Dear Pat Buchanan:
This is an open letter to you at your foundation, American Cause, in Virginia in response to your essay published yesterday, March 27th. We will quote three portions of your essay and then comment.
“In his Philadelphia address on race, Sen. Obama identified as a root cause of white resentment affirmative action—the punishing of white working- and middle-class folks for sins they did not commit: ‘Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race,’ said Barack. ‘As far as they’re concerned, no one’s handed them anything. … So when they … hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed … resentment builds over time.’ On this issue, Barack seemed to have nailed it.”
But, Pat, you are supporting Barack in his claim to supremacy in knowing how white Americans feel (“resentment”) when he condenses all the emotional diversity among the white American peoples, and you are backing up his claim to the bizarre sole feeling of “resentment.” Barack even claims to see inside the minds of the voiceless white American peoples to know that “resentment builds over time.” Why won’t you speak out against this sickly arrogance?
At Resisting Defamation, we believe that only diverse European Americans have the right and privilege of saying what our feelings are, and reporting on emotional development over time. This is not just a picky point — we have been carefully schooled by a malevolent media and a snarky multicultural ideology that the only peoples who can describe and define themselves are those peoples themselves. Barack’s arrogance and supremacy claim ignores this fundamental right.
“But then he revealed the distorting lens through which he and his fellow liberals see the world. To them, black rage is grounded in real grievances, while white resentments are exaggerated and exploited. White resentments, said Barack, ‘have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. … Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.'”
Pat, you missed the key concept here and that is his use of “reverse racism” which simply does not exist. Racism is racism — there is no “reverse” to it. To add the adjective “reverse” is to admit the original accusation of Barack and his ilk. If one kind of racism is bad, why render another kind as “less than” by putting “reverse” in front?
It is easy to notice that you rise effectively to the bait of policies, but you need to become much more aware of the bait of names, labels, definitions, and descriptions. Words do have meanings and consequences especially for our children and in the white-bashing “national conversation” on race that Barack kicked off in an effort to save his candidacy.
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“Now that our national conversation is underway, Barack should be asked to explain why discrimination against whites is good public policy, while discrimination against blacks explains the rants of the Rev. Wright.”
You focus exclusively on policies defended by Barack or on bigotry by his pastor, but you ignore that Barack has a record of slander and stereotyping of the diverse European American peoples. If anything undermines his claim to the high moral ground, it is his gratuitous willingness to smother our diversity and to tell us who we are — things any white American learned long ago to eschew at the risk of public humiliation and loss of career. For example, he used the slur “acting white” in his 2004 convention speech, a term that smothers us into one model and carries special loathing in the black American community.
He used “white resentment” in his notorious speech on race last week which claimed the privilege of naming our feelings and smothering all their variety. The day following, he called his grandmother a “typical white person,” a slur formulation that would cost you many outlets for your column were you to say that someone was a “typical black person.” Barack is deeply committed to an insane and one-dimensional imagining of the diverse white people, and is extraordinarily dangerous to the republic and to our children when we carefully examine his mind, not just his policies. His discriminatory policies are ugly extensions of LBJ’s, but his naming and describing reveal an essentially pathological and diseased mind that needs exposure throughout the so-called “national conversation.”
Bo Sears