I would have resigned myself to the usual afterglow of watching a night of enthralling, hard-hitting Basketball games under the wire in which six and seven footers collaspe at the end either from emotional defeat or the utmost elation. Yet, there was one other thing that also lingered in my thoughts the entire day.
It began with reading the rotten and rather pejorative words of MSNBC pundit Patrick Buchanan from his vitriolic "A Brief for Whitey".
I've read quite a plethora of different texts since I was knee high to a grasshopper. But this one truly broke the mold in terms of its content. For it to be on not only the national stage (if not an international one) only showed that even with two steps forward in terms of racial progress, society takes two steps back.
Here are excerpts from Mr. Buchanan's commentary in all their sickening glory [emphasis mine]:
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?
Patrick Buchanan
When I first read this in D Wreck's wonderful diary, I was aghast and rather upset. After firing off a response, I sat and had my cup of joe. While I looked outside on the Holy Saturday morning, I knew that Mr. Buchanan's remarks just highlights an already pervasive problem that has been there for time and eternity. Although the response today was overwhelming in terms of condemnation, the MSM airs a singular view which privileges white males. The point of view mentioned mirrors the patriarchal lens in which gives the authority of subjugating "the other" in a criminalizing or transgressing light.
It is a position so commonplace within the media eye that it is almost taken for granted. Over the years, the MSM cynically and ironically plays out a narrative that has defamed, criminalized and denigrated "the body of the other" as one continually possessed, scrutinized and dissected. Helplessness and complicity must be adhered to without question.
God forbid if 'the other' speaks back.
Punditry and reporting from the distinct view of white privilege on cable and network news outlets play out the last vestige of the old boys club in which women, people of color, gays, lesbians and the transgendered are rendered silent and forced to hear talk "putting them in their place". Sometimes, it is in the form of borderline racist comments. Other times, it is more of the type of back-handed insults that are meant to be "advice" ("They should be thanking us", "Racism doesn't exist", "Stop whining about race and get some responsibility"). Such statements along these lines made by white male pundits are to be taken silently without confrontation. If 'the other' does, they are seen as "troublesome", "aggressive", "violent" and of course, "uppity".
Nobody subscribing to white privilege wants the 'other' to "act out" or rebel. The 'other' must be infantilized and rendered "safe". Being thought of as "safe" (such as a Larry Elder or a Juan Williams, for example), is just as good as being rendered voiceless until being made to echo the virtues of white privilege in a perverted form of Stockholm Syndrome.
During such talk fests which rarely invite the voices of 'the other' to speak back, white (conservative) male hosts (or pundits) shout down and talk over dissenting voices so that it is almost complicit that no one questions him and his opinions. Without license, they tell the voices representing 'the other' to be quiet and do what they say. There was no better example than the situation of Mr. Buchanan's famous retort towards Democratic Strategist Keli Goff to, "Shut Up"[emphasis mine]:
Buchanan:"In Iowa and New Hampshire, there aren’t that many black folks. He skipped Michigan, the first big contest besides South Carolina -
Goff: "Because he’s black?"
Buchanan:"HOLD IT!" [cross talk] Shut up for a second, please!"
Goff:"Excuse me, don’t talk to me like that, Pat. That’s inappropriate. [snip]
Maddow:"First of all I would just say, as a matter of procedure here, Pat, I’ve been on television with you a million times and I’ve never heard you tell anybody to shut up before. That was absolutely, completely ridiculous of you. Second of all, tell me about how the black vote explains Obama’s win in Utah."
--Crooks and Liars, March 13, 2008
Although there have been a few cases out there, most shows rarely feature the voices of 'the other' as ones of authority. Minority opinions are usually viewed as ones of "support" to the white male host. This is especially the case in which the "big lie" of racial equality is perpetuated, that since the faces are there, the landscape of the media has changed. From the shouts of Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Joe Scarbourough, Chris Matthews, Chris Wallace and of course, Pat Buchanan such false projections of an America in which no race problem exists is more of a fallacy.
In the end, Mr. Buchanan's corrosive words against African Americans in his commentary reflects the silent desire in order to return to a past of acquiescence and total allegiance to a system of white supremacy without fighting back. In that world, the races are segregated in a 'top-down' form of feudalism that depends on the every whim of those who benefitted from such a system. The problem of this point of view is that it desensitizes the pain and powerlessness of Black people by neutralizing their wants and needs. Any attempts of restoring humanity or empathy is seen as attacking "traditonal American ideals"--as if those ideals still contained the nature of invading, attacking and conquering of those who do not fit into the narrative of "Manifest Destiny".
What is even more disconcerting is that these views are often echoed in terms of "race-based" talk between whites and non-whites. Some whites do not even realize that their words still contain the semantics of colonization and Jim Crow as they are uttered. Thus, change by anyone who is from a disenfranchized group is perceived as a rebuke ultimately to what what once an considered American way of life in which only the "master" was pleasured and no one else.
The ultimate transgression of Black folk (and other disenfranchised voices) is to assert power through subverting the patriarchal desire and gaze. We cannot be told to be silent and complicit if change is supposed be the order of the day. With the progress of civil rights, multicultural society and Senator Barack Obama's call to be more honest in racial talk, it must be addressed that in this new age there are many voices that need to be heard. That requires action and change in our media outlets and institutions in which the gateway of information is exchanged.
Well, in D Wreck's discussion section, I fired my first salvo against Mr. Buchanan's kind of talk. Even though I try to maintain decorum in my writing, I couldn't in this case.
I wrote that he ought to have STFU. There's my gratitude.
--politicalceci