Jim Webb has Macaca Moment

[Ross K]

From Tom Scocca at Slate:

Let's have a conversation about race! Sen. James Webb, Democrat of Virginia, took to the Wall Street Journal's opinion page this past Friday, apparently because he felt left out of last week's vaudeville show of racist stupidity. James Webb has very strong feelings about affirmative action, which he believes has "damaged racial harmony" and has moved "away from remediation and toward discrimination, this time against whites."

But James Webb knows it is hard to talk about race, and especially about the problems of white people, without upsetting folks:

Pat Buchanan got into trouble recently by pointing out that if Elena Kagan is confirmed to the Supreme Court, there will not be a single Protestant Justice, although Protestants make up half the U.S. population and dominated the court for generations.

Well, actually, Pat Buchanan got in trouble because Pat Buchanan is a known anti-Semite, and that particular column was a particularly clumsy attempt to find a novel way of complaining that the Jews control everything. (The new code is "Ivy League pretensions to represent and rule America," which is pretty rich coming from lifetime Washington insider Pat Buchanan, Columbia Journalism School '62.)

http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/scocca/archive/2010/07/27/senator-james-webb-being-a-white-person-is-just-like-being-a-slave.aspx

What is it with pols from VA & SC? The article goes on to positively skewer not just Webb and Buchanan, but other fools complaining about the "poor, oppressed white man."

[wtmusic]

1. If Buchanan had actually been *accepted* to an Ivy League school

they wouldn't be at all pretentious, now would they Pat?

[Ross K]

3. Columbia is an Ivy League school...

so I'm not quite certain what you mean.

[TheDebbieDee]

2. Wasn't Sen. Webb a well-known republican before

"W" sullied the repuke brand and Webb realized he had to appear to move to the left to run as a Democrat?

In all fairness, I've read about some of his views on prison reform and the unequal justice system in America. We have become a prison nation something needs to be done about the annoying habit we as a nation have of sending people to prison for crimes that should only warrant probation.

[Hekate]

4. Didn't read like a macaca moment to me. Read the whole article. Look up his history books

The man has a point, and it might be well to listen to him with an open mind.

Even the Rev. MLK got to the place where he not only pointed out the injustice of the Vietnam War, but pointed out the historic preponderance of generations of whites among the ill-educated, ill-housed, ill-fed, ill-paid, and unhealthy.

Howard Zinn pointed out that the coal-miner's daughter (white, female, poor) is nowhere near a level playing field with the coal-mine owner's son (white, male, rich).

This isn't about having a pity-party. Poverty is passed down through the generations, regardless of color. We need to look at the situation anew.

Hekate