I have been a fan of Pat Buchanan for many years. We both grew up in Washington D.C., are about the same age, and seem to agree on politics. The following is a Buchanan column, with which I don’t really agree, even though it is accurate, and to most, should make a lot of sense!
Buchanan to Obama
“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:
“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. Jeremiah Wright ought to go down on his knees and thank God he is an American.
“No people anywhere, have done more to lift up blacks than white Americans. Untold trillions have been spent since the 60’s on welfare, food stamps, rent supplements, Section 8 housing, Pell grants, student loans, legal services, Medicaid, earned income tax credits and anti-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 their 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 ’ladders of opportunity’ for blacks. Let him go to Altoona and Johnstown Pennsylvania, and ask the white kids in Catholic schools, how many were visited by Ivy League recruiters handing out scholarships for ’deserving’ white kids? Is white America really responsible for the fact that the crime wave and incarceration rates for African Americans, is seven times those of white Americans? Is it really white America’s fault that illegitimacy in the African American community, has hit 70%, and the black dropout rate from high schools in some cities, has reached 50%? 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 interracial crime, especially interracial crimes of violence. Is Barack Obama aware that while white criminals choose black victims three percent of the time, black criminals choose white victims 45% of the time? Is Barack aware that black-on-white rapes are 100 times more common than the reverse, that black-on- white robberies are 139 times as common in the first three years of this decade, as the reverse? We have all heard from the Rev. Al Sharpton, about the Tawana Brawley, Duke, and Jena rape cases, 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.”
Thanks Pat, now for my own personal experiences and opinions. My Dad and Mom bought a retirement farm in southern Maryland when I was 14, 45 miles from D.C. Nearby, were two colored families with their own farm and kids. We all played together, and their farms were wonderful. No one had a single bit of racism, nor were there any handouts to them. My Dad was a corner druggist for 36 years in D.C. and he had three colored employees. Never was there a problem with any of them, and there were no handouts either. My first experience with racism, was when I moved to Philadelphia, and saw what blacks had done to former white neighborhoods. I saw, for the first time, graffiti, slums, abandoned cars and homes. I saw for the first time, racism, and heard the word ’nigger’ used. There was segregation all the time I was growing up in D.C., but no one thought anything about it. Colored had their own schools and shopping areas. They had their own radio stations, which played the music they liked. No one hated them, and they didn’t hate whites. I truly believe that the negro race would have slowly but surely raised itself, with no handouts, which in reality has destroyed them. My Dad’s employees worked full time at good jobs, and part time for my Dad. This was long before the “Civil Rights Act,” which merely enflamed whites. The forced school integration and bussing, cost hundreds of billions of wasted dollars. “Birds of a feather, flock together,” is the old saying, and very true. Blacks like blacks, and whites like whites.
When I was 21, I borrowed $20,000 from my Dad, and built a drive-in theatre in Southern Md. (It’s long gone, but in its place, there is a ’Theater Street’). Like D.C., Southern Md. was segregated. My drive-in theatre had two sections, and two sides of the entrance box office. One side said “colored,” and the other side said “white.” There were two sets of rest rooms, and two sides of the concession stand, but no fences or divided lines between the two sections. Colored loved their side, and whites did theirs also. There was NEVER any skirmishes of any kind, or hard feelings. To be truthful, the ’colored side’ had far less vandalism than the white side. I opened the drive-in in October 0f 1956, operated it for 8 years and sold it. I don’t know when it was developed into more useful property. The point of this, is that before the ’civil Rights’ nonsense, there was no racial bitterness in the South. In the north, like Philly, races had kept themselves separated for a hundred years, with no legislation, and there were no problems. From the time of handouts and freebies, all hell broke loose, and especially in the big cities like Philadelphia. Whites were driven out, and blacks destroyed the neighborhoods into which they moved, usually with no money down, thanks to Uncle Sam. The results were destroyed big cities, like Philly and Detroit. It’s so damned obvious! Government handouts destroys people, races, cities, and the economy.
The Civil Rights Act, ruined big cities, by forcing whites to abandon the neighborhoods they grew up in, and loved. The Civil Rights Act, and similar bureaucratic and Presidential executive orders, has destroyed not only the negro race, but the American Indian as well. Handouts give temporary relief, but destroy the ability and desire to work, support, and care for ones self and family.