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Pat Buchanan Says Black Americans Should Be Grateful for Years of Oppression and Segregation

Posted by Pam Spaulding, Pam's House Blend at 4:50 AM on March 24, 2008.


How could Buchanan listen to the Obama speech and walk away with this level of vitriol in his heart and purposeful ignorance of history?
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While progressives and average Americans who think Barack Obama's speech presented a difficult challenge wring their hands worrying about appearing to be racist if they broach the subject in any significant way, the depth of the problem at hand is clear when we have folks on the right like Pat Buchanan just laying it on the line with this kind of mind-blower.

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.

Wright ought to go down on his knees and thank God he is an American.
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.
...We hear the grievances. Where is the gratitude?
Thanks, Pat. We've got the old "lift up" message, all right. How could people like Buchanan listen to the same speech and walk away with this level of vitriol in their heart and purposeful ignorance of history? Our country suffers an incredible sickness when it comes to race relations. The point of Obama's speech is that we all have work to do, and share responsibility in opening up an adult dialog. The above does nothing to advance understanding, and shows no desire to do so either.

I love Dave Neiwert's comment on Pat's "A Brief for Whitey" essay. It's below the fold.

Damn, I'm sure most black people forgot to be grateful for segregation, the lynching era, sundown towns, and the continuing discrimination they face both in employment and in residence. Because the institutional conditions created by those decades of bigotry have in fact gone largely unchanged, though to white guys like Buchanan, that simply isn't a factor:
Is white America really responsible for the fact that the crime and incarceration rates for African-Americans are seven times those of white America? Is it really white America's fault that illegitimacy in the African-American community has hit 70 percent and the black dropout rate from high schools in some cities has reached 50 percent?

Is that the fault of white America or, first and foremost, a failure of the black community itself?
Well, I'm sure black voters are convinced by that argument. After all, it's obvious that the matter of continuing discrimination is just an illusion in their heads.

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Tagged as: race, wright, obama, racism, buchanan

Pam Spaulding blogs at Pam's House Blend.


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quit the pandering
Posted by: Joe on Mar 24, 2008 6:59 AM   
Current rating: 2    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
should i be outraged? you know when wright said what he said i thought this is one man's opinion why all the hype; move on. in some ways i agreed with him but i felt what he said was non productive. i know the failings of this country. i know the double standards. i know the racism. i know the wrongs....and i deal with them, i try my hardest to navigate around it. i only speak for myself when i say im tired of this; move on.

quit the pandering.

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White fear still the order of the day
Posted by: nfamous on Mar 24, 2008 8:03 AM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Pat is a racist idiot and so is his sister Bay. How they keep their jobs is beyond me but does offer a testament to how lenient whites are with other whites, another form of white privilege. Why don't they make Rev. Wright a regular commentator?

Racism is America is a story of first blood. What happened to blacks under slavery set the stage for most or all of the negative things that continue to plague us today. That is not to say blacks would be perfect if it weren't for slavery but slavery is the root cause of most of these issues whether whites want to admit it or not. Blacks are expected to overcome all of these obstacles and just assimilate with whites when he have broken families, poor healthcare, horrible education, poor nutrition, high unemployment, low incomes and the like.

I would like to see how whites would cope with these ubiquitous circumstances. I'm sure they would not fare nearly as well as blacks have given their spoiled nature from being coddled by white privilege and supremacy for hundreds of years. The only way whites can co-exist with other races is if they are in control. It is a defect in the white psyche that is destroying to world and whites refuse to even admit they have this innate fear of anything different from them.

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» He kills me!!! Posted by: lefty010
Ohh poor white Pat Buchanan
Posted by: lefty010 on Mar 24, 2008 8:12 AM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Buchanan's article is barely readable. And after all of the effort to get through his nauseatingly racist tirade I come to the end and it says, "This article closed to comments." What kind of chickenshit crap is that? I have never read anything so ignorant and victim blaming in all my life and then I can't even comment on the putrid, vile, pile of shit article(I am now convinced that Buchanan is the leader of some KKK chapter somewhere).
How does Buchanan and all other racist morons convince themselves that ANYONE would knowingly and willingly choose to keep living in the environment that many African Americans live in?

The reason IT IS NOT RACIST for the Rev. Wright to make his comments is that he is not a part of the DOMINANT group. This is not rocket science. Anyone (and many do) can say harmful, terrible things about another group of people, what makes it racist is when the DOMINANT group with the POWER participates it has profound, negative consequence for the non-dominant group. Why is this such a difficult concept?

There is no such thing as reverse- discrimination. That would imply that there are two groups with power and that is simply not the reality. There is only ONE dominant group.

I am so disgusted with white America's continual denial of the criminal way in which we treat non-dominant segments of our society. Too fucking bad if white folks' feelings get hurt when they have to look at the ugly reality of what they are: White racists with TONS of unearned WHITE privilege. And when they can't face up to that FACT, they in turn work even harder to subjugate the very population that has forced them to take an honest look at themselves. It is so much easier to continue to vehemently blame the victim for their situation rather than take responsibility for making meaningful changes in our society that would level the playing field for all participants.

PATHETIC...

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» NOT true Posted by: lefty010
» RE: Ohh poor white Pat Buchanan Posted by: AMERICAN VETERAN
» RE: Ohh poor white Pat Buchanan Posted by: AMERICAN VETERAN
» Agreed n/m Posted by: lefty010
What Is The True Lie?
Posted by: QQOblivion on Mar 24, 2008 9:27 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
As Pat proves, White privilege doesn't extend to brains!
The Neo-Nazi even looks like the fascist he is. How has this dick-head gotten ANY respect from the mainsteam media? (I can understand if he is commenting just on Faux, but he has been making his crap-filled talking-points in other venues as well.)
Hey, I would love it if the MSM would replay Pat's racist comments over and over, all with appropriate criticism of those comments from the pundits, so that America can see how dangerous the Right-Wing in this country is. Won't happen? But we will hear MUCH about the TRUTH spoken by Rev Wright, all spun by the media as if what he said was some kind of horrible lie.

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Is this even news?
Posted by: hurricane hugo on Mar 24, 2008 10:00 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Pat's been talking this same line of shit for 2 decades. At least.

jdfu!

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» RE: Is this even news? Posted by: Quannah
Pat Buchanan failed Presidential Candidate
Posted by: mnascimento on Mar 24, 2008 11:14 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Poor Pat, it must be a bitter pill to see Obama have a record number of popular votes in a primary. Not to mention, states won and committed delegates.

He believed, when he ran for President, that there were enough right wing reactionary bigots left in the County to elect him.

It is time to pass the torch to the younger generations who have been cheated of their birth right by wars of imperialism, corporate greed, and partisan politics.

Lets elect someone who isn't "experienced" at destroying the Country.

OBAMA, 08!

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The man is an ass
Posted by: Misha2 on Mar 24, 2008 1:07 PM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
and that is all there is to it. I read what he wrote on his site. He is such an idiot and what scares me the most is the fact that he believes what he has written. I have never taken him seriously and it surprises me that MSNBC has him on so frequently.

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What Bothers Me The Most
Posted by: desidid on Mar 24, 2008 4:59 PM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
is, he is a "respected" journalist with plenty of opportunity to express his views. Can you name any Black journalist who could write the same things from a Black perspective, with the number of platforms as Buchanan? If you can't then perhaps racism does exist.

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Underdtanding Pat and other White racists.
Posted by: bc430 on Mar 24, 2008 7:31 PM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Buchanan wrote: "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.
...We hear the grievances. Where is the gratitude?"

The greatest disservice done to the portions of Black America that believe this kind of rubbish is that too many of them feel guilty for being the conduits of this great financial windfall that they can show no accounting or material proof that they ever received, because they really didn't. They "served" as surrogate conduits for those who hold title deed to their life necessities. Simply a more sophisticated form of the same social construct that circumscribed their chattel slave existence.
Apparently Pat believes the "ungrateful" Blacks received trillions of free dollars and just blew it because that's just the way those highly miseducated, stupid, ungrateful Black people are.
Somebody please let dear brother Pat in on how the game is played. Tell Pat that Free market capitalism is about OWNERSHIP, and not "free" money. Corporate and capitalist owners need so called welfare recipients like fish need water. Welfare recipients do not own the house they live in, the stores they shop at and for the most part the thoughts they think, except for the will to live, and many have abandoned that dream and settled long ago into the nightmare of mere day to day survival and a meager existence.
Poor Pat being the victim of generational ignorance bemoans the out of wedlock babies born to these ungrateful Blacks as though biology should be as cruel to a people group, whose only worldly possession is each other, as he has been taught to be to them.
To understand Pat B. and other White racists who sincerely cling to their strongly held, lifelong belief is to see a little child Pat inside the old man Pat's 60 something frame. Now see the little boy being indoctrinated by generations of identically indoctrinated White racist little boys and girls who became old misguided racist White men and women before Pat was born. White Americans who believed it was God's will for them to own and rule over non human Blacks who had been cursed by Almighty Gawd, or the one GWB calls "the good Lord." That little boy is running Pat's life, and a like minded little girl is making decisions for Bay.
This can be the year in our nation's history when we mark a new beginning, turn a page and step boldly across a line over which we agree as a collective of proud liberated Americans never to return.
The Union of South Africa has elected it's third Black president since Nelson Mandela's release from prison.
And here we are in 2008 appearing to be what, who, where and how South Africa used to be.
We don't need to be concerned about making history by electing a woman president just because she is female or a male because he is Black. Given what our government has become and done to us and to the world over the recent past several decades our concern this November must be to turn out in record numbers and elect the best leader available to us as our 44th president. That leader just happens to be Barack Hussein Obama.
We only have to ask ourselves one compelling question. Regardless what our nation looks like fifty years from Nov. 2008 do we want the United States of America to THINK like Barack Obama or Pat Buchanan?

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