What Bigots Are Scared Of

You know, we often hear people in the US railing against immigration and racial minorities. Even today, we still hear nasty things about black people or Hispanics. People of other races get the short end of the stick, as well, of course. And they hear their fair share of discrimination from the bigots in Washington or who otherwise have media or face time or influence law and policy, but the two that hear the most tend to often be black or Hispanic.

Often, people wonder what these white men of privilege are scared of. Why is it so important to keep other people down, just because they're different? Why is it such an imperative? There has been a lot of speculation on it, but I think an article from Raw Story which quotes a book by the recently-fired from MSNBC Pat Buchanan gives us the answer.

Those who believe the rise to power of an Obama rainbow coalition of peoples of color means the whites who helped to engineer it will steer it are deluding themselves. The whites may discover what it is like to ride in the back of the bus.

That quote is from a chapter called The End of White America from his book entitled Suicide of a Superpower. I think this tells us all we need to know about the why we keep asking about. It's because they're fully aware of what they've done to people in the past and they don't want to lose power both because they like being in power and also because they are afraid that they will finally have to reap what they've sown. That minorities will become the majority, will wrest the power from them and then trod all over them in retaliation for the decades, centuries even, that they've done their best to oppress and suppress said minorities.

They know what was done was wrong, they know what they're doing now is wrong, but they're so afraid that everyone else in the world is just like they are that they've become paranoid that they will be oppressed and suppressed. That's why they fight so hard. Deep down, they project their own bigotry and hatred onto the rest of the US citizenry, onto the rest of humanity as a whole even, and they're scaring themselves with it.

They need to get over themselves. Bigots are in a minority of a different sort. While we will never be rid of them, I think the era where we think their bigoted hatred has any real point or should be considered is largely gone. They now have to cry persecution when people disagree with them because the dissenting voices are so many more than the voices which agree with them.

People like Pat Buchanan will be with us forever, but that doesn't mean we have to tolerate their nonsense or give in to their own fear and allow them to project it onto the rest of us. And we won't.