience but not somehow for a "diverse audience."

Or it could be that someone actually read his book. Rather than discuss the book's dubious endorsement by white nationalists, Cashill tried to insist his book wasn't offensive at all:

Since my book makes no reference at all to things gay or trans or Muslim, and speaks only positively of women and immigrants, the only "diverse" people that I might offend are African Americans.

Except I don't. In fact, several black people attended my presentation for C-SPAN's Book-TV (to air Sunday, Aug. 13, check listings), and none took the slightest offense.

I cannot imagine that in a town with a black population of less than 2%, there would be angry mobs besieging the library doors even if I had written a book extolling Democrat heroes like Andrew Jackson or Woodrow Wilson.

"Given the nature of our audience and the current discourse surrounding certain aspects of your work," Tedesco-Blair blathered on, "we believe it is in the best interest of the library and its patrons to make this difficult decision."

"The nature of our audience"? Trump carried Chautauqua County by 20 points. The people with a right to be concerned are area conservatives.

A public servant whose salary they pay has just subjected them to flagrant "viewpoint discrimination," which is prohibited under the First Amendment.

Nowhere did Cashill offer excerpts from his own book to demonstrate how supposedly inoffensive it is, or why we shouldn't read anything into VDARE's enthusiastic endorsement. Cashill has spent years judging others (like Barack Obama) by the company they keep, but he doesn't seem to want to be judged by the company his book keeps.

Cashill was still playing victim in his  Aug. 16 column -- but he did find a more agreeable group to which he cold make his book presentation:

In the week since, my speculation has been confirmed. The president of the library board emailed my wife, "So, very soon after our website posting which announced Jack's appearance at the Barker we began to receive numerous correspondence ranging from general disbelief to adverse protestations from with in the local community."

He then added, as though this detail were necessary, "Oddly, all of this response came from women." I should clarify here. All Karens may be women, but not all women are Karens.

Upon hearing of my disinvite, one women, whose actual name is "Karen," invited me to speak at the Chautauqua County TEA – Totally Engaged Americans – Party at their upcoming meeting. "And," she added wryly, "you will not be disinvited."

Once the word got out other local women emailed their sentiments – ranging from general disbelief to adverse protestations – letting Mr. Tedesco-Blair know what they thought of the library's decision.

Cashill failed to elaborate that the TEA group is presumed to be a right-wing one that would be more receptive to his whitewashing message. Cashill went on to praise a story about the brouhaha in the local paper as "more than fair" -- probably because the reporter did little investigating into the subject of the book or the conspiracy theory-obsessed past of its author and simply copy-and-pasted Cashill's version of his history.

Meanwhile, Woody Cozad wrote a fawning review of “Untenable” for the right-wing Manhattan Institute’s City Journal website, in which he claimed the book "punctures this familiar white flight narrative."

Cozad’s end-of-review bio describes him only as “a lawyer in Missouri” who has held other minor state offices and was once chairman of the state Republican Party. However, he’s a lot closer to Cashill than City Journal chose to disclose. He’s worked on numerous projects with Cashill: he chaired a panel about the business of law in Kansas City that Cashill moderated, he appeared in an anti-evolution video called “The Triumph of Design” that Cashill directed, and a 2017 column by Cashill touted how Cozad popped up in a Netflix video made by Robert Reich.

Seems like Cashill got a buddy of his to write a positive review of his book for a right-wing website. Doesn’t seem very honest of him.

Race-baiting a newspaper

Cashill began his Sept. 20 column by complaining:

As half of America now knows, last month two teenagers in a stolen Hyundai consciously targeted an innocent Las Vegas cyclist and ran him over, killing him in the process.

The other half of America does not know about this incident because their media have chosen not to tell them.

The Poynter institute, a nonprofit that "provides fact-checking, media literacy and journalism ethics training to citizens and journalists in service to democracy," weighed in on this issue Tuesday.

Instead of holding the media to account for their silence about the murder, Poynter scolded Elon Musk for daring to talk about it.

But the issue is not that Musk was "daring to talk about it"; it was that he was falsely accusing a newspaper of suppressing the story, which resulted in death threats to the newspaper. As befits someone who wrote a VDARE-endorsed book seeking to absolve white people for fleeing cities in the 1960s, Cashill obsessed over racial issues here, pointing out that the victim was white and that at least one assailant was black, and baselessly assumed that the media was trying to hide that:

Some have assumed that both of the perps are black.

It is this assumption that has likely kept the media silent. The video surfaced on Aug. 29. As of this writing the New York Times has yet to say word one about the murder of Andreas Probst.

Cashill didn't explain why the Times should have reported on this story. His goal was to justify Musk's attacking on the Las Vegas Review-Journal and the threats that followed:

The video of the Probst murder surfaced on social media this past Saturday, Aug. 16. Poynter took exception to an Aug. 17 tweet by Musk.

"An innocent man was murdered in cold blood while riding his bicycle," Musk tweeted. "The killers joked about it on social media Yet, where is the media outrage? Now you begin to understand the lie."

By the following day the post had been viewed more than 68 million times. And still the major media remained mum.

Once the video surfaced, many citizens apparently focused their anger on the Review-Journal and its crime reporter, Sabrina Schnur.

According to Poynter, an unnamed "they" made "anti-Semitic comments" about Schnur and "accused her of being anti-white."

To its humble credit, the Review-Journal did report on the murder and acknowledged the video, but as with the Las Vegas TV media, bicycle safety was the theme of much of the reporting.

Cashill omitted the fact that Poynter reported that the reporter who originally reported the story "received 700 notifications on X and an onslaught of angry emails and voicemails," that people were doxxing her and digging up posts the reporter made as a teenager, and that other staffers and the paper itself also received numerous hate messages and threats. (Also, Twitter video view counts are virtually meaningless.)

Rather than actually try to prove that the Review-Journal was trying to hide something, he complained that Poynter pointed out that a reporter for the newspaper was murdered last year by a local politician, so the place is a little on edge over threats to its reporters. Even though Poynter specifically noted that the politician "had made angry social media posts referencing the journalist and his work" before killing him, Cashill counterfactually claimed that "social media had nothing to do with [the reporter's] murder" and that bringing it up "is gratuitous and misleading."

Cashill concluded by making his race-bating more explicit and misrepresenting Poynter some more (and plugging his VDARE-endorsed book):

As I report in my new book, "Untenable: The True Story of White Ethnic Flight from America's Cities," the media have been sweeping away black-on-white crime for the last 60 years.

This would be bad enough, but the media make the situation much worse by amplifying the relatively rare instances of white-on-black crime.

This is the "lie" to which Musk alludes. In this instance, Poynter does not labor "in service to democracy." Poynter labors in service to the lie.

But the real liar here is Cashill, who is trying (with an assist from Elon Musk) to smear a reporter and a newspaper as reverse racists based on nothing but circumstantial evidence he (and Musk) can't be bothered to prove is true, and he's seeking to justify threats and potential violence based on those specious assumptions.

Cashill's Nov. 22 column began by invoking the "Charlottesville lie" lie:

When candidate Joe Biden launched his 2020 presidential campaign, he offered events at Charlottesville, Virginia, as his rationale for running.

Biden specifically cited Trump's allegedly racist reaction to a 2017 dust-up in Charlottesville, shamelessly misrepresenting Trump's comments about the violent clash.

Cashill went on to hype a sick-out by teachers at Charlottesville High School, allegedly because of incidents of student violence -- which, of course, Cashill was quick to blame on black students, despite have no actual evidence to support the claim:

The night before the sudden Friday shut down, CHS counselor David Wilkerson took to Facebook to describe the mayhem that unfolded in the school on Thursday.

"Today, we had roving bands in search of the next fight, multiple fights from which to choose, and hundreds of kids filming and cheering," Wilkerson wrote.

"We are infantilizing the kids who have neither the personal discipline nor the support from home to make healthy decisions and setting them up for horrific consequences in the near future."

CHS is about 25% African American. The absence of any references to race, and the evidence from school fight videos elsewhere, leads the savvy reader to infer that the instigators are black.

Cashill didn't explain why he thinks only black people are violent.

This then morphed into a promotion of his new VDARE-endorsed book and more lashing out at Michelle Obama:

This racially driven madness may be new to Charlottesville, but it is now new to inner-city America. As I document in my book "Untenable: The True Story of White Ethnic Flight from America," chaos has been the norm in many city schools for at least 60 years.

When Michelle Obama was ready to start elementary school in 1969, for instance, her parents, Fraser and Marian Robinson, refused to send her to shiny new Dulles Elementary School just a block away.

From the Robinsons' perspective, the problem wasn't the school building. It was the school's students, many of whom came from nearby housing projects.

Committing a Class C misdemeanor, the Robinsons used the address of Marian's sister in Chicago's middle-class South Shore neighborhood to enroll both Michelle and her brother, Craig, at Bryn Mawr Elementary, a 15-minute drive from Parkway Gardens.

[...]

Ignoring her own experience, in 2019 Michelle condemned a largely white audience for the sin of "white flight." Said Michelle, "I wanna remind white folks that y'all were running from us, and y'all still runnin'."

Among the things that unnerved white people, Michelle imagined, were "the color of our skin" and the "texture of our hair."

The posting of school fight videos online is making it harder and harder for race-baiters like Michelle to ignore the racial problems they and their political allies have helped nurture.

The graphic nature of these videos also make it harder for Michelle and her friends in the media to blame racial turmoil on people who flee to avoid it.

Cashill didn't explain why he thinks only black people must be held responsible for "racial turmoil" and that white people don't contribute to it.

Super Bowl parade shooting

Cashill is bizarrely proud of portraying black people as criminals. He demonstrated that again in his Feb. 28 column:

On Wednesday, Feb. 14, at 2:29 p.m., I got a text from my sister in New Jersey, asking, “You all OK?”

I live in Kansas City. I figured something bad must have happened. It did. At 2:02 p.m. Kansas City Police confirmed that shots had been fired in front of Kansas City’s restored Union Station at the end of the Chiefs Super Bowl parade. By 2:13 p.m. two suspects had been detained.

My office is about 2 miles away from Union Station, but I was unaware of the incident until I checked the news. Now a half hour after the shooting, I quickly texted my sister back, “Boyz will be Boyz.”

There was already enough information available to make that judgment with confidence. As it turned out, one innocent bystander was killed in the shooting and 23 people were wounded, many of those children.

Two days later, Ann Coulter appeared on HBO’s “Real Time” with Bill Maher. When Maher claimed to not know the race of the shooters, Coulter looked at him as if he were disputing the guilt of O.J. Simpson.

“We have some idea,” smirked Coulter. “If it were a white man shooting, we’d know.” When Maher protested the races were still not yet revealed, Coulter shot back, “That’s how we know it’s not a white man.”

Maher jokingly accused Coulter of having “special powers,” but these powers are accessible to anyone except, apparently, those occupying America’s newsrooms.

Cashill continued to be obsessed with the racial makeup of the alleged shooters in Kansas City, while whining that Kyle Rittenhouse was quickly identified as the suspect in the shooting deaths of two people during a protest a couple years earlier:

A week after the shooting, the Kansas City Star ran an article with a promising headline, “Police identify several suspects in Crown Center shooting, investigation continues.”

The article itself honored the Coulter Rule: “In their preliminary investigation,” the Star reported, “police said the shooting broke out after an argument between two groups described as ‘youths.'” As of this writing, the woke Jackson County prosecutor has yet to identify who those “suspects” are.

By contrast, here is how CBS News headlined its story about Kyle Rittenhouse the day after the incident that put him in the news: “Kenosha Shooting: 17-Year-Old Kyle Rittenhouse Arrested In Connection With Shooting That Left 2 Dead, 1 Wounded.”

As a 17-year-old, Rittenhouse “was taken to the Lake County Juvenile Detention Center near Vernon Hills.” His youth did not stop the media, however, from plunging into Rittenhouse’s past and portraying him as an enemy of the people.

The media openly rooted for Rittenhouse’s conviction when tried, juvenile status or not, his obvious innocence notwithstanding.

Cashill did not explain why Rittenhouse’s innocence was “obvious” — indeed, it was anything but, given that he deliberately went to the protest with a loaded rifle.

Cashill concluded by whining that Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas called out coded racial language:

Two days after the shooting, the Kansas City Star headlined a story, “KC mayor says governor used dog whistle when blaming ‘thugs’ for Chiefs rally shooting.”

Explained Lucas, “I certainly do think this was criminal activity; it’s lawlessness and I think that that’s troubling. But ‘thugs’ is a dog whistle in the most classic sense and I have seen this dog whistle time and again.”

The Star clarified: “‘Thug’ has been used as coded language, typically to demonize Black people as criminals.” Needless to say, Gov. Mike Parson is a Republican.

No, “thug” is used to avoid demonizing all black people as criminals, and it’s a whole lot more precise than “youths.”

Actually, Cashill is the one who’s trying to demonize all black people as violent criminals — it’s what he does. He would not have written a thing about the Kansas City shootings if the perpetrators were white.