Maddow on Buchanan tapping "white people's racial grievances": "You're playing with fire. ... [Y]ou're living in the 1950s"
July 16, 2009 9:57 pm ET
Previously:
What Would Pat Buchanan Have To Say To Get Himself Fired From MSNBC?
Maddow slams "Uncle Pat" Buchanan for "stoking... white people's racial animus" on Sotomayor
Buchanan on Sotomayor's intellect: "That lady up there is a Scalia? Come on!"
Buchanan declares Sotomayor a "militant liberal Latina," Matthews and Robinson push back
Media Matters: The Palin chronicles
The Friday Rush: A series of conflicts
Contrary to media hype, Sarah Palin is very unpopular
Discrimination is the heart of the matter, and some ribs need to be cut to get to the problem and fix it. They'll heal, and they'll heal even faster when the heart is healthy. Basically, discrimination against historically repressed races is a different topic than discrimination against the historically repressing. I think even Pat could admit knowing which is which, and he's conflating the two in order to defend against his fear of losing white superiority.
I believe Buchanan is a bigot and I usually disagree with everything he says. However I must agree with him that affirmative action is discrimination because it in point-of-fact, is. One can argue whether this form of discrimination was the only viable option in the past as an attempt to promote equal opportunity. I would argue that affirmative action itself is "dated".
What we need is not to discriminate against any class of people but instead promote true equal opportunity. That means making sure the poor and have-nots of every race and gender have the chance for a world-class education.
It does not make sense to discriminate against one class in an attempt to make up for discrimination against another class. It's like saying two wrongs make a right. I don't understand why progressives who think torture is unacceptable would take a Machiavellian stance on reverse discrimination - the ends of affirmative action justify the means. They do not, and there are alternatives that will get us as close to equal opportunity as we can be.
That you consider discrimination against a person who happens to be born of a certain ethnicity A-OK is unconscionable.
There are plenty of poor kids out there who just happen to be white. Yet you want to blame the sins of the past on them. Some of them migrated to this country after slavery was abolished. They committed no wrong, and they do not deserve to be discriminated against. To compare a poor white kid living in the inner city or out in the boonies to a rich white kid growing up in the suburbs whose family may have been rich since the time they owned plantations is unfair.
The world isn't fair, you say? I agree. That is why we need government and people to step in to propel our communities forward. We do not need affirmative action. We need proper education and parental support for boys and girls of all races. I recognize that society is imbalanced, there are haves and there are have-nots. But not all white kids are privileged and not all black kids are downtrodden. Equal opportunity is not a racial issue, it is a class issue that digs much deeper and is spread amongst people of all colors, primarily determined by one's family's level of income.
No, it is not. And in that fact lies the rebuttal to the entire rest of your frankly trite screed.
Under affirmative action laws, it is illegal to hire a less-qualified minority over a more-qualified white in order to achieve some claim to racial balance. And unlike your sweeping bland generalizations about the "dated" "discrimination" of affirmative action, that is a fact.
Affirmative action is not about "reverse discrimination," it is about recognizing that we can't just pretend the effects of the past have simply vanished and that we need to actually take steps to undo those effects. It's not about unfair competition, it's about creating fair competition by removing the barriers that have stood in the way of minorities (and women). Put another way, we can't just sit passively, we must take "affirmative action." Get it?
It means, for one thing, that if some employment or promotion practice has a "disparate impact" on a protected class, there had to be a good, employment-related reason. If, to use an example, a test was used as the basis for promotion and it showed such a disparate impact, there needed to be a good reason why that test was used rather than, say, seniority or evaluations or work record or a variety of other factors.
The idea that affirmative action is "reverse discrimination" is. Total. Bull. Spread by people who either don't know the facts or who choose to ignore them.
One other observation: The idea that "education" is the answer to all problems was debunked years ago as racial and gender discrimination in hiring and promotion persisted even in cases of people with equal or equivalent educational backgrounds and achievement.
President Lyndon Johnson
You may think such a state of affairs is outrageously unfair to and discriminatory against white men -- but no one else who really believes in things like equal pay for equal work and equal opportunity in hiring does. The statistics, in terms of pay and employment, access to advancement, etc., simply don't support your contention that white men are victims.
Rather than complain about, and becoming enraged by, relatively modest efforts to advance fairness in employment and education (in the public sector only), perhaps you should be more concerned about the ways in which employees in the working and middle class in general, of all genders and ethnicities, have lost ground -- wage stagnation and decline, massive domestic job losses, fewer legal protections, etc. -- over the last several decades of conservative dominance. Rather than feel like a victim, perhaps you should join a union or support efforts to protect organizing (and thereby increase the political voice of working people), stand up against discrimination, become an activist in the area of employment and consumer protections, etc. The very best way to protect your own rights is to stand up for the rights of others. Because whenever you support the the right of the most powerful to exploit and discriminate against others, you are simply handing them the tools and excuses they want and need to do, when it serves their interest, exactly the same thing to you.
A beautiful softball pitch right across the plate that could have given Pat just the slightest bit of dignity when leaving this interview. She offered up to him the one chance he could have at scoring at least a base hit. There was no harm in admitting that the nomination of our first latino judge, regardless of how you may feel about her, is in some way a positive for the progress of our nation. He could have said, "yes," and it would have in no way harmed his argument in the least.
Here comes the pitch! Swing and a miss!
Maddows question refers to - as she stated - the glass ceiling that has, from all historic appearances, kept latinos from reaching the level of serving on the supreme court. She's asking Pat if Sotomayors appointment to the bench is an indication that the barriers are down, and if that's a good sign for America.
Rachel Maddow asked,
She even later asked him again,
I say again, that there would have been no harm to his argument or position, by acknowleding that it would have been a positive thing. Rachel generously offered up to him a chance to come out of this interview with a bit of his reputation in tact.
jayhammer writes,
In this interview? Are you serious? It seemed to me that he was claiming that white American males deserve preferential treatment based on a history of having "fought and died" for our country. The whole thing about the Constitution being written 100% by white men was jaw dropping.
Rachel gave Pat both barrels in this interview and then she tried to heal the wounds. That shows both her professionalism and her class.
Rachel Maddow asked if it was a good thing that a Latina is on the court for the first time, a positive thing for our country overall. She did not ask if Sotomayor's "appointment to the bench is an indication that the barriers are down". There is a difference.
If Sotomayor were a terrible judge, a Satanist, a baby eater, and a terrorist, and was appointed to the Supreme Court, I would not see it as a positive thing for our country. I would, however, see it as an indication that race barriers are breaking, and I see THAT as a positive thing. Rachel may not have intended to phrase it the way she did, but she was basically asking "Is Sotomayor's nomination a positive thing overall because she is Hispanic?"
Hey, this aurgument is not supposed to be about Rober Bork!
I explained the ambiguity of her question and why Pat could not in good faith answer "yes" or "no". I hope this makes sense to you guys now! You can't be that dense :).
He has been repeating his completely basis accusations on her lack of qualifications, impartiality, etc. while completly ignoring her record for a month now. You yourself acknowledged that you do not agree with his position on this. I see no reason to debate what he has said over and over any further at this point. What was at issue was the remaining context of this interview.
Straw man. You know good and well that this was not the intention of Rachel Maddow's final question. You are deliberately being obtuse.
Yes, Pat Buchanan is probably a bigot. No, his refusal to answer this question does not prove it. It's a small point, sure, but I like precision. I'm an engineer, after all.
WHAT?
Graduated, summa cum laude, from Princeton University in 1976. Received her J.D. from Yale Law School in 1979, where she was an editor at the Yale Law Journal. Worked as an Assistant District Attorney in New York for five years before entering private practice in 1984. Sotomayor was nominated and appointed to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in 1992. Sotomayor was nominated and appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in 1998. She has also taught at the New York University School of Law and Columbia Law School.
One must first be qualified, to receive consideration for the high court, unless you're Harriett Miers that is. And since Judge Sotomayor is MORE than qualified, ANY argument Buchanan makes that she's not qualified, is complete bull*h** from a racist old bigot!
Buchanan is just that old white guy complaining about how bad things are because times have changed and he doesn't automatically have the upper hand anymore.
4 now
And really, look at the subtext: Out lesbian hosting news show, *colleague* of Buchanan. That means equal. Simply being there on the split screen as host means Maddow wins the argument. And for sure there's no 'affirmative action' based on sexual preference.
This is the kind of stuff that will propel Rachel into the annals of media history as one of the best! and will hopefully lead to the firing of one very old and decrepit, out of date, senile racist man!
Matthews was clueless about Ricci also.
Yea....have to hate that whole free speech thing.
ha. Just kidding. Without inane silly tripe, they're mute.
Holy smokes! I've never seen Rachel get that excited but as always, she was the consumate pro.
Pat's just from the old white guy network. He's about as harmful as a glass of water.
Why would he? What is your objection?
I on the other hand am against affirmative action of all types. The only type I have ever really considered was affirmative action based on income, but the problem is that even then you are discriminating against a class. Giving advantages in admittance to school or in hiring to low-income applicants over high-income applicants is still discrimination. Instead, taxes should be used to ensure that low-income children get a fair shot at a good education and supportive environment from birth. This way, low-income children will be able to earn their way on merit.
Today the true barrier to success is the environment you are born into, not your skin color. Improve the environment through support programs and education, solve the problem. This is an upstream solution to the problem of societal imbalances - grant equal opportunity at childhood, in the formative years. It is the only kind that will last, by solving the root of the problem.
Affirmative action is a downstream solution. It tries to address the problem far too late, once a child has become an adult. It does not educate, it does not prepare the disadvantaged for life, it does not give them the opportunity to succeed on merit and pass down the knowledge they have gained to their children to continue the pattern. This downstream solution will never be as effective as the upstream solution.
And certainly he doesn't hold this position out of self interest: After all, he's yet another draft-dodger who, at least during the Cold War years, was a humongous war-monger, too.
Pat is one of many who forms an opinion, a world view, and then grasps for whatever support he can to support that opinion. He does not gather facts first and then form an opinion. You'd be surprised how many people do that on all sides of politics.
I also do not agree that "affirmative action is the only way to make up for past wrongs". Today there are other, better options that do not necessitate discrimination based on what race we happened to be at birth. And two wrongs do not make a right.
I never like to go against my ideals for short term gain and I feel like that's what was done with affirmative action - we sacrificed equal protection for some groups in a short-sighted attempt to correct the problem of discrimination against other groups. Perhaps if we had tried to implement the kind of social programs I'm talking about 50 years ago we would not have come as far today as we have with affirmative action. To me it's similar to the torture debate. Let's assume for argument's sake that torture really does yield faster results than the Informed Interrogation Approach. Do we use torture to get faster results or do we elect not to and adhere to our values? Which choice is better for our country in the long run? Do we discriminate in an effort to help those who have historically been discriminated against or do we do it right although we may not see immediate results?
I think the current atmosphere in our society will facilitate doing the right thing - phasing out affirmative action and implementing social programs to give all our children a fair deal. Sotomayor herself stated on the subject of affirmative action, "It is firmly my hope that in 25 years race won't need to be considered as factor."
I'm curious about what the other posters here think about credits to children of alumni. You would think that those who are pro-affirmative action would be pro-alumni admissions. After all, they are basically the same thing- each benefits members of a certain class.
Or is it that you are only supportive of any policy that benefits "historically disadvantaged" groups? If that's the case, you remind me of Pat Buchanan, who makes up his mind based on race and gender first, then finds support to back up his preconceived notions.
Either discrimination is wrong or it is right. Check your moral compass. Discrimination is not wrong in some cases and right in others. That's far too subjective a notion.
We can do away with discrimination through non-discriminatory practices and policies. Perpetuating discrimination through affirmative action will ensure that societal prejudices never die out.
They wholeheartedly know he's a bigot, a racist, a dinosaur representing the darkest ages of the US. But guess what, there are still a few people like that living in this country. I don't have the numbers, but I bet you they don't represent a sizable amount of their audience. Nevertheless, MSNBC is afraid of being labeled as yet more liberal or progressive (which I do not think they are at all) by the other networks or the right wing establishment, which may make them lose market not just with the conservative base, but also with some moderate conservatives who are not yet completely lobotomized by FOX, CNN, etc.
As much as I despise Buchanan, it's MSNBC's decision to give him air time. And we should probably complain to MSNBC if we think that's unethical.
Yes its true. White men were at the front of building America. That is only because so many of you forced your way on to this land.
Black men were held in chains and did the real work to make America what it is today.
It was a Black man that was instrumental in the Louisiana Purchase.
If the White man had lived up to what he had written, America would have better a place for all of us to live.
If the situation was reversed, I think we would have been a better Nation.