'> Pat Buchannan-'blacks should be grateful' I should be thankful for the trees in the south that held the ropes that were tied around the necks of black men and women who were lynched at the hands of whitey.

Leave it up to whitey to rewrite history in such a way that favours himself as blacks’ greatest saviour - and I quote:

“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.”

The words above can be attributed to right-wing conservative Pat Buchanan's A Brief for Whitey. If you ask me, it sounds like someone's been drinking unfiltered tap water, if you know what I mean. Since when is kidnapping, lynching, raping and torture seen as a good thing? Talk about living in a state of denial. Pat Buchanan's comments are exactly the reason why black people need to address the atrocities committed against us and not leave it to others to rewrite our history.

If we don't we get ludicrous statements like the one above which we all know is about as far from the truth as WMDs in Iraq. The fact that he felt comfortable enough in his whiteness to say this is what really bothers me and just further illustrates how they continue to try and minimize and justify slavery and years of racial discrimination. If I follow Buchanan's logic, as a black woman I should be thanking my lucky stars that the white man travelled across the Atlantic Ocean and to capture my ancestors and bring them here to work as slaves in his fields and home.

I should be thankful for the trees in the south that held the ropes that were tied around the necks of black men and women who were lynched at the hands of whitey. As black women, we should be rejoicing over the white man's penchant for our dark chocolate coloured skin, big hips, and voluptuous breasts that frequently took him from the big house to the outhouse where we were. The Bible - that Christian salvation that Buchanan and those like him speak so passionately about - well it's the same book that justified whitey owning slaves and the mistreatment of those slaves. Whitey's Bible came complete with a blue-eyed Jesus to suit and was forced upon his African slaves in their new land. I think Buchanan forgot to mention that part.

Yes, Amerikkka's been really good to blacks. What would a bunch of Africans know about freedom and prosperity anyway? Before the European whitey and the American whitey showed up in Africa we were just reigning as kings and queens of our own land, providing for our families and villages through harvesting crops and Africa's natural resources, and praying to the God that we knew and believed in.

Africans were kidnapped from their homelands, not brought voluntarily to America

Africans were doing just fine in Africa until whitey showed up and decided to steal us for our talents at producing beautiful crops and children. That's the reality.

According to Buchanan, we never knew real freedom and prosperity until the first chain locked around our necks and we were shipped off to a foreign land and forced to cooperate in whitey's dreams of prosperity. So here we are in 2008 and Amerikkka is still living in denial.

Pat Buchanan probably believes that Amerikkkan slavery was the best thing to ever happen to us black folks, but we know the inconvenient truth. Buchanan writes that "---It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships---" as if a Princess Line cruise ship pulled up to the West Coast of Africa and rolled out the welcome mat. Try changing the word 'brought' to forced, captured, or kidnapped because that's the reality of what happened.

Africans were doing just fine in Africa until whitey showed up and decided to steal us for our talents at producing beautiful crops and children. That's the reality. Our crops weren't dying, whitey's were. We had our own land and religion before we were forced to adopt theirs.

“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.”

Not one of those trillions can bring back from the dead the lives the that were lost at the hand of whitey either here in Amerikkka or during the Middle Passage. Furthermore, Buchanan fails to delve into the reasons that Blacks would need public assistant in the first place. Another gift from whitey to blacks, Jim Crow and racial discrimination.
But it gets worst. “We hear the grievances. Where is the gratitude?” I'll be damned before I ever thank whitey for enslaving my ancestors and creating the chaos and confusion that exists today.

However, I'd offer to Pat Buchanan and the like, that they should be thanking their God that the years of white superiority indoctrination fed consciously and subconsciously to black and brown people has worked so well to the point where we haven't managed to get it together to come together. Because the day that we do is the day that whitey knows his reign of terror is up.

Pat Buchanan---talk about giving new meaning to Gil Scott-Heron's "Whitey On the Moon."


Based in Los Angeles, Jasmyne A. Cannick is a nationally syndicated race, culture, and social issues journalist and critic.