In an interview on Monday, Bill O’Reilly asked Republican Presidential front runner Donald Trump how he was going to get jobs for black Americans, considering “many of them are ill-educated and have tattoos on their foreheads.”
O’Reilly Tells Trump Blacks Are “Ill-Educated And Have Tattoos On Their Forehead”Edit descriptionmediamatters.orgWhile, this time, O’Reilly’s comments sparked headlines and outrage, they’re part of a pattern of racist stereotypes that the Fox News host has been pushing for years.
O’Reilly purports to caution all job seekers against tattoos — in a 2012 “Factor Tip of the Day” on “tattoo regret” he cautioned viewers “if you must tat, keep it as private as possible” — but he frequently mentions tattoos and racially coded signifiers like “gangsta” in the same breath.
In 2014 while talking about the Obama Administration’s My Brother’s Keeper program, which targets young men of color, O’Reilly insisted that the boys were too poorly educated to recognize role models like Colin Powell and instead were only interested in “tattoo guys.”
“No, it’s these gangsta rappers, it’s the athletes, it’s the tattoo guys. You’ve got to get them in there to tell these kids that you’ve got to stop the destructive behavior or you’re going to wind up in a morgue or in prison,” he told Valerie Jarrett, Senior Advisor to President Obama.
Earlier that year, O’Reilly also said on his show that youth must “conform” if they want to be successful, “unless your athletic and music skills are so enormous you can make a living that way” — citing two tracks that have traditionally been high-profile routes out of poverty for black Americans.
“That means you have to learn how to speak properly. You have to learn how to groom yourself. You can’t have a face covered with tattoos unless you punch like Mike Tyson,” he said.
And in 2013, O’Reilly said:
“So, when president says and all the other black leaders who’ve we talked to, well, we need jobs. We need jobs. You have to be able to do something to have a job. And a lot of — not a lot, but some of these younger, not just black, white, Hispanic, they can’t speak English, they can barely read. They are covered with tattoos, they are disrespectful. They can’t do any jobs. Literally can’t do them.”
In a different show, he called this “cultural debasement.” People who have tattoos, he implies, are less educated, less employable, and ultimately less American — and they’re probably black or Hispanic.
It’s true that there is an employment stigma against people with tattoos, although it varies depending on industry. A 2014 study published in The Social Science Journal found that people with tattoos still feel stigmatized, and that the more tattoos they have, the more stigmatized they feel. That stigma, however, isn’t racially correlated — nor is the tendency to get tattoos.
The same study found that those who had tatted family or friends were less likely to look down on those who had tattoos — which means that tattoos will become more and more accepted, because among young people, tattoos are increasingly common. 40 percent of people between 18 and 29 have tattoos, according to a Pew Research Center poll. Last year, in response to backlash about a short-lived restriction on the number of tattoos soldiers were allowed, the Army loosened its tattoo policy. It now allows unlimited tattoos — as long as they’re not racist, derogatory or sexist, and aren’t on the face, neck or hands.
Tattoos are becoming normalized across race and education levels, but O’Reilly is still aiming his admonishments predominantly at black youth, as if they are the main tattoo demographic. That’s because what O’Reilly is really doing is using tattoos — particularly face tattoos, which are sometimes associated with gang activity or time in prison (or, sometimes white supremacist views, which O’Reilly fails to mention) — as a racially coded signifier.
In a 2011 show, he clearly laid out the divide according to O’Reilly.
“Those who have privilege in their lives. They are going to be the masters of the universe. And everybody else are going to have tattoos on their forehead and pierced. And they look like, come on.”
It’s a stereotype he keeps bringing up in his interview with Trump, who was talking about how he was going to help the black population by getting jobs. Trump tries several times to bring the conversation back to helping the black Americans get jobs, yet, undeterred, O’Reilly continues harping on the idea that they are tattooed and unqualified. What he’s really saying to Trump is that helping the black population is an impossible task — that they’re not worth it.
O’Reilly is pushing a narrative, which he’s been promoting for years, that by their own choices black Americans at large have permanently put themselves beyond help — because they’ve slacked off, because they don’t dress right, because they like hip hop, because they don’t talk right, and essentially, because they’ve chosen to tattoo their blackness on their foreheads.