Pat Buchanan on why blacks should thank white Americans:
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.
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?
Ta-Nehisi Coates replies:
I always found this quote interesting because it originates from the same racist thinking that Byron York employed last week–that black people don’t actually count. In this instance, the idea isn’t about polling, it’s about taxes. By Buchanan’s lights, black people do not exist as tax-payers, but as social sponges. And the converse is true–no white people use government services, they simply pay taxes that are transferred to blacks.
See also:
- Ta-Nehisi Coates: My Days of Arguing Are Numbered – the post that this is taken from
- white gaze, pt 3 – the Byron York thing
- The difference between a racist and a fucking racist – Coates in reply to something Marty Peretz said about Mexicans
- How to tell if a commenter is white
Pat Buchanan is an ass of the highest magnitude, as are most high profile televangelists. They’re a bunch of hypocritical sexual perverts, many of them closet homosexuals in the highest states of denial. They are living affirmations that P.T. Barnum was correct.
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I’ve never thought of him as a televangelist, but maybe so! He preaches to some unwashed masses, that’s for sure.
All the screen time Buchanan gets is another piece of evidence that the corporate media run through an unspoken white framework and mindset. That is–there’s NO ONE on the other side of the racial divide who says the kind of discriminatory crap that he does and also gets so much screen time, and so much respectful consideration from the other talking heads.
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My fucking lord! That may just be the most ignorance squeezed into 4 and a bit paragraphs of speech that I’ve ever come across.
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Oh..Pat! *shakes my head*
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“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.”
Oh man, I don’t know where to even start with this first paragraph alone.
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Wow. The stupid! It burns!
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Wow. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. For the love of God what, in all seriousness THE HELL is wrong with people?
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Does he even hear what he is saying? Has no one called him on this?
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Dear God! How was this ignorance not covered widely? How did this not become a scandal?
“Second, no people anywhere has done more to lift up blacks than white Americans.”
WTF!!! Horse, don’t try to lie to appease your guilt. And referencing pathetic social work programmes is sad and it doesn’t advance your case at all.
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I’m sure it’s happened, but…
I have yet to personally hear a single white person say, thanks to all the slaves who built this country while getting absolutely nothing (except physical and sexual abuse) in return.
This country has not even come close to compensating black people for the lost wages and property of slavery, much less pain and suffering.
When America gives us our 40 acres and a mule, or the current equivalent thereof, THEN guys like Buchanan can talk about gratitude.
PS, we need to understand that Buchanan, who was one of Ronald Reagan’s communications directors, was a part of the group that used racially divisive wedge issues to sow disunity among the various constituencies of the Democratic Party. (Thus producing so-called “Reagan Democrats.”)
What’s needed is not for just black folks to attack this; we need whites and all peoples to push back against this.
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I posted this on a Christian website I am a member of. Nearly every response was that Pat was spot on with his observations and that if black people don’t like it her we all can just go back to Africa.
Man…I guess even among those that profess Christ racism and prejudice is alive and well. I had to really fight myself not to curse every single one of them out (for more then obvious reasons).
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Wow, that is sickening, sad – and worse than I would imagine. Maybe nobody in Buchanan’s circles has ever called him on it.
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Well put, lunchcountersitin.
Joker, I’m curious as to which site you put it on. It’s really funny (in the weird way).
“First, America has […] have ever known.”
Or “greatest levels of freedom and prosperity” ever known to Buchanan’s ignorant self. Black people in ancient times were crazy prosperous.
I love the way that he accounts the slave trading as a happy story that was employed solely for the Christening of Africans, instead of the fact that it was for the greed of slave traders. He also uses “grew” as if turmoil and loss of self didn’t play a huge part in this “growth.”
“Second, no people […] into the mainstream.”
Oh my gosh! Not every black person utilizes these things. There are way more white people than black people on welfare. (I’m not trying to degrade any race, I’m just setting the facts straight.) Also, I’m pretty sure that black people aren’t exempt from paying taxes.
“Governments, businesses and […] over white applicants.”
White women are the prime benefactors of affirmative action.
“Churches, foundations, civic […] to such things.”
Black people aren’t the only people who use soup kitchens, adult education, day care, retirement and nursing homes. Gasp! Other races (including black people) donate to these things too.
“We hear the grievances. Where is the gratitude?”
It’s up your nose, with a rubber hose.
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The welfare comment especially pissed me off. First off black people are only 13% of the total U.S. population. Now, if we make up a small portion of the country how can welfare, section 8 housing or food stamps have been created for our benefit?
Idiot. Logically there are more white people using those things then black people by virtue of their being more whites then blacks in the whole country!
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Lol, I guess that Buchanan didn’t even consider what easily came to the previous commenters’ minds before opening his mouth. He is an idiot. I’ve never even heard of him before this though.
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Buchanan used to write speeches for Nixon. He is also a talking head on cable news. I see him on MSNBC. He ran for president in 2000 and got a suspiciously high number of Jewish votes in Florida.
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When I read the quot above, I laughed as I thought it was written as a satire?(right word?) or as a joke.
I couldn’t believe it when I found out it was an actual quote!
So ridulous, I had to laugh
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i know some people will think like this man Pat Buchanan which is sad enough. but to actually voice it out.From my little knowledge of American history,blacks and white arrived and worked this land roughly the same time. the only major difference was that while one was master, the other was a slave.I don’t believe blacks should be “given” anything. they deserve every good thing America has to offer. they certainly earned it.history is there for anybody to look up.
thank you.
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Pat Buchanan: “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……”
Wow, like it was a Carnival Cruise or something with salvation tossed in as a freebie… And, of course “where is the gratitude?” Didn’t this guy watch Roots? Come on!
I’m often dumbfounded with the ignorant, racist comments people like him profess. Truly embarrassing – his statements are profoundly ignorant and privilege based.
I wish men like him would just disappear. :(((
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I have become a pretty conservative guy after growing liberal in the 1950s and 1960s right in the same neighborhood Barack Obama later made into his home and political base.
I certainly agree with some of the things Patrick Buchanan has said, but I lately come to see one thing in great clarity.
It is this. There is no point to endlessly discussing what social justice is and how to achieve it in the absence of permanent full employment.
Without full employment, and that means a job commensurate with the individual’s education and horizons, along with a health benefit, there cannot be social justice.
On the other hand, if you have full employment, you are 90 percent along the way to social justice already, at least in an economic system as advanced as that which exists in Western and Westernized countries today.
Put it this way. Social justice is economic justice.
I want to add, I consider the liberalism I was raised with to be incongruous. Liberals say they support justice and actualization for all. But what they actually believe in is a vast and impossibly expensive system of ministrations which will make everyone as they grow up exactly like their own pampered upper-middle class children.
I have a little surprise to spring here, several actually. First of all, I am white guy (perhaps a surprise, but not the big one) who grew up under poverty conditions (the second surprise, but still not the big one).
The big surprise is, people in America who have grown up in poverty, urban or rural, or under ghetto or barrio conditions do not look back and wish they could change everything in their life.
I don’t wish that. I doubt that someone like Denzel Washington wishes that either. I can see a few important things I wish had been different. I am sure someone like Denzel Washington does too. But not everything. Not enough to steal my passion, I’ll put it that way.
In one important way, conservatives are far ahead of liberals in what they have to offer. They believe in the power of human spirit. The problem is, most of the time their outreach falls short, or is just plain too limited.
Back to Patrick Buchanan. Sometimes he troubles me as well. His argument about what America has done for African-American is not totally without merit, however.
Perhaps it is hard to accept the fact that the world was in the past just plain a cruder place than it is today.
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“His [Pat Buchanan’s] argument about what America has done for African-American is not totally without merit, however.”
I disagree – what White America did for the African American beginning in the 1600’s when the first 20 indentured servants came to Virginia through the 1960’s is subjugation, torture and marginalization. We never granted equal status or leveled the playing field. We were happy to let black Americans live on the side lines.
If not for the African American leaders, MLK and the rest, in the push to create a better place for black Americans white America would have never changed a thing. Why would we? We have nothing to gain by helping a group of people we subjagated gain status and potentially “take over” – there would be hell to pay!
Most white Americans did nothing. Present day Conservative white Americans are the ones who you might find burning crosses or confronting the negro if he were to be out of place…. conservatives are not compassionate and self sacrificing, trusting in the good will of humanity to bring justice and equality.
I do agree though that social services should promote education, empowerment, and independence, however conservatives would end all social services – liberals should push for productivity and not dependence.
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Im confused about “The Joker” So 5 years ago he was posing as a black man? Wow….
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