Black People Owe Very Little to White People

Conservative commentator and former presidential candidate, Pat Buchanan, has written an editorial in response to Barack Obama's much acclaimed speech on race, A More Perfect Union, given last week. In his article, Buchanan agrees with Obama's desire to have an honest conversation about race in America, but he asserts that the so called "Silent Majority" (racist white Christians) must have its "convictions, grievances and demands heard". By this, Buchanan goes on to explain why he thinks black people should show "gratitude" to America, which Buchanan describes as the "best country on Earth for black folks", and rants about how much black-on-white crime there is.

For what, you may be asking, are black people supposed to be so grateful? Well, Buchanan writes the following, which I will undoubtedly be accused of taking "out of context" from you Cons out there:

"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."

"...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."

Now, the thing that is so interesting and disgusting about Buchanan's flawed reasoning, is that, in the opinion of this author, it is an all too common way of thinking among ignorant and defensive white folks. It is not a stretch to say that MOST white people in America would at least agree with Buchanan's basic premise - that black people should show more "gratitude" to white people for lifting up blacks. The sad thing is that people who think this way probably don't even realize just how racist these views are, or how unbelievably illogical, and in fact, offensive they are.

What Buchanan and people like him conveniently gloss over, is the fact that it was white men who were overwhelmingly responsible for the slave trade, and enslaved blacks in this very country, amassing incredible levels of wealth on their labor - in fact, this includes more than a few of the very white men responsible for founding this country under the premise that "all men are created equal". However, in his article, Buchanan refers to slavery almost as if it were not white people who enslaved blacks, but some third party - perhaps Klingons - who were primarily responsible for the trade and enslavement of black human beings. Furthermore, when slavery ended, it was not done peacefully, as a result of the good grace of white American slaveholders, but rather, by force - a little known event called the Civil War - maybe Buchanan was absent from school for that lesson, at home sick watching Howdy Doody perhaps - and while slavery was the issue that the conflicts that led to Civil War revolved around, it wasn't the primary impetus for the Lincoln's willingness to prevent Southern secession, at least not at first.

The point is that there is no gratitude owed to people who enslave others, and only undo the chains when forced to at gunpoint. Then, after being forced to release the human beings they enslaved, the wonderful white people Buchanan believes blacks should be so grateful toward, passed laws to keep the ungrateful black people of America in quasi-slavery for another one hundred years - Jim Crow and Black Codes - and formed organizations like the Ku Klux Klan to terrorize blacks and whites of good conscience.

Then, the end of Jim Crow and segregation in America did not come about from white Americans voluntarily reforming in an attempt to "lift up" black Americans. No - change happened because black people themselves rose up, literally sacrificing their lives at times, and demanded equality and the right to live without being terrorized, If left up to white racists like Buchanan, black people would probably still be drinking from separate water fountains, and hanging from trees for looking the wrong way at white women.

The second half of Buchanan's racist and flawed thinking is that blacks should be grateful for the "untold trillions" spent on social programs that black people may or may not have participated in. First of all, the programs Buchanan lists were not created exclusively for black people, and in reality, the programs listed were primarily utilized by white people. Secondly, even if black people have benefited from these programs, there is hardly cause for "gratitude" toward white Americans for providing services they should have had equal access to in the first place, and which hardly settle the score or correct the damage inflicted from hundreds of years of slavery.

In this sense, the "white guilt" that conservatives like Buchanan revile, is totally appropriate. In 1860, for instance, there were approximately 4 million slaves in the US. Let's say, that if those slaves were free workers and earned even a very modest 2 dollars per week (most likely more), they would have earned 416 million dollars in just that one year. If we were to taking it back 200 years and calculate what salve populations would have earned as free black workers, the number becomes astronomical. Then there is the massive amount of wealth accumulated by southern land holders and northern businesses that also profited from the immoral and anti-human practice of slavery. Despite this enormous debt owed to slaves and their descendants, no reparations have ever been paid to slaves or their descendants by either the southern plantation owners, or the US government that allowed the institution of slavery to exist, and later turned a blind eye to Jim Crow. In fact, lazy, racist white southerners were largely allowed to keep the wealth they generated on the backs of black slaves, and today, while black people endure various forms of intitutionalized racism and fester in ghettos devoid of opportunity, that inescapably lead to the alleged black crime Buchanan whines about, just mentioning reparations will make you the subject of ridicule and/or anger from subtly racist defensive white people.

The bottom line here, and what people like Buchanan can't make out through the fog of their racism, is that white Americans are owed very little gratitude from black Americans, because any of the significant progress black people have made came as a result of their own organizations, struggles and demands for equality. Of course, there has traditionally been a small group of white people, activists and sympathetic elites and politicians in key positions who have helped. But, white people as a whole have done little to help black people, and only embrace them when and if they present themselves as "less black", and attack their own poor people (see bill Cosby), and/or if they abandon talking about inequality and race matters - because ya know, god forbid we white Americans should confront our racism and racist past.