The political impact of Barack Obama’s speech on race in America won’t be known for another month. That’s when voters go to the polls in Pennsylvania.
But conservative commentator Pat Buchanan has heard enough. He thinks "white America needs to be heard from, not just lectured to." In a post headlined, "A Brief for Whitey," Buchanan gives Obama grief for not throwing Rev. Jeremiah Wright under the bus:
How would Barack explain to his press groupies why he sat silent in a pew for 20 years as the Rev. Jeremiah Wright delivered racist rants against white America for our maligning of Fidel and Gadhafi, and inventing AIDS to infect and kill black people?
How would he justify not walking out as Wright spewed his venom about “the U.S. of K.K.K. America,” and howled, "God damn America!"
Buchanan thinks African Americans should show more appreciation for being the descendants of slaves:
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.
Buchanan was just warming up:
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.
For the record, 20 million Africans were shackled and packed into the holds of slave ships. Roughly 10 million black people didn't make it here because they died in passage.
I won’t dignify Buchanan’s rantings by disputing the amount of government spending on social programs. Suffice it to say there are more poor whites than poor blacks. But unlike the broken promise of "40 acres and a mule," the government programs that Buchanan lists were not “designed” for African Americans.
Also, white women have been the primary beneficiaries of affirmative action.
Buchanan denounces government spending to "lift up" individuals. How typical. Meanwhile in one day, the federal government spent $30 billion on corporate welfare to bail out Bear Stearns.