My experiences with "Coloring the News" confirmed that there are sanctions for speaking out too candidly about this subject. Traveling through the intersection of journalism and our nation's racial tensions requires a hard head, if not a helmet. Though some reviewers gave the book's arguments and evidence fair treatment, there were many instances when the unacknowledged ideological leanings of a news organization or professional groups made constructive dialogue all but impossible.Anthropologist Jonathan Friedman has talked extensively about this sort of thing. In an article called Rhinoceros II (pdf), he looked at the way associationism (as opposed to rational argument) is used to stifle debate and restrict research not deemed to be politically correct.
Many journalists were all too ready to read racial ill will into the book's critique of the diversity crusade or to dismiss it as a "right wing" screed and describe me as some kind of conservative ideologue with an agenda. While some critics showed an almost religious attachment to the concept of diversity, frustrating rational discourse, others did their best to discredit it with blithe dismissals or unfounded charges about the book's "dubious scholarship." With some I sensed that the distancing they did from the book was to avoid coloring their own career prospects.
Like McGowan’s article, Friedman’s piece is also a personal story, which describes the treatment he and his wife received when they conducted a research project into Swedish attitudes to immigration.
[Note: I’ve never been able to get the pdf version of Friedman’s article to load properly, if you have the same problem the google cache is here.
UPDATE
In Friedman's forthcoming work "PC Worlds: The Anthropology of Political Correctness", a whole chapter is devoted to "Rhinoceros II". The book's first six chapters are previewed on-line at Global Anthropology.
