cross-posted to jack & jill politics
Many of you have written in or posted comments about Pat Buchanan's crazy ass comments that black Americans should be grateful to white folks for bringing us (via slavery, of course) to America and Jesus and welfare.
Rather than tackle this stupidness, I pass the mic to Ta-Nehisi Coates. Excerpt
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Many of you have written in or posted comments about Pat Buchanan's crazy ass comments that black Americans should be grateful to white folks for bringing us (via slavery, of course) to America and Jesus and welfare.
Rather than tackle this stupidness, I pass the mic to Ta-Nehisi Coates. Excerpt
There is a lot wrong here, but one central thread of errant logic undergirds it all. Buchanan, like most racists, doesn't actually believe that African-Americans are Americans. This isn't an interpretation, Buchanan's argument that white Americans, in the form of social programs, have done more for black people than any group (including presumably the entire Civil Rights Movement!) assumes that black people have never paid any taxes for those programs. He quite literally doesn't categorize black people as Americans, but useless layabouts who've never contributed anything to the country. All those charities that Buchanan lays out, presumably none of them were run by black folks.
It goes without saying that Buchanan ignores Jim Crow, the epoch of lynching and housing discrimination. That's what bigots do. And Buchanan's rhetoric shouldn't make us angry. He's always been a racist. That said, it's always frustrating to see rank neanderthals, half-wits, and fools making the argument that black people should be thankful to them. Intellectually, Pat Buchanan can't carry Barack Obama's unwashed boxers--from last week. I just got done jogging down Lenox Ave and passed no less than five brothers that would smash Buchanan in any debate.
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