After Obama’s thrilling speech, one of the finest speeches in American history, a speech New York Times op-ed columnist Nicholas D. Kristof compared to Kennedy’s speech on Catholicism and called “a symphony,” a speech the LA Times said “offered a context that explained (without excusing) Wright’s ravings,” I was surprised to hear that some of my students were less impressed with Obama’s honest discourse on the most troubling and persistent problem in American society – race.

Then I asked if those less-impressed students had listened to the entire speech. The less-impressed had not, but they had heard people like Pat Buchanan denigrate Obama’s words. Unfortunately, too many Americans rely on Buchanan and his ilk to process the news for them, rather than gathering information and thinking for themselves. Many of my students promised to listen to Obama on YouTube, and one particularly ambitious student promised he would even write me a report. I wonder if any of my students, or many other Americans, are aware of the racist response Pat Buchanan posted on his blog on March 21st.

I also wonder why this guy is allowed to speak into a mic on FOX or MSNBC or anywhere else for that matter, as his blog clearly articulates the plantation-era view that slavery was good for Black folks. Buchanan’s blog states:

“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.”

Buchanan later goes on to feed white anxiety and fear – the same anxiety and fear Obama acknowledged with balanced language and frank, clear-headed logic. Instead of wise words that lead us to real solutions, however, Buchanan offers only searing, inflammatory rhetoric that keeps working whites emotionally unbalanced and exploited (and, thus, economically unbalanced and exploited):

“Governments, businesses and colleges have engaged in discrimination against white folks ? with affirmative action, contract set-asides and quotas ? to advance black applicants over white applicants.”

It is difficult to return to the tedious work of offering counter-narratives to Buchananesque mean-spirited division. I still want to soar on the current of optimistic change Obama’s candidacy offers. Despite my fatigue with these old farts who offer nothing more than centuries-old funk when they speak, however, I refuse to allow them to overpower the scent of fresh hope. This moment in American politics may be difficult, but we’re almost at that wind-swept mountaintop. Let’s not allow the racialist hot air Buchanan blows around prevent us from getting there.

My wonderful husband first sent Buchanan’s blog to me. Thanks, also to Marcia Mayne for sending me Buchanan’s blog entry.