By: Deborah Mathis, BlackAmericaWeb.com
If you’re still wondering why the Jeremiah Wrights of this world do not preach to empty sanctuaries where nary an “amen” can be heard when they rail against racial injustices, look no further than one Patrick J. Buchanan.
Buchanan has been on the public stage since the administration of Richard Nixon, whom Buchanan served in the White House. Since then, he has made a name for himself as a syndicated columnist, television talk show host, omnipresent political pundit, public speaker and, twice, presidential candidate -- first, as a Republican and later as the nominee of a feeble third party. His jobs may have varied, but his ideology never has. Buchanan is a rock-ribbed conservative. And a neo-racist.
Surprisingly to some, Buchanan joined the chorus of observers who congratulated Sen. Barack Obama on last week’s “race speech,” as it’s being called. The presidential candidate acquitted himself well, Buchanan said in several TV appearances.
But, it would have come as no surprise to those who know Buchanan’s underhandedness and two-faced habits that, in the same week, he had resorted to form, turning to his old hateful, separatist tricks.
Of Obama’s call for more faith and investment in civil rights and equalization of the various playing fields -- jobs, housing, criminal justice, etc. -- Buchanan wrote this in a column:
“It is the same old con, the same old shakedown that black hustlers have been running since the Kerner Commission blamed the riots in Harlem, Watts, Newark, Detroit and a hundred other cities on, as Nixon put it, “everybody but the rioters themselves.’
“Was ‘white racism’ really responsible for those black men looting auto dealerships and liquor stores, and burning down their own communities … .”
If you’ve ever seen Buchanan on the air -- and he is a fixture at MSNBC, to name but one of his many haunts -- you will know that he is a student of history or, better put, of historical facts. He can name dates of treaties, obscure opponents of nearly obscure presidents and election results with the best of them.
But Buchanan seems either incapable of or unwilling to be faithful to history and actually process or learn its lessons. Were he the student of past experiences that he fancies himself to be, he would acknowledge that words, actions and policies have consequences; that they affect conditions and circumstances, which, in turn, affect attitudes, which, in turn, affect behaviors. He would admit that, to portray the riots of the 1960s as just purely impulsive, unfounded events, detached from circumstance spawned by discriminatory -- even cruel -- policy and practice is half-witted. Failing to acknowledge that is what leaves us in, as Obama put it, the “racial stalemate.”
Compounding the offense, Buchanan ran to that old and corrupt argument about black indebtedness to whites for sparing us the degradations of the motherland or, for that matter, anywhere else on Earth.
“America has been the best country on Earth for black folks,” he wrote. “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.”
Rev. Wright, he said, “ought to go down on his knees and thank God he is an American.”
Then, the coup de grace: “No people anywhere has done more to lift up blacks than white Americans.” Buchanan names several domestic programs like food stamps, Pell Grants and affirmative action, all of which, in his demented view, give black Americans an unfair advantage. “Where,” he asks, “is the gratitude?”
What accounts for Buchanan’s seething anger and resentment is unclear, since he did not grow up without health care or good housing or a fine education but, indeed, seems to have enjoyed every advantage the country has to offer. I suppose, then, he is playing to his audience -- whites who blame their failures and disappointments on black Americans and other people of color.
His language toys with their anger, bats it around and fuels it -- this, from the same man who says Rev. Wright is just stirring the bad pot.
But, of course, that’s his line for the general public. He sings a different tune when talking to his base. That’s what Rev. Wright understands: The underground movement of spiteful, condescending and militant racism lives, supported by men and women of influence who pretend to be civilized while, in truth, their hearts cradle vile, savage passions, feeding on damning stereotypes so hungrily that it seems they are addicted to anger.
Talk one way; walk another. It is, you could say, the same old con.
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