Boston - Fox News host Bill O’Reilly has stated that his comments in his review of the Harlem restaurant Sylvia’s were taken out of context and were not racist.
O’Reilly had a radio show on September 19th and stated that he took civil rights leader Al Sharpton to the restaurant named Sylvia’s in Harlem. He stated that he “couldn’t get over the fact that there was no difference between Sylvia’s Restaurant and any other restaurant in New York City. I mean, it was exactly the same, even though it’s run by blacks, primarily black patronship.”
That final comment was the one which the world is now honing in on and is being seen as veing very racist. He continued by talking about the famed restuarant and saying “It was the same, and tha’s really what this society’s all about now here in the U.S.A. There’s no difference.”
He also spoke later in the day with Fox analyst Juan Williams and stated “There wasn’t one person in Sylvia’s who was screaming M@#her F@#ker, i want more iced tea! It was like going into an Italian restaurant in an all-white suburb in the sense that people were sitting there and they were ordering and just having fun.”
O’Reilly has been taking a beating because of the remarks but has defended himself as he spoke on his television show on Fox News stating “Anybody who listened to it…would, I think, have appreciated the discussion for being an exposition of why people are afraid not only of blacks but of everybody they don’t know.”
He stated he was simply trying to put “reassure whites.”