Media’s Racialized Coverage Of The East Palestine Train Wreck Is Yet Another Toxic Disaster

Greg Sargent, Washington Post, acknowledges the hazardous chemical catastrophe in East Palestine, Ohio in an article. Feb. 21 columnIs. “a story about profit-driven rail companies underinvesting in safety, lobbyists weakening rail regulation, and the government’s failure to assure residents’ security from lingering toxins.” The corporate media appear to act unilaterally by refusing to listen to the concerns of the right regarding the crisis. The New York Times even tries. described right-wing criticisms as though they were overly cynical. 

And even though the liberal pundit Sargent is willing to acknowledge the current presidential administration may bear part of the blame for this humanitarian and ecological crisis, he avers that “what’s objectionable is the right’s deliberate racializing of this story.” 

Even amid an apolitical tragedy, the corporate media make the right the bad guy. 

Tired Newsflash: Liberal Attacks Conservatives on Race

Sargent is referring to various comments by conservative pundits and Republican politicians who have tarred Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg as being negligent and abandoning working-class white communities in favor of woke policies. Buttigieg earlier this month complained about construction projects in “neighborhood[s] of color,” where “everyone in the hard hats on that project, doing the good paying jobs, don’t look like they came from anywhere near the neighborhood” — or, in other words, too many white construction workers. Tucker Carlson, Sen. J.D. Vance, and Charlie Kirk, among others, unsurprisingly pounced on the secretary’s controversial comments.

Cue Sargent’s finger-wagging in his op-ed, provocatively titled, “The right fans a repulsive campaign to racialize the Ohio train disaster.” He argues that “what this illustrates is how the right uses race-baiting to deceive people into forgetting that Democrats are now the far more committed party when it comes to investing in such left-behind communities.” He censures those on the right who have “transformed” the East Palestine crisis “into a tale about racial malice, with White Americans as the victims.”

In one sense, Sergeant’s take is hardly surprising. Liberal pundit attacks conservatives for alleged race-baiting — yawn. But in another sense, Sargent has, presumably unintentionally, walked himself into a rhetorical corner from which it is difficult to escape.

Doesn’t the Left Racialize Everything?

Setting aside the entire issue of race as it relates to the terrible, ongoing crisis in eastern Ohio, Sargent’s premise — that racializing things is bad — would carry more resonance if the left didn’t do that with, well, everything. Try an experiment. Name something you’re interested in: professional baseball, motorcycles, sewing; it doesn’t matter what you choose. Now run a search for that word and “racist” or “racism.” Undoubtedly, a liberal publication or organization will be discussing the systemic racism that still haunts that hobby of yours. 

In 2021, the Times claimed that artificial intelligence is racist. In 2020, The Atlantic published a piece titled “The Hidden Bigotry of Crosswords.” The Washington Post has published articles claiming that even bird names retain the stench of bigoted patriarchal, colonialist norms and that the “white farming industry” (did you even know that was a thing?)