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.
Is this the way conservatives see race? That slavery, segregation, lynching, etc., were simply minor blips to offering great opportunities to African Americans?
3 comments:
I suspect it's less a conservative view than a Souther white male asshole view. It's true that we aren't exactly seeing conservatives fall over themselves to condemn Buchanan, but most conservatives I know personally ignore him on principle, so it's not as though the opportunity to distance themselves has arisen all that often.
Perhaps. I fear that this is not that far out of the mainstream white American conservative view--that the final abolition of slavery, and removal of legal segregation oddly proves the superiority of American culture and somehow erases the cultural sin of both forms of discrimination. Nevermind, of course, that conservatives like Buchanan fought civil rights on every hand. The very fact that civil rights have been won deserves gratitude, according to Buchanan.
I have spent my life on the west coast and in the bluest parts of a nominally red state, so I probably don't have the best sense of mainstream conservative culture.
Post a Comment