Pat Buchanan on undeserving Latinos

When Pat Buchanan was on the Rachel Maddow show the other night he claimed that Sotomayor was an intellectual lightweight not qualified to be on the Supreme Court who had gotten where she was through affirmative action. Remember, he was talking about a woman who:

Coming from a housing project in the Bronx, Sotomayor ended up graduating summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Princeton. She also was a co-recipient of the M. Taylor Pyne Prize, the highest honor Princeton awards to an undergraduate. Sotomayor then went to Yale Law School, where she served as an editor of the Yale Law Journal and managing editor of the Yale Studies in World Public Order. [the Think Progress blog]

Of course, there is no reason to believe that I am aware of that affirmative action had any role to play at Princeton or Yale in anything other than admissions. Buchanan offers no evidence that Sotomayor was not deserving of her educational achievements other than the fact that she is a minority. If graduating summa cum laude does not prove that you deserved to be there, even though you were admitted through affirmative action, what would? Obviously no level of achievement, no amount of ability and hard work, would be enough.

To black and Hispanic voters the message in this is clear, insofar as Pat Buchanan defines the Republican Party, a Republican administration would be one that thinks that minorities are undeserving per se, just because they are minorities. It is amazing to me that Republican elected officials and Republicans who aspire to be elected seem to be unwilling or unable to counter the damage that racists Pat Buchanan and Rush Limbaugh are doing to the Republican brand.

Hope for Republicans in the culture wars?

In his latest newspaper column Pat Buchanan sees hope for the Republican Party. First he gives the bad news:

...the voting groups growing in numbers — Hispanics, Asians, African-Americans, folks with college degrees, the young — are all trending Democratic, while the voters most loyal to the GOP — white folks and religious conservatives — are declining as a share of the U.S. electorate. And demography is destiny.

But he sees an advantage for Republicans in the culture war issue of gay marriage.

When African-Americans, who gave McCain 4 percent of their votes in California, gave Proposition 8, prohibiting gay marriage, 70 percent of their votes, why would the GOP give up one of its trump cards — not only in Middle America but among minorities? A conservative who could have sharpened the social, moral and cultural differences might, from the exit polls, have done far better.

That is just too stupid for words. All the Proposition 8 vote showed was that in a straight up or down vote on gay marriage most African-American voters were against it. Their feelings about gay marriage have caused few African-Americans to support Republicans up to now and there is no evidence, in the Proposition 8 vote or elsewhere, that very many African-American voters will become single-issue anti-gay rights voters in the future.

In fact the same demographic and intellectual trends that favor Democrats that Buchanan cited are eroding opposition to gay rights in general and gay marriage in particular. In fact, these trends will continue to erode opposition to gay rights until it will be as much a fringe position among the American electorate as is opposition to womens suffrage or support for slavery. But that is the issue Buchanan hopes will stem the tide of Republican decline. What a maroon!

Pat Buchanan’s rant

I received a question from a regular reader of this blog why I had not commented on Pat Buchanan's Sunday newspaper column. I had not been moved to comment on it when I first read it because I thought it was its own refutation. Here are some excerpts from Buchanan's March 21 column:

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:

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?

Well, now that I think about it I guess I do have something to say about this. Racial prejudice has diminished greatly in this country during my lifetime. A day may come when the disadvantages of being black in America will have diminished so much that they will be outweighed by the advantages and being of African descent will be as positive a thing as Mr. Buchanan finds being of Irish descent is today. That day has not yet come and only a self-pitying white racist such as Mr. Buchanan would think it had.

When people ask Barack Obama why he self-identifies as black rather than white he explains that it is because in many situations, such as trying to hail a taxi at night, he is treated as black. Whether or not he is African-American is not something he can choose the way someone with dual citizenship chooses one or the other of those countries.

In spite of all those programs Mr. Buchanan lists black unemployment, poverty and incarceration rates are much higher than whites. Government assistance targeted at the black community is trying to compensate for the disadvantages blacks face in the job and housing markets because of racial prejudice. When racial prejudice fades away those programs will no longer be needed and will also cease to exist.

Feelings of gratitude arise naturally in those who have reasons to be grateful. Demanding gratitude, as Mr. Buchanan does here, accomplishes nothing. Mr. Buchanan should see the difference between his expectations and reality as a signal that perhaps he is operating with faulty assumptions and he needs to reevaluate everything he thinks he knows.