"A Brief For Whitey" -Why MSNBC needs to lose Buchanan (Updated)

Note - I know that some of this has been brought up before, but obviously I don't think it's been dealt with.
In case you missed it:

Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Trinity UCC senior minister for 30+ years, said things that were stupid and offensive to some.  To others, especially those who watched the videos of the whole thing, these comments were (1) accurate, (2) sensical and (3) taken out of context.

Sen. Barack Obama, his parishioner and front-runner for the Democratic nomination, denounced the words but not the man.  He gave a speech on race in America entitled, "A More Perfect Union," which talked openly and honestly about race - something not really done before.

Pat Buchanan, who has never been elected to anything and is even on the outs with the Republican leadership, is a commentator for MSNBC and regularly spouts arch-conservative ideas that almost certainly are representative of about 10% of the US population.

After "A More Perfect Union," our good friend Pat Buchanan who has said:

"If a country forgets where it came from, how will its people know who they are?"

went on a nice little tirade about race in America (to TownHall, RealClearPolitics and HumanEvents, as well as other places).  From his article on HumanEvents.com

Barack then listed black grievances and informed us what white America must do to close the racial divide and heal the country.

The "white community," said Barack, must start "acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination -- and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past -- are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds ... ."

And what deeds must we perform to heal ourselves and our country?

The "white community" must invest more money in black schools and communities, enforce civil rights laws, ensure fairness in the criminal justice system and provide this generation of blacks with "ladders of opportunity" that were "unavailable" to Barack's and the Rev. Wright's generations.

Let's start here.  First, Senator Obama made great mention of what the Black community needed to do to address racism:

For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances - for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans -- the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for own lives - by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.

Buchanan, in his online rant, ignores Obama's call to the Black community to address its own issues.  Obama did this before even addressing what the White community must do in this country.  Furthermore, he took bits and pieces of various lines to form demands that Obama never made.

Pat Buchanan went to private school and to a private college (eschewing the grandeur of public education).  Maybe that's how he missed the dilapidated schools that Barack Obama talks about.  Since he's never been elected to represent anyone, maybe he's been able to ignore and skip the poorest parts of America.  And maybe, since his only real job has been to talk, ad nauseum, on television (instead of working 2 waitressing jobs, fast food, in factories, in fields, etc) he doesn't really get the plight of poor America - White or Black.

The truth is, though Pat Buchanan talks about wanting to remember where America comes from, he does so out of ignorance.  He romanticizes the prosperity of Blacks in America (some Blacks achieve wealth, many are stuck in abject poverty) as well as indicates the Eurocentric mentality that living in the US is better for slaves.

Unfortunately, being a pundit (even from a good school such as Gonzaga) allows you to make false equivocations without retribution.  Who is to say that Africa would be the same if Europe and the Americas didn't take 40 million of its citizens away from the continent?  If the West had left her alone, would Africa have its resources, governments, wealth and people - so that it could rival any other continent (especially considering how Africa brought us civilization in the first place)?

In his "Brief for Whitey" (written in his white briefs?), he writes that the US government has given untold trillions to aid the Black community by way of welfare, etc.  Here are, in no particular order, the issues with his statement:

• Blacks aren't the only ones that receive Aid to Dependant Families and Children (what we used to know as "welfare") or Temporary Aid for Needy Families (what we currently think of when we hear "welfare").  Families of all races receive this, housing supplements and food stamps.
• Even worse, the amount given to poor families is nothing, nothing, compared to the amount of welfare given to energy companies, medical industries and defense contractors.  That welfare FAR outweighs and outspends the welfare given to poor folk - and the recipients are largely white, upper class.
• Just for fun, Harper's magazine estimated that the US Government would owe over 100 trillion dollars in reparations, if we were to go that route.  So - maybe we are just paying it back slowly.

Finally, good ol' boy Buchanan lists some crimes that Blacks commit against Whites more often than Whites against Blacks.  Being the guy I am, I want to include rape of slaves by slaveowners, murder/lynching, etc - but I won't go there now.  He lists a few numbers, without any proof, so it's hard to really deal with the veracity of the statements.  I will say this - no one would justify Black on White crime or crime, really, of any kind.  But when his argument is that Blacks commit crime against whites "45 percent of the time" - it sounds scary, right?  But that means a population that is 12-13% of the country commits crimes against its own population MORE often than it does of the race that makes up 74% of the country.

Repeat that with me: Blacks commit more crime against 12% of the country than they do against 74% of the country - and this man is calling it racism.  He talks about Black on White robberies - but what about the Black employees of Enron or any other corporation that sells out its employees so the boards and CEOs/COOs can fly away with millions of dollars?

I've edited a bit of this to add in what Michael Medved has had to say (via Crooks and Liars who summed it up well):

  1. Slavery was an ancient and universal institution, not a distinctively American innovation.

   2. Slavery existed only briefly, and in limited locales, in the history of the republic - involving only a tiny percentage of the ancestors of today’s Americans.

   3. Though brutal, slavery wasn’t genocidal: live slaves were valuable but dead captives brought no profit.

   4. It’s not true that the U.S. became a wealthy nation through the abuse of slave labor: the most prosperous states in the country were those that first freed their slaves.

   5. While America deserves no unique blame for the existence of slavery, the United States merits special credit for its rapid abolition.

   6. There is no reason to believe that today’s African Americans would be better off if their ancestors had remained behind in Africa.

Slavery was an institution used by other civilizations and nations but NO country used slavery like chattel slavery like we did.  Furthermore, there are many books, articles, etc which detail the abuse that American slaverowners perpetrated.  Live slaves were more valuable, but you would think that strong, well-rested and well-fed, well cared for workers would be better than not.  But American slavery didn't do that - they worked them to the grave and then simply bought more.

For point 4, he ignores that it's not necessarily states who profited - by companies.  Sugar, railroads, banks, etc all made great money off of the backs of slaves and then kept that going through investing and other entrepreneurial work.  On and on, Pat Buchanan's racism helps feed the xenophobia and racism of others.  Something must be done to get him off MSNBC and off the airwaves!

Let me be clear - the conversation that the stark conservatives want to have about race is, "Why aren't Black people thankful for slavery?"  I think it's going to be hard for the typical voter to line up behind that statement, especially given the facts, images and stories of how slavery killed and tortured millions.  Email MSNBC and remind them just how much Buchanan is feeding the racism of America.

Email MSNBC: [e-mail] or [e-mail]

Letters:
NBC News
30 Rockefeller Plaza
New York, N.Y. 10112

JEFF ZUCKER
President and Chief Executive Officer, NBC Universal

Steve Capus,
President, NBC News
[e-mail]

MSNBC NEWS DIRECTOR 201 583 5155. fax. [phone]
MSNBC SWITCHBOARD (ASK FOR NEWSROOM) 201.583.5000
fax: [phone]

NBC NEWS CHIEF  212.664.4773. fax: [phone]

NEWS DIRECTOR 201 583 5231 fax. [phone]
NBC SWITCHBOARD (ASK FOR NEWSROOM) 212.664.4444.
fax: [phone]

bsmcneil has a BA in Race and Gender Studies from UNC-Asheville and is working on a Master's of Divinity.