Pat Buchanan has some issues with Obama’s race speech which he expresses in a piece titled, “A Brief for Whitey.” Apparently he feels like the discussion on race has been too one-sided and he wants black people to begin to listen to the white perspective (a group that he refers to as the “Silent Majority,” by the way). In the process of listening, he wants blacks to also acknowledge and be grateful for what white folks have done for them. His main points:
First, America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known.
Thanks Pat. We thank America’s white ancestors for saving our ancestors from themselves and brining them over on slave ships to the U.S. That 248 years of unparalleled inhumanity and the subsequent decades of terror and Jim Crow was a small price to pay for the wonderful opportunity for us to live here. Maybe after the number of years we have been in this country exceeds the number of years we have been treated less than human, we will be able to see how truly right you are.
Second, no people anywhere has done more to lift up blacks than white Americans. Untold trillions have been spent since the ’60s on welfare, food stamps, rent supplements, Section 8 housing, Pell grants, student loans, legal services, Medicaid, Earned Income Tax Credits and poverty programs designed to bring the African-American community into the mainstream.
Governments, businesses and colleges have engaged in discrimination against white folks - with affirmative action, contract set-asides and quotas — to advance black applicants over white applicants.
Churches, foundations, civic groups, schools and individuals all over America have donated time and money to support soup kitchens, adult education, day care, retirement and nursing homes for blacks.
We hear the grievances. Where is the gratitude?
Thank you again, sir. Forget about that little civil rights movement thing that was initiated and driven mostly by black people. No, that little blip in American history had nothing to do with our advances. No, it wasn’t that little movement which forced much of white America to look at itself in the mirror and try to make good on the proclamations and laws laid out by the country’s founders. No, whites did that all on their own just as they paid for all of the social programs you mentioned. That money never came out of anyone else’s pockets–just whites. And all that money wasn’t an effort to better America, it was an effort to benefit black people. Yes, Pat, we are all so grateful.
If only Pat were being just as facetious… I believe he’s losing it. Again.
5 responses so far ↓
1
L
// Mar 25, 2008 at 8:50 am
Buchanan’s article has the lone quality of providing the first instance where I can test Obama’s “zero’sum” theory of race. My conversion to his view of race is even stronger after viewing Buchanan’s tired, old barbs seen through this lens.
Let’s start at the beginning. It is a verifiable scientific fact that “race” does not really exist. Not biologically anyway. So, race is a social fiction that we pretend is real, which has actually come to play a central role in the lives of millions of Americans. Now that I think about it, race is like interest in that way, but I digress.
What is real is the scarcity of resources in the world: money, food, oil, shelter, etc. As Obama frames it, the concept of race is really a signifier for identifying the competition for resources. This model is born out by Buchanan’s whole article. In sum, Buchanan is saying: “Hello. Y’all should be thanking us for giving you a piece of our pie. In fact, if it wasn’t for us, you wouldn’t even be having any pie. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You got a small piece and for a while we didn’t give you any pie. And yeah, you had to bake the pie and serve it and clean up after we ate it. But, look now. You get pie too. Can I get some thanks up in here?” The main character in Buchanan’s distorted drama is not the whites who were gracious enough to serve the pie nor the blacks who were lucky enough to get some pie, but the pie itself! This theory explains every racial problem we have in this country: affirmative action, to government subsidy or not to government subsidy, stereotyping, etc.
Recently, many people have come to discuss the “codes” that exist for racial animus. But that’s not really what it’s about. Racial animus, itself, is a code for fear of being the zero in the zero-sum game.
Aside from all that, the fundamental failure in Buchanan’s argument is that there is no hierarchy of Americanism. America does not ask or demand that any of its citizens be grateful for the status of being American. Rather, America asks and demands only that we acknowledge the rights of other Americans to live freely and prosper according to the designs of their hearts. In this way, Buchanan has exposed himself as either fundamentally unpatriotic or deeply confused about what America is. Either way, arguments buttressed by those seminal notions are bankrupt and unworthy of serious attention.
2
E
// Mar 25, 2008 at 9:17 am
Eight years ago, Buchana ran for office (Presidency), choosing as a running mate, Ezola B. Foster, a black woman. Among some of Foster’s greatest hits were the following:
(1) “God brought African slaves to America so that their descendants would know freedom”
(2) “Our people were better off under the bondage of slavery than the Marxist ‘Great Society’ of Johnson.”
I refuse to dignify his remarks, for as rightly noted, they are not worthy of even scant consideration.
3
Vee
// Mar 26, 2008 at 10:53 am
There’s really not much to say about Buchannan’s statement.
I recall Richard Pryor expressing his appreciation a while back on one of his comedy albums.
4
La'ree
// May 23, 2008 at 8:18 am
Clearly you all are sitting at the computer so open a new browser and type in Tuskegee Experiment. For those who do not what to read, then I will tell you. For forty years between 1932 and 1972, the U.S. Public Health Service conducted an experiment on 399 black men in the late stages of syphilis. These men were never told what disease they were suffering from or of its seriousness. They were simply informed that they were being treated for “bad blood.” Their doctors had no intention of curing them of syphilis at all.! Now expand these 399 men to their wives, girlfriends, etc. This is a true fact; now given this historic revelation; how likely do you think the black race will believe that AIDS just sprang out of no where!!! Hence the rhetoric from the pulpit and the source behind it!!
5
Mike
// May 23, 2008 at 8:58 am
La’ree, your point is well taken. Although to me, the Tuskegee experiment is not a compelling reason to believe that the govt created HIV/AIDS. What the experimenters did in Tuskegee was undoubtedly horrendous and inhumane. It has also greatly influenced the degree to which blacks distrust the government and medical institutions. But we need to be careful in terms of extending what happened with this experiment to claims of the government creating HIV/AIDS.
Many make the argument that since blacks were GIVEN syphilis by the government, why would they not give us AIDS. The reality is that blacks were never given syphilis during the experiment nor was syphilis created by the govt. The travesty and conspiracy of this experiment had to with the experimenters not treating men who already had syphilis.
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