Losing White America

Losing White America

Pat Buchanan
July 23, 2010

On Monday, the Department of Agriculture demanded the resignation of Shirley Sherrod over a two-minute videotape where she appeared to describe to a cheering crowd of the Georgia NAACP how she denied assistance to a poor white farmer about to lose his land.

Declaring itself "appalled" at this "shameful" act of racism, the NAACP said it would investigate the Georgia crowd that cheered her and praised the Department of Agriculture for firing her.

On Wednesday, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack was begging for Sherrod's forgiveness, and the NAACP was burbling apologies.

For the video turned out to be an excerpt from a speech in which Sherrod described her growth from a bitter black woman whose father was murdered by a white man into one who found joy helping poor white folks keep their farms.

What was it that caused the rush to judgment by Vilsack, the NAACP and a White House that supported the ouster of Sherrod without talking to her or viewing the full tape?

Panic. The White House fears it is losing white America because of a false perception that it harbors a bias against white America.

Outrageous, rail those journalists who celebrated the NAACP's accusation that the tea party is harboring racists and is too cowardly to confront them.

Yet, as things perceived as real are real in their consequences, if the White House does not eradicate this perception, its lease may not be renewed. Whence comes that perception? Several incidents.

First was the startling accusation by Attorney General Eric Holder, days after Barack Obama was inaugurated in a gusher of good feeling, that we are all "a nation of cowards" when it comes to facing issues of race.

A real icebreaker for a national conversation.

Second was the instantaneous verdict of the president, when asked about the arrest of Harvard's Henry Louis Gates by Cambridge cop Sgt. James Crowley. With no knowledge of what happened, Obama blurted out that the cops had "acted stupidly."

It took a White House beer summit to detoxify that one.

A third was the revelation that Obama's first Supreme Court nominee, Judge Sonia Sotomayor, the "wise Latina" herself, had gone to extremes to see that the case of Frank Ricci and the New Haven, Conn., firefighters never got to the Supreme Court. Ricci and co-defendants had been denied promotions they had won in competitive exams solely because they were white and no black firemen had done as well.

The fourth was the Justice Department's dropping of charges against members of the New Black Panther Party, whose intimidation of voters in Philadelphia had been captured on tape.

When a department official resigned in protest and went to the Civil Rights Commission to accuse officials at Justice of ordering staff attorneys not to pursue such cases, that explosive charge, too, was ignored by Justice.

Came then the NAACP smear that the tea party was harboring racists, which Joe Biden explicitly rejected on national television on Sunday, before the Monday firestorm over Sherrod.

Now, whatever one's views on each of these episodes in which race played a role, white Americans are being forced to address them. And, surely, the White House understands this is bad news for Obama and the Democratic Party.

For though the black community remains solidly behind Obama and the white majority is shrinking toward minority status by 2042 or 2050, depending on which Census survey one uses, whites in America still outnumber blacks five to one. And if forced constantly to come down on one side or the other of a racial divide, most folks will wind up with their own.

In past elections, Democrats have raised race -- allegations that black churches were being torched in the South, that George W. Bush's opposition to a hate crimes bill meant he was coldly indifferent to the dragging death of a handicapped black man -- to solidify and energize the minority vote. And, today, that vote remains solid behind Obama,

Where the erosion is taking place is in white America, among working- and middle-class folks who voted for Hillary Clinton in the primaries but took a chance with Obama in the fall. Now, every time some new incident erupts, these folks are being tarred.

Opposition to affirmative action is racist. Supporting the tea party gives aid and comfort to racists. Opposing health care puts you in league with folks who used racial slurs on Rep. John Lewis. To raise the issue of the New Black Panther Party is to play the race card.

One understand the bitterness of tea party folks who carry signs that read: "What difference does it make what this placard says. You'll call it racist anyway."

As the National Journal's Ron Brownstein has been reporting, white America is increasingly alienated and distrustful of all our major economic and political power centers -- the banks, big corporations, the government.

And, for the first time in our lifetimes, outside the South, white racial consciousness has visibly begun to rise.

I think both sides are playing with the race card quite a bit. Some people call other people racist, and other people are saying that they're constantly being called racist.

The article talks like there are lines drawn between whites and every minority. "Isolating white middle class workers".... as if there aren't black middle class workers that are affected by every political action the same way their white counter part is affected. Drawing racial lines into society is never a good thing.

And saying "white America is increasingly alienated and distrustful of all our major economic and political power centers -- the banks, big corporations, the government" is merely a sign of fear that more minorities are beginning to take on higher, and more responsible jobs. I fail to see the harm in that.

BubbleBliss wrote:I think both sides are playing with the race card quite a bit. Some people call other people racist, and other people are saying that they're constantly being called racist.

It does get old after while. I've been called a racist even though my best friend is black. Then i've been told (after saying so) that i have him just as a token black friend. It's utter bullshit because the guy is my closet friend and we have so much in common.

BubbleBliss wrote:The article talks like there are lines drawn between whites and every minority. "Isolating white middle class workers".... as if there aren't black middle class workers that are affected by every political action the same way their white counter part is affected. Drawing racial lines into society is never a good thing.

That line gets drawn in every quarter. Blacks don't like Mexicans and whites don't like them either. Then some blacks and whites don't like each other. Self-segregation isn't always a good thing either. That's when blacks decide they want to live in a black neighborhood, etc, etc.

BubbleBliss wrote:And saying "white America is increasingly alienated and distrustful of all our major economic and political power centers -- the banks, big corporations, the government" is merely a sign of fear that more minorities are beginning to take on higher, and more responsible jobs. I fail to see the harm in that.

There's nothing wrong with that but his statement of that doesn't point to race. It just points to the distrust of those entities to begin with. Not many minorities are in those big jobs. Some, but not much.

In my experience, certain groups of blacks don't like each other. In London, there seems to be a bit of friction between Africans and Jamaicans... I had lots of black friends when I was a child and from my understanding later in life, the friction is all to do with the perception that African blacks are disliked because of the role they played in slavery, that their ancestors sold the Jamaicans ancestors into slavery. It is pretty irrational to blame all Africans, as irrational to blame all whites.

Yeah, and over here i see blacks from the inner city disliking blacks who are well-to-do (made something of themselves). I know this because my friend Bernard goes thru it now and then. He says that they tell him he's not black any more. Silly.

TexasBlue wrote:

BubbleBliss wrote:I think both sides are playing with the race card quite a bit. Some people call other people racist, and other people are saying that they're constantly being called racist.

It does get old after while. I've been called a racist even though my best friend is black. Then i've been told (after saying so) that i have him just as a token black friend. It's utter bullshit because the guy is my closet friend and we have so much in common.

Just for the record, that doesn't mean you're not a racist. I've met plenty of black dudes that were racist themselves and thought they were the only good black guy there is. Not saying you're racist, just saying what most people think about that argument.

TexasBlue wrote:

BubbleBliss wrote:The article talks like there are lines drawn between whites and every minority. "Isolating white middle class workers".... as if there aren't black middle class workers that are affected by every political action the same way their white counter part is affected. Drawing racial lines into society is never a good thing.

That line gets drawn in every quarter. Blacks don't like Mexicans and whites don't like them either. Then some blacks and whites don't like each other. Self-segregation isn't always a good thing either. That's when blacks decide they want to live in a black neighborhood, etc, etc.

But I don't ever hear articles about "losing the black/latino middle class", not do I ever hear them being mentioned really. The middle class is the middle class, no matter what ethnicity, they all want to live a comfortable life.

TexasBlue wrote:

BubbleBliss wrote:And saying "white America is increasingly alienated and distrustful of all our major economic and political power centers -- the banks, big corporations, the government" is merely a sign of fear that more minorities are beginning to take on higher, and more responsible jobs. I fail to see the harm in that.

There's nothing wrong with that but his statement of that doesn't point to race. It just points to the distrust of those entities to begin with. Not many minorities are in those big jobs. Some, but not much.

Exactly, and the author is saying that white Americans feel more alienated and distrustful because more blacks and Hispanics are in higher ranking positions.