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This post is a response I made to an email of a March 21st, 2008 Pat Buchanan blog post entitled A Brief for Whitey .
Pat Buchanan, a senior advisor to American presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan is a true-blue, hard-nosed conservative. He also has some very unacceptable racist views.
Buchanan says, White America needs to be heard from, not just lectured to.... Well, white America has been heard from, from racist Americans like he, time after time, over and over again.
His comment America has been the best country on earth for black folks. Where is the gratitude? Really! I assume then that he has never read the history of the black experience in our country.
Pat Buchanan wrote a memo urging Nixon not to visit the Widow King -- his term for Coretta Scott King, Dr. Martin Luther King wife -- on the first anniversary of her husband’s assassination. Buchanan wrote that a visit would outrage many, many people who believe Dr. King was a fraud and a demagogue and perhaps worse.… Others consider him the Devil incarnate. Dr. King is one of the most divisive men in contemporary history.
Pat Buchanan said This has been a country built, basically, by white folks.
He has written America faces an existential crisis. If we do not get control of our borders, by 2050 Americans of European descent will be a minority in the nation their ancestors created and built. No nation has ever undergone so radical a demographic transformation and survived. Only whites have the appropriate “genetic endowments” to keep America from collapsing.
He has written 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 their time and money to support soup kitchens, adult education, day care, retirement and nursing homes for blacks.
Buchanan says blacks should be thanking white people -- or should I use the word Whitey -- a racist word in-and-of itself -- for all the good fortune they have had in America. He says they should express their gratitude.
Buchanan speaks as if all those social programs are meant only for black people. Got news for you Mr. Buchanan, those social programs were put into place for the health, safety, and the well-being of all Americans who are or have become disadvantaged.
It was not white America that brought equality and justice for black men and women. It was folks like Frederick Douglass, Dr. Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Medgar Evers, the Little Rock Nine, Linda Brown, Ruby Bridges, Homer Plessy, and yes, Malcolm X and Jesse Jackson. It was events like Bloody Sunday, and the courage of people like little eight year old Sheyann Webb that contributed to the appeal to conscience in our Nation that resulted in various Civil Rights Act of the 1960’s. They and others, black and white, courageously pursued their ideals at very grave risk to themselves, and some even gave there lives in the pursuit of equality that not only benefit people of color but white (colloquially expressed as if white is not a color) as well. There are hundreds of others who are well known, as well as those who may be less known, who have all made contributions to a better world of equality and justice, as we know it today.
Pat Buchanan talks about America being a Christian Nation. This email states We are a Christian Nation and further states even if Mr. Obama says we are not.
It is simply mind boggling to me that there is such hypocrisy in the Christian Nation. I know that if I was to sit down at my kitchen table and have a conversation with Jesus regarding these issues that he would be appalled.
It’s appalling to me that Buchanan, and others like him, can claim themselves to be Christians.
Even to reject and degrade another race, or their nationality, culture, or their religious beliefs is not being a Christian, at least as I understand the tenets of Christianity to be.
Pure and simple, America is not a Christian Nation. To denigrate our nation by implying that we solely are, works totally against what our nation professes itself to be. To claim that we are a Christian Nation is simply being ignorant, disingenuous, narcissistic, and hubristic.
So, the content of this email, at least in my view, does not reflect any of the values that Christians or Americans say they hold dear in their hearts.
The fact is that we do have a Legacy of discrimination. It’s real and must be addressed where and whenever it raises its ugly head. The election of Barack Obama, or the enactment of Civil Rights Legislation, was not in anyway shape or form a cure-all for America’s propensity toward racial discrimination. This email certainly is testimony and a very good example of that.
And as with the email I received, and in fact with most email comes the obligatory: Will you pass it on?
Because I am for a better America, I have.a
