Cruel caricaturing of Derb Towners

See if you are able to detect something sinister about the following typical write-up of an up-and-coming community organizer and activist:

Brooks has appeared at the National Press Club in Washington and hosted web seminars with Cornel West, a similarly polished promoter of what West calls "color consciousness", and Julian Bond, who has spent his life promoting African-American rights and culture. Brooks has spoken before A Better Chance, a job placement group that once took credit for chalking "African-American pride" around the campus of Oberlin College. 

I couldn't, but based on the tone of the entire article, I feel like there must be something terrible lurking here.

And then there is this, which will surely blow your mind. It certainly did mine:

Why don’t people behave in more racially conscious ways? New research presents one uncomfortable answer: They don’t want to be associated with white nationalists.

That’s the conclusion of troubling new research from Canada, which similarly finds support for separatist goals is hampered by a dislike of separatists.

Participants held strongly negative stereotypes about such activists, and those feelings reduced their willingness “to adopt the behaviors that these activities promoted,” reports a research team led by University of Toronto psychologist Nadia Bashir. This surprisingly cruel caricaturing, the researchers conclude, plays “a key role in creating resistance to social change.”

While the findings are lamentable, it's encouraging to see major media outlets such as Salon drawing attention to the inherent unfairness in these sorts of mendacious, bigoted portrayals of reformers merely promoting social change like Jared Taylor and Richard Spencer.