A Brief for Whitey (by Patrick J. Buchanan)

A Brief for Whitey
by Patrick J. Buchanan

How would he pull it off? I wondered.

How would Barack explain to his press groupies why he sat silent in a pew
for 20 years as the Rev. Jeremiah Wright delivered racist rants against
white America for our maligning of Fidel and Gadhafi, and inventing AIDS to
infect and kill black people?

How would he justify not walking out as Wright spewed his venom about "the
U.S. of K.K.K. America," and howled, "God damn America!"

My hunch was right. Barack would turn the tables.

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?

Barack talks about new "ladders of opportunity" for blacks.

Let him go to Altoona and Johnstown, and ask the white kids in Catholic
schools how many were visited lately by Ivy League recruiters handing out
scholarships for "deserving" white kids.

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?

As for racism, its ugliest manifestation is in interracial crime, and
especially interracial crimes of violence. 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?

Is Barack aware that black-on-white rapes are 100 times more common than the
reverse, that black-on-white robberies were 139 times as common in the first
three years of this decade as the reverse?

We have all heard ad nauseam from the Rev. Al about Tawana Brawley, the Duke
rape case and Jena. And all turned out to be hoaxes. But about the epidemic
of black assaults on whites that are real, we hear nothing.

Sorry, Barack, some of us have heard it all before, about 40 years and 40
trillion tax dollars ago.