Pat Buchanan Says "Blacks Have Lost the American Identity They Had During Segregation"

Pat Buchanan says "blacks have lost the American identity they had during segregation,which didn't prevent us from being one people.

Patrick J. Buchanan, author of the "Suicide of a Superpower," which we reviewed, is showing just why people of color should continue to distrust him. He appeared on WPAB's The Mark Davis Show and said, blacks have lost the American identity they had during segregation. This man is crazy and thinks he can pass his brand of racism off as logic.

DAVIS: There's a statement you made maybe three or four books back that I've quoted so much, so often, always with credit, because it makes people's eyebrows go way up, but they need to pause and understand it, and that is that the African-Americans, the black Americans of pre-Civil Rights Act America -- I mean, yes, it, was a country that had colored water fountains, and nobody is looking to go back to that, but the black Americans of 1960 were more woven into the fabric of the America of that time than many of today's black Americans are woven into the America of this time. What do you make of that?

BUCHANAN: You know, that's -- let me tell you, I grew up in Washington, D.C. I was in high school when Brown vs. The Board Of Education came down and I remember before it came down we had one black player on our football team, a Catholic team, and public high schools wouldn't play us. And we had to go up to Pennsylvania on these back roads and find teams that would play our school.

But you are right. In the 1950s, for example, Washington, D.C., was a segregated town. It wasn't Birmingham, Alabama, but it was segregated, clear and simple. But we all had a common religion, we all worshiped the same god, we all went to schools where American literature was taught, the English language was our language, we all rooted for the same teams, we read the same newspapers, we listened to the same music. We were a people then. We were all Americans.

Now I'm not saying segregation was good. But what I was saying, that did not prevent us from being one people. If you'd ask those black folks that are traveling abroad, "Who are you?" "I am an American." That was their first identity in my judgment at that time. Clearly they were African-Americans, but we didn't use hyphenated terms in those days. And so I think that what we had then, which was a sense of cultural and social one-ness, we were a people, that I think that is what is being lost. Across the divide now, people are calling names, they're not communicating, and I think it's really a tragedy and it could be a disaster for this country.

How can he have the hubris to assert that blacks felt as one with America? That's like saying the Ku Klux Klan and blacks lived in harmony, even hanging out together. In case he forgot, we had separate entrances, couldn't eat at most lunch counters, had to sit in separate sections in the theaters, weren't allowed in many schools, churches, hospitals and neighborhoods, unless we were domestic helpers or laborers. Should I go on? Isn't it time for Joe Scarborough and the gang over at MSNBC to see Pat Buchanan for who he really is, a foe of multiculturalism and hostile to the black community. He is so bothered by the "browning" of America, as stated in his book. It is an affront to suggest that blacks were better off in any way during segregation. We were lynched and denigrated.