I’ve felt this way ever since last year when then-candidate Barack Obama– responding to the Reverend Wright controversy– gave his speech on race in Philadelphia, where he recounted America’s long, complex history on race.

Some people liked it, some people didn’t, but Buchanan’s response stood out among all others.  In an article titled “A Brief For Whitey,” Buchanan argued that black people should be thankful for slavery and that every social program the government has ever instituted– from welfare to student loans to Medicaid– has been nothing more than a handout for blacks.  Observe:

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?

Never mind the fact that just a cursory glance at statistics would tell you that whites are overwhelmingly the beneficiaries of most of those programs, including affirmative action, which rightfully put more white women into the workplace than any other group.  Worse than that, Buchanan believes that black people should be thankful for the 400-year transatlantic slave trade that killed as many as 10 million Africans, because if it wasn’t for slavery, they wouldn’t be living in our modern-day “black utopian” America.

This is the equivalent of saying that Jews should be thankful for the Holocaust.  But ironically, I don’t even need to make that stretch because Buchanan just happens to be a card carrying Hitler-apologist as well.

Last Thursday, on the 70th anniversary of Germany’s invasion of Poland, Buchanan celebrated by writing an article titled “Did Hitler Want War?” in which he argued that historians have misunderstood Hitler’s peaceful intentions, that Hitler was not bent on conquering the world, and that he actually wanted to end the war in 1940, “almost two years before the trains began to roll to the camps.”  Buchanan’s argument– which he has made before in the past– is that World War II wasn’t worth it and that the Holocaust was Britain and Poland’s fault, not Hitler’s.

Which brings us to MSNBC, where Buchanan is given a nationally televised platform and has collected a steady paycheck for years as a political contributor.  Last week, Buchanan’s Hitler article was being promoted on MSNBC’s website.  They took it down once the criticism and complaints began coming in:

David A. Harris, President of the National Jewish Democratic Council, condemned MSNBC’s promotion of the “deplorable” column and urged that it be removed from MSNBC.com.  Well, now the network has pulled it.  (Indeed, the old link is dead).

Harris, in second statement, said that “MSNBC took the responsible action and removed Pat Buchanan’s column,” while adding that “no worthy news organization should employ and promote a commentator who engages in such vile fiction.”

An MSNBC spokesperson issued a statement to POLITICO: “An editorial decision was made to remove the column from msnbc.com. Pat is a contributor to MSNBC, his syndicated column does not speak for the network or represent the views of MSNBC”

But here’s the thing.  MSNBC can play the old “the views expressed by so-and-so do not necessarily represent” card all day.  But when you are paying someone to express those views, promoting those views on your website, giving those views a steady national platform on cable news, then those views do represent the views of MSNBC.  If they truly don’t, then prove it; stop paying the guy and find another commentator.

It’s not as if Buchanan’s views on blacks and Jews (and women and gays and immigrants and every other segment of the population that isn’t white males) are a secret.  Fair.org put together a comprehensive list of Buchanan’s own words on these subjects and it reads as if he has learned absolutely nothing from any progress made in America since about 1850.  Keep in mind that this list (click the link above just to see how long it is) was put together in 1996 and doesn’t even include all the things he’s said in the last decade.  Here’s just a sample of Buchanan’s quotes:

▪ White House adviser Buchanan urged President Nixon in an April 1969 memo not to visit “the Widow King” on the first anniversary of Martin Luther King’s assassination, warning that a visit would “outrage many, many people who believe Dr. King was a fraud and a demagogue and perhaps worse…. Others consider him the Devil incarnate. Dr. King is one of the most divisive men in contemporary history.” (New York Daily News, 10/1/90)

▪ In a 1977 column, Buchanan said that despite Hitler’s anti-Semitic and genocidal tendencies, he was “an individual of great courage…. Hitler’s success was not based on his extraordinary gifts alone. His genius was an intuitive sense of the mushiness, the character flaws, the weakness masquerading as morality that was in the hearts of the statesmen who stood in his path.” (Guardian, 1/14/92)

▪ Trying to justify apartheid in South Africa, he denounced the notion that “white rule of a black majority is inherently wrong. Where did we get that idea? The Founding Fathers did not believe this.” (syndicated column, 2/7/90) He referred admiringly to the apartheid regime as the “Boer Republic”: “Why are Americans collaborating in a U.N. conspiracy to ruin her with sanctions?” (syndicated column, 9/17/89)

▪ “Rail as they will about ‘discrimination,’ women are simply not endowed by nature with the same measures of single-minded ambition and the will to succeed in the fiercely competitive world of Western capitalism.” (syndicated column, 11/22/83)

So why does MSNBC continue to employ someone who believes, in his own words, that Martin Luther King, Jr. was “divisive” and Hitler was a “genius,” that women aren’t “endowed by nature” with the brainpower to succeed in our society?  If the guy in working in MSNBC’s accounting department came into work expressing these views to coworkers, he’d be fired on the spot.  If an MSNBC job applicant had these views on their Facebook page, they wouldn’t pass the first background check.  So why does Pat Buchanan get a pass?

The truth is that MSNBC believes that Buchanan’s views are worthwhile– worth airing and worth discussing.  They believe he represents a segment of angry, aggrieved, conservative white males in America, who happen to be racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, xenophobic, jingoistic, and completely unapologetic about all of it.  MSNBC believes that this buffoonish caricature of conservatism is one worth giving a platform to.

Well, here’s what I believe.  I believe that people like Pat Buchanan should be isolated and marginalized as much as possible.  I believe that if you want to hear what someone like Buchanan has to say, it should not be as easy as turning on your television or pulling up the website of a major news organization; it should take a Google search and a lot of scrolling.  I believe that when someone walks in the door arguing that women are naturally inferior and white rule over blacks is not inherently wrong, that we shouldn’t sit around and hear this person out, we shouldn’t give them a national platform to debate their views, we should escort them back out the door as quickly and as loudly as we possibly can.

And I refuse to watch MSNBC until they do just that.

Specifically, until this man does just that: Phil Griffin, President of MSNBC: phil.griff­in@nbcuni.­com.

Related posts:

1. What’s Wrong with Obama’s Speeches on Race
2. Glenn Beck: Obama is a “racist” with “deep-seated hatred” for whites
3. Exposing Beck, Limbaugh, and other racist Obama critics

No, seriously –  let me start by saying that the fact that we have a president who talks about race seriously at all is a huge step in the right direction.

That said, I am frequently distressed by what the president actually says when he does speak about race.  Because I think he is (perhaps unintentionally) intellectually dishonest about how race truly operates, what life is actually like as a Black person, and what it will take to really create equality of opportunity and an equitable division of resources (which are two very different things that require two separate, but specific, approaches).

Unlike most people, I thought the Philadelphia speech was terrible, a historical, and dangerous.  I thought in his attempt to appeal to both White and Black, he made a crucial mistake that many people make when discussing race — equating Black and White feelings about, and experiences with, race symmetrically.  Meaning White people’s resentment at Black progress was the same as Black frustration with being oppressed.

Simply – though both are legitimate, they are not equal.

To suggest, as he did, that they are, I think is dangerous.  I think it contributes to a feeling of fatigue in America.  Fatigue with remedies for past wrongs.  Fatigue with talking about Black people when we can talk about White people.  Fatigue fatigue fatigue.

This is perhaps unavoidable.  He is a politician and there are many more White people than there are Black people.  He must say what will allow him to stay in power and do what he wants to do to help everyone.  I get that.

But because race operates the way it does, what any prominent Black person says carries enormous weight.  In this case, what he’s saying is incredibly detrimental to a concerted, real fight to end racism (it’s great, if you’re goal is bettering race relations…but yea, that’s a different goal).

We’ve got to find language that talks honestly, directly, and passionately to the specific and unique experience of being Black in America without it being assumed that, by doing so, we ignore everyone else. 

I think Obama attempts to find this language in his speech before the NAACP last week:

The first thing we need to do is make real the words of your charter and eradicate prejudice, bigotry, and discrimination among citizens of the United States. I understand there may be a temptation among some to think that discrimination is no longer a problem in 2009. And I believe that overall, there’s probably never been less discrimination in America than there is today.

But make no mistake: the pain of discrimination is still felt in America. By African-American women paid less for doing the same work as colleagues of a different color and gender. By Latinos made to feel unwelcome in their own country. By Muslim Americans viewed with suspicion for simply kneeling down to pray. By our gay brothers and sisters, still taunted, still attacked, still denied their rights.

On the 45th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, discrimination must not stand. Not on account of color or gender; how you worship or who you love. Prejudice has no place in the United States of America.

But we also know that prejudice and discrimination are not even the steepest barriers to opportunity today. The most difficult barriers include structural inequalities that our nation’s legacy of discrimination has left behind; inequalities still plaguing too many communities and too often the object of national neglect.

Lovely language, but later in the speech he says something he’s never really said before:

We need a new mindset, a new set of attitudes – because one of the most durable and destructive legacies of discrimination is the way that we have internalized a sense of limitation; how so many in our community have come to expect so little of ourselves. (emphasis mine)

This is the part of the speech that has been missing from all his other speeches regarding race.  And boy – it’s beautiful to see.  Even more beautiful to listen to.

See, the problem I’ve always had with Black conservatism, particularly as embodied in Obama, is the silly belief that Black self-reliance is so Herculean that it can fix all problems that Black folks face.    Black conservatives didn’t always pay the proper attention to just how damaged Black folks really are.

Here though, Obama nods at something that few public Black figures speak enough on – the psychic dimension of racism.  He acknowledges that so much of what being Black is is about wrestling with a legacy of racism that manifests in subtle, specific ways all damn day long.  That takes its toll on a person.

The problem then, in this speech, is that he doesn’t expound on this idea more.  He doesn’t talk about the daily bombardment with anti-black images and ideas that black folks have to deal with.  He doesn’t talk about the fact that Black boys do well until about 4th grade and that it could have something to do with the fact that a racist White America is still largely in charge of his education.

But he does immediately follow it up with the usual, “get off your ass and change,” undercutting the weight and importance of his statement about the psychic damage of racism.  So much so, that no one has mentioned it.

Shame.

Were it that easy for us to collectively pick ourselves up, dust off the racism and keep it moving, we’d have done it long ago.

The sad truth is that even if you work really hard and play by the rules all the time, as a Black person, you are still more likely to “fail.”  Even if you “succeed,” you have to be like Obama and pretend that you aren’t the exception that proves the rule that you are.

Either road isn’t good for Black psyches.  Either road perpetuates the dominant narrative that if there is a problem in Black communities, it’s Black folks’ fault.  Either road doesn’t eradicate racism.

Continuing to deny that Black people are profoundly damaged, that life is hard for us no matter how “well” we do, that the end of Jim Crow, slavery and lynching isn’t the same as the end of racism, that the burden for ending racism has as much to do with White folks as Black folks will doom us to repeat the past.

As evidenced by Pat Buchanan’s unrepentant racism, the tea parties, caricatures of the First Family, racism is alive and well.  Resurging, even.

Now might be a good time to start talking about it for real.

Related posts:

1. Why Obama can’t be the national spokesperson on race
2. Collective v. Individual; Where Does Racism Lie
3. Glenn Beck: Obama is a “racist” with “deep-seated hatred” for whites