Talking a little truth to "y'all", Buchanan-style.

Witness this discussion of AG Eric Holder's contention that we are a "nation of cowards" over race:



I think the first thing I want to get out up-front is that I think there is a reluctance to really open up a discussion about race. The dialogue suggests that Americans want to believe we're living post-racially, as if the big problems of civil rights and equality are closed. The results still imply we are not post-racial, yet.

I think it needs to be said: no, the idea that we are a nation of cowards, and the idea that we have racism in this country are not dead issues just because we elected a black president, any more than Martin Luther King Jr. Day or Black History Month, or watching a few hours of BET every now and then, mean we have become an inclusive and post-racial culture. Our racial dialogue at the moment tends to fall into the "someone said the N-word" category. We can talk about the "N-word". White people know that's bad. We can talk about that. What is harder to do, and necessary to do, is to talk about race from a perpective that does not rely so much on the controversy of "This is/is not racism" and addresses the problem of what racism is, does, and has been doing.


And just like we aren't post-racial if we let the "We elected Obama, so racism is over" meme prevail, we also aren't discussing it completely when, as Buchanan seems to, we look at negative statistics regarding the incidence of, say, single motherhood and crime, and then go, "Well, why isn't the African-American community and its leaders doing something to address that?" as if there was some separate, black country within America, just doing its own thing without interaction with and history within white America and her institutions. When he looks at the black church as self-segregating, he is missing the point--

White people started segregation. It's not anti-white racism to admit what happens to be an historical fact, but when it's said, the effect is sometimes jarring. (Some of the imputed racism of Rev. Jeremiah Wright comes to mind--if he discusses white racism, is he wrong because he is inaccurate or is he wrong because some things are wrong to say "out loud"?) The institutions black people created still exist as an artifact of that. The existence of predominantly African-American neighborhoods also reflects white segregation as well as African-American segregation. The discussion has to go both ways. The implications of race are not an "African-American" or an "Asian-American" or an "Latino-American" or a "Jewish-American" discussion--but an American discussion.

Also, I have to wonder why Pat Buchanan happens to be the "go-to white guy" in this discussion. The argument that there is "no better place than America" for black people isn't a real winner coming from someone who seems nostalgic for the friction-free planatation days. Being satisfied with inequality because things could be worse?

I don't think so.