The Independent Women's Forum is saddened to learn of the loss of William F. Buckley Jr., founder of National Review and a leader of the conservative movement. Mr. Buckley had a profound impact on America and will be lived on by the numerous publications, scholars, and nonprofit organizations that have joined the battle of ideas as a result of his leadership. Our sympathies are with his family and many friends.
—Michelle D. Bernard, President and CEO
2 Comments
William | March 5, 2008, 1:28pm | #
It is rather puzzling that a black woman would talk about the impact of William F. Buckley in such a positive way. If Bill Buckley had his way, black people would not be entitled to the right to vote. That is why many black americans will never fully side with the thinking of conservatives. I don't consider myself as a Democrat or Republician. I am free thinking black man who feel that as long as you have alliances with people who don't have our best interests at heart then you should not be able to sleep at night. Good day and good luck.
Chad Shumate | March 5, 2008, 8:58pm | #
Michelle,
As a fellow Howard University graduate I find it perplexing and dissapointing that you, an African American woman and former Howard graduate, would be so "saddened" by the loss of William F. Buckley an elitist, erudite, pompous, condesending racist?
His strained justifications of his 1960's pronouncements about Jim Crow were simply crude attempts to prettify his thoroughly conventional racism.
He was indifferent to the bigotry all around him, and there can be no question that he stood in the way of racial progress. In a 1963 column taking exception to the imminent march on Washington, where Martin Luther King would deliver his "I Have a Dream" speech, Buckley described himself as someone who believed that
"a federal law, artificially deduced from the Commerce Clause of the Constitution or from the 14th Amendment, whose marginal effect will be to instruct small merchants in the Deep South on how they may conduct their business, is no way at all of promoting the kind of understanding which is the basis of progressive and charitable relationships between the races."
Im sure there are many persons far more worthy than Mr. Buckley that you could highlight and give recognition to.
A fellow HU Graduate