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Patrick Buchanan

Blacks Should Quit Complaining, Suggests Buchanan

     In the aftermath of Barack Obama's recent speech on race, conservative commentator Pat Buchanan has launched a diatribe against black complaints about racism.
      Writing on his own blog, Buchanan says, "America has been the best country on earth for black folks" and argues that America can't have a conversation about race without hearing from the silent majority of whites.
     "Barack says we need to have a conversation about race in America," Buchanan writes. "Fair enough. But this time, it has to be a two-way conversation. White America needs to be heard from, not just lectured to."
The McLaughlin Group commentator seems to argue that African Americans benefited from being brought to this country as slaves. "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," he writes.
      And Buchanan also goes after Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who has criticized the country in some sermons now widely broadcast on YouTube. "Wright ought to go down on his knees and thank God he is an American," Buchanan says.
      Buchanan is a regular MSNBC contributor, where he often talks about politics, but on his blog he seems to go farther than what he says on television, even defending white America from charges of past racism. "[N]o people anywhere has done more to lift up blacks than white Americans," he argues, citing what he says are trillions of dollars spent since the 1960s 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."
      A former Republican presidential candidate, Buchanan has been known for making controversial remarks in the past, but these most recent remarks do not appear to have been mentioned much in the mainstream media.  Buchanan seems to argue that African Americans should be more grateful and less critical of their country.
     "We hear the grievances. Where is the gratitude?" he writes.
    

Posted April 2, 2008

  To the extent that he acknowledges real problems in the black community, Buchanan seems to dismiss the white community's responsibility for those problems. "Is white America really responsible for the fact that the crime and incarceration rates for African-Americans are seven times those of white America? Is it really white America's fault that illegitimacy in the African-American community has hit 70 percent and the black dropout rate from high schools in some cities has reached 50 percent? Is that the fault of white America or, first and foremost, a failure of the black community itself?"
      But that's not all.
      Buchanan admits that racism is a problem in America, but he seems to suggest that whites are more likely to be victims than blacks. "As for racism, its ugliest manifestation is in interracial crime, and especially interracial crimes of violence," he writes.  "Is Barack Obama aware that while white criminals choose black victims 3 percent of the time, black criminals choose white victims 45 percent of the time?"
      Data from the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics seems to contradict Buchanan's argument. Those statistics show that blacks are far more likely than whites to be victims of crime.
      Buchanan's statistics have also been challenged by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which points to data in the National Crime Victimization Survey. According to the data, 73 percent of white violent crime victims were attacked by whites, and 80 percent of black victims were targeted by blacks. 
     "What's mystifying about all this isn't that Buchanan pushes racist ideas," according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
     "He's been doing that for a long time now. It's that he gets away with it while holding on to his high-profile job as a mainstream TV commentator."

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