Saturday - March 22, 2008

The Great Race Debate (GRD), round 3: Buchanan’s Essay

Americans and other impatient people may skip this part:

I would like to apologize in advance to our international readers. I am sorry, but I think you are going to see a lot of these racial posts. I’m going to give you a brief bit of background on and about America and her people that I hope will enable you to understand our mindset, and allow you to understand why this is such a Bloody Big Deal to us. I fully expect people to cuss me out, tell me I’m an idiot, and offer up countless counter-arguments that show my errors. All of which will actually show that I’m right, as “spirited debate” is one of the things that makes us Americans.

The United States is currently fixated on it’s painstakingly slow process of choosing it’s next leader. This iteration of the process is exquisitly tedious. For starters, this is the longest preamble to an election we’ve ever had. In the past we could do the whole thing in 8 to 10 months. Last time it took 18 months. This time we’re going at it for a full 2 years. And this is the Information Age, when almost literally everything is available instantly with just the click of a mouse or the flip of a remote control. It’s getting crazy. An awful lot of us are sick to death of the endless beating we’re suffering, seeing and hearing about these candidates, every minute detail of their lives, their backgrounds, their associates, their finances, every single hour of every single day FOREVER. For added angst, the selection of candidates this time has been disappointing to almost everybody. From the Conservative, Republican side of politics, it felt like a hundred guys wanted the nomination, but we didn’t really like any of them. None of them met our qualifications. Too much this, not enough that. It finally came down to John McCain, even though many of us can’t stand him. We don’t think he’s a Conservative. Hell, most of us have a hard time even believing he’s a Republican. Which really means he is a Centrist, and that’s a good position for a candidate. From the liberal, Democratic side of the aisle, another horde of people wanted the nomination. Being a Democrat has taken on a new meaning in the last two decades. The Left has shifted much further to the left. Liberalism has become Progressivism, and nobody notices that this is what the Communists used to call their policies. No, we’ve all come down with selective amnesia and decide that (thank you Tim Curry in Clue),"Communism was just a Red herring”. At this point there are two candidates left vying for the Democratic nomination. Both are major leftists; just one generation ago both would have been branded, and damned, as Socialists at best, Fascists or Communists more likely, but at the far end of the political spectrum definitions start to blur for most of us. Regardless, 25 years ago both of them would have been deemed so Far Left they’d be Left Out. Anyway, one of them is female. And one of them is black. But we also can not ignore that in those same 25 years our government has also shifted quite a lot to the left. We’ve become a Nanny State, where all goodness flows from the Almighty in Washington DC. Where the role of government has changed from one of minimal guidance to one of massive protection from every minor risk in life and has become the font of sustenance and wealth. So in many ways these two lefties are more centrist than many people want to believe. That change in philosophy is another gigantic essay, but for now I’ll just state that as a given, even though I believe that such change is wrong and should be reversed if at all possible.

We’re a funny people. We all know that the President doesn’t really have all that much power, and can at best merely guide the federal government. The federal government, and the state governments, can guide and constrain the economy and the people to some extent, but their influence is really mitigated by world events and economic realities. We are a capitalist nation, a nation of shopkeepers writ large. Business, both large and small, drives us. We like to make money, lots of money. That being said, there is another part of our psyche that is strongly concerned with social issues. We worry about the education of our children, the cleanliness of our environment, the quality of life of the less successful among us, et cetera. We also think a lot about the higher issues, the meta-concepts like freedom, equality, justice, opportunity, and so forth. I am not claiming that we are the only people that do this; I’m sure that many of these worries are shared by most other folks around the world. But in America, The Land Of Opportunity, one’s present level of social and economic success, along with everything else good and bad in life, generally gets blamed on the current President. We blissfully ignore the realities that trends exist, that policies take time to come to fruition, that change often happens slowly. No, we are impatient, hyperactive people. We want it all, we want it now, and if it isn’t happening right this second it’s the fault of the person in the White House. Oh, and we love to argue. We disagree on everything, all the time. Sometimes we disagree purely as a matter of principle; I refute what you’re saying today because I’ve disagreed with you in the past. And the beat goes on ...

Oh, one other thing. Every group, either ethnic or religious, that has come here has been hated and feared at first. They’ve all had to prove themselves in an extended trial by fire, sometimes generations long, before being accepted as True Americans. We’re a tough club to join, because we want only the best of who gets here. The rest of you can either die or go home. Well, that’s how it used to be, at least. Things have changed in the last few decades. Now anybody can get in, and immediately start crying when things get rough. And they get rewarded for it! Back in the day, it was “root, hog, or die”; a rural expression that meant you were the only one responsible for your own success and survival.

For all of our history our Presidents have always been white men. For most of our history our Presidents have always been Protestant Christian white men. Around the time that I was born we elected a President who was a Roman Catholic. People turned themselves inside out over that one, worried sick that our leader would be in thrall to the Vatican. That didn’t happen obviously. “Regular” religion has become almost a political non-issue, though we still can get excited about any “unusual” religions the candidates may belong to. We also get our panties in a twist when a candidate seems “excessively” religious, and (forgive me the applicable oxymoron) God help the candidate who might be an atheist, should we ever field one. It’s a minefield, but it’s one that can be avoided by treading lightly.

This election cycle has brought us to a unique spot in our history. We have a woman running for the office. We also have a Person Of Color ( a choice euphemism that theoretically means “anyone of any skin tone darker than a sheet of paper”, but in reality means a person of remote African descent. I know, I know; people from many other parts of the world are just as dark or darker. They can also claim the POC mantle, but usually only do so when they have something to complain about and want to convince us that they’ve been put upon. The rest of the time they’re just Americans, which means they’re too busy making money to pay much attention to skin tones. )

Ok ... the Woman Thing ... nobody really cares. Not really. We have truly “come a long way, baby”; we have women in the workforce, we have women bosses, we have women business owners, we have women in the military. We still argue a bit about “the glass ceiling” and “pay inequalities”, but we ignore the fact that women often want different things out of life than men do. But being female is no real barrier anymore to being President. Well, as long as they don’t complain “you’re being mean to me because I’m a girl” because they get asked the first question in a debate. We see that response as a cheap trick, to which the proper response is “Man Up”. It’s the old dichotomy in action again; you can’t demand full equality on the one hand, and seek special treatment because of some natural circumstance (ie being female) on the other. Swim with the big fish, as a big fish, or get out of the lake.

Right. Finally? The Race Thing. Mostly. The United States of America was founded on some lofty concepts. One of those concepts was that all of us are born equal (after that it’s what you make of it). We love the concept, but it has taken a long time to actually make it happen. We weren’t a society of complete equality at first. It is not unfair to say that it took us nearly 200 years to get even close to that point. It was within my lifetime that laws were passed that enforced true legal equality for people of all genders, races, sexual alignments, and belief systems. Laws notwithstanding, it has primarily been within the past 45 years that most of the social turnover has taken place. Changes are happening still. While a vast number of people today do honestly feel that a “level playing field” has finally become a reality, other large numbers of people feel that the “level” has quite a bit of slope left in it. So, of course, we argue whether the slope is uphill or downhill for “our side”, even though most of us are out on that field, running around in circles as fast as we can, making money. Hey, we’re Americans. Getting rich is our job.

Geez, are we there yet? I have to pee! Yes! For the past 50 years America has made enormous efforts to improve the lives of black people. We had this whole thing called the Civil Rights Movement in my childhood, and Full Equality was the supposed outcome. That wasn’t enough, or maybe the outcome didn’t really happen. We’ve had the push for the Great Society (a new New Deal). We’ve had the War On Poverty and created a vast welfare state. These weren’t enough either. We’ve had Affirmative Action, a very slick term for reverse discrimination, for many years now to force black people to have more than equal rights and opportunities in higher education and the workplace. All of these programs were meant to atone for past wrongs and to make up for past mistakes at an accelerated rate. But we’re still not there. We’ve spent billions on improving our schools, spending extra heavily in the inner cities and other areas with strong black populations. It doesn’t seem to be working. We’ve been round pegs hammered into the square holes of Political Correctness and Zero Tolerance, to the point that the pale among us suffer from White Guilt, our children suffer from Black Envy, and we have had our voices silenced to the point that black celebrities can come on the TV and tell us how some words are reserved for black people alone, and can have either a positive or negative meaning based on context, but those same words are denied to white people because, no matter the context they are used in, they will always - by definition! - be the negative meaning. And this has been not only allowed, but celebrated! And still millions of us, white and black, cry racism and inequality and discrimination and secret conspiracy theories to Kepp the Black Man Down. To many of the Caucasians living in this soup, these efforts seem to be Too Much even though they are forever derided as being Not Enough. An awful lot of us have just about run out of patience with the whole thing. We’re fed up, because we’ve got to where we are now largely by our own efforts, and it looks like the other side isn’t willing to do much other than complain and feel sorry for themselves. The olive branch has been extended time and time again, then gold plated and re-extended. Heck, it feels like the whole forest of olive trees has been extended, but it’s never going to be enough. Nothing ever will.

Yes, Barack agreed, Wright’s statements were “controversial,” and “divisive,” and “racially charged,” reflecting a “distorted view of America.”

But we must understand the man in full and the black experience out of which the Rev. Wright came: 350 years of slavery and segregation.

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.

What is wrong with Barack’s prognosis and Barack’s cure?

Only this. 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 stories, and burning down their own communities, as Otto Kerner said—that liberal icon until the feds put him away for bribery.

Barack says we need to have a conversation about race in America.  Fair enough. But this time, it has to be a two-way conversation. White America needs to be heard from, not just lectured to.  This time, the Silent Majority needs to have its convictions, grievances and demands heard. And among them are these:

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.

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.

Churches, foundations, civic groups, schools and individuals all over America have donated time and money to support soup kitchens, adult education, day care, retirement and nursing homes for blacks.  We hear the grievances. Where is the gratitude?

Go and read the rest. I think it’s one of his better essays, though I fully expect him to be instantly sidelined. After all, he is a Religious Nut. And a White Guy. And a Right Wing Extremist. So he can be ignored. Have to keep the Silent Majority silent, you know.

Posted by Drew458     on 03/22/2008 at 08:38 AM   
Filed Under: • Politics • Racism and race relations •  
• Comments (8) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

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