I am approaching this without animus or accusation, but I don’t deny that I am passionate about this subject. Here I would like to focus on real history and the facts. It is true that America has a proud history of democracy and civil liberties. The Constitution and the Declaration of Independence have been considered, by many scholars and historians, as two of the greatest documents ever devised by any country or society. Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty are regarded in history and the world as enduring symbols of freedom. These things are all part of American history, but not the only part. There is another aspect of the U.S., another America if you will, with a history and culture that is just as real as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Real history tells us that America would not be without the genocide of the Native; the enslavement of the African; the subjugation of the woman and the exploitation of the immigrant. In the building of the America that Pat Buchanan speaks of, I wonder how many of these brilliant architects of our nation (i.e. Jefferson, Washington, Patrick Henry etc.) would have been able to compose or pen many brilliant thoughts or fully participate in the formation of a democracy without the “luxury” of having slaves. Just a thought.

So let us recap the issues of affirmative action and “racial preferences.” Blacks and other people of color are the face of a program that benefits white women more than any other group of people. Society ultimately ignores the actual racial preferences that create more job and career opportunities for whites---even to the point of white ex-cons having the same shot at employment as Blacks who don’t have a criminal record; the white privilege that still allows white students (more than any other group) to get into their college of first choice---while loading up on admission evaluation points made possible by past discrimination and current educational and economic inequities; as well as the racial and class preferences that got former President Bush into Yale and kept him out of Vietnam. Additionally, while Blacks ultimately will receive less pay than their white counterparts (even with similar or better credentials and experience) and inherit less (based largely on past and current discriminatory practices), they will still pay more for automobiles and houses---houses which will accrue less equity than those owned by whites.

People such as Pat Buchanan spew the most insidious kind of racism and it can be narrowed down to two primary paradigms: (1) Ignore the more entrenched de facto affirmative action that advantaged whites (and white males in particular) since Jamestown (anyone remember Bacon’s Rebellion?); (2) Minimize and deride any achievement by people of color as always falling short of white achievement or not belonging in same league or conversation (which means that in the mind of Pat Buchanan, and others like him, there is nothing that a person of color could ever achieve that could reach the heights and glory of white accomplishment). This begs the question: why the white supremacist fears of Obama and Sotomayor? In light of the facts, and history, this fear is irrational and unfounded.  So let us review some of those key facts:

·       97.7% of all American President’s have been white

·       94% of the Senate is white

·       83% of the House of Representatives is white

·       8 out of 9 of the Supreme Court Justices are white (please refrain from all Clarence Thomas jokes) --- with Sotomayor (and every single person that questioned her on the Senate Judicial Committee was... well.... White) there would be 7 out 9
92% of the U.S. state governors are white

·       97.4% of the CEO’s of the Fortune 500 companies are white

·       98% (393 out of 400) of the 2007 Forbes 400 Richest Americans are white

·       The wealthiest 1 percent of Americans owned 62.3 percent of the business assets in 2004.

·       The wealthiest 5 percent collectively owned 88.7 percent of business assets.

·       According to the EEOC’s 2007 statistics for U.S. private industry, Whites represent 87.4% of Executive/Senior Level officials and managers, and 80.5% of the First/Mid Level officials and managers

·       The wealthiest 5 percent also owned 93.7 percent of the value of bonds, 71.7 percent of nonresidential real estate, and 79.1 percent of the value of stocks.

·       Every nightly political news program on the major cable news networks (MSNBC, CNN, Fox) or broadcast news networks (ABC, CBS, NBC) is hosted by someone who is white

However, these numbers do show a dominance tilted in favor of whites, and that’s with affirmative action in place. Power has been described as the ability to define reality and the capacity to make that definition binding for others. What Pat Buchanan and his ilk do show us is the ability of the privileged in our society to simultaneously control most, if not all, the institutional and structural levers of power and still cast themselves in the role of the outraged victim. We live in a nation where the criteria for "best qualified", "exemplary", "outstanding" etc. has been (and for the most part still is) defined predominantly by white males. In a system where people of color and women had not been allowed to participate for centuries (and we are still not at full participation yet) discrimination and inequality doesn’t just determine where a generation of an oppressed group ends up, it also determines where the next one begins. How do we eradicate that?