Over the weekend, BigJournalism.com posted video of and commentary on the confrontation between Daryle Jenkins of One People’s Project and Andrew Breitbart.  Beyond ambushing Mr. Breitbart at this weekend’s CPAC, Mr. Jenkins has written a number of articles riddled with false facts regarding me and my role in what he called a “racist forum” at Georgetown Law Center.  BigJournalism.com has offered me the opportunity to go on record to refute various assertions made by Mr. Jenkins.  As has been acknowledged previously at Big Journalism, Mr. Jenkins is far from a mainstream blogger, but so long as he continues to misrepresent facts that are then used as source material for authors who are published on mainstream sources like Max Blumenthal at Salon.com, he ought to be exposed as well.

From left: Marcus Epstein, Jared Taylor, Kevin Martin, and John Derbyshire at what Daryle Jenkins dubbed a “racist forum”

David Almasi, who is the national director for Project21, which is under the National Center for Public Policy Research, contacted me via voicemail about the Leadership Institute’s desire to have a black panelist speak on a forum they were sponsoring on “Race and Conservatism.” Because I was working nights at the time, Marcus Epstein and I played phone tag for about two weeks before I was finally able to contact him. Marcus extended the institute’s invite to me personally and told me the forum’s rules–these included a 15-minute speech by each of the speakers and Q&A for those in the crowd.

I committed myself to the event and began my in-depth research into the writings of Jared Taylor, as I do with any opposition I debate.  This flies in the face of Jenkins, who repeatedly prints I was a “last-minute addition.”  I had weeks to research Mr. Taylor’s writings and ideas.

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For Release: February 4, 2010
Contact: David Almasi at (202) 543-4110 x11 or (703) 568-4727 or dalmasi@nationalcenter.org or Judy Kent at (703) 759-7476 or jkent@nationalcenter.org

Washington, DC – Kevin Martin of the black leadership group Project 21 and Amy Ridenour of the National Center for Public Policy Research are questioning the accuracy of an article in the left-wing online magazine Salon which implies that independent filmmaker James O’Keefe is a racist.

The article, “James O’Keefe’s Race Problem,” by Max Blumenthal, cites O’Keefe’s attendance at a “Race and Conservatism” panel in 2006 as evidence that, as Blumenthal put it, O’Keefe’s “short but storied career has been defined by a series of political stunts shot through with racial resentment.”

Black conservative Kevin Martin, one of several panelists at the event, disagrees. In fact, Martin says, O’Keefe approached him after the event and expressed support for Martin’s positions, which are certainly not racist:

As a panelist at the Robert Taft Club ‘Race and Conservatism’ event in 2006, I had the chance to personally meet James O’Keefe after the event ended. He voiced personal support for me and my positions. He also repudiated the radical elements in the room that night.

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