Quote:Obamanation: A Lesson In Black*Power Being Black in the US means something. *It implies an understanding of power and oppression. *It implies an inclination and proclivity to side with those that resist oppression and exploitation, the Black nation having a history of acute experience with those forces. That said, does it matter if we have sitting, the first Black chairman in the 221 years of the House’s existence, if he sits idly by and congratulates a president-elect that promises to embrace imperial foreign policy across Africa and the so-called Middle East? Does it matter if that President-Elect’s skin happens to be Black if his office appoints an Attorney General that advocates more of a draconian domestic policy already *decimating Black communities? Does it matter if we are greeted by the first ever Black Attorney General if he wants to make possession with (cop’s discretion) intent to distribut a 5 year felony? Does it matter, in 2008, the color of the faces of a system that is grinding into dust, the bones of Black and Brown Americans and Iraqis alike? Hell yes, it matters so much that he is Black. *But not as a justification for backslapping celebration. *Obama is a tool of the ruling class and when the power of Blackness is used by the ruling class it is Black power in reverse, turned around to use as a weapon against everyone except the ruling class.

David Healy Wrote:someone provide this essayist a dime, point him/her towards the Golden Gate Bridge... way too much pain... No wonder the world is ripe for another wannabe messiah

Quote:The messiah is obviously a very powerful concept in some religions. If not expressed under the word messiah, it can be also seen in images such as that of a saviour, or an avatar. But the idea of a messiah has to do with a new revelation, or a new epoch, perhaps a way maker.

The concept, and the experience of the messiah archetype possibly arises from a deep stratum of the human psyche that holds racial memories of confrontation with times of crisis, times when human development had reached a point that needed a new impulse, a new way of responding to the world, to continue. In other words the way forward in human, social or individual development had reached a point of impasse. A new paradigm, a new example, a new birth of human potential was needed. My best guess is that within the human unconscious, a vision or sense of what was needed had formed and was felt. The ‘new being' that needed to emerge was intuited as a great leader, a great spiritual being who would incarnate and lead the race forward. Of course, the ‘new being’ was or is a potential within the person themselves. But individuals who expressed this new being would be looked upon as the very incarnation of the messiah, and act as a catalyst for others to allow the new qualities or social order to emerge from within themselves.

Part of the messiah archetype is to do with demonstrating the courage to face death lightly, or to be sacrificed. In its very primitive form, the messiah or saviour would have been killed by his own tribe or people, and torn apart and eaten. The flesh would have given the magic power of fearlessness to those who ate this sacred meal. Therefore the torn body would have been like seeds of the new life, the new consciousness.

Magda Hassan Wrote:Obama will be for black liberation what Thatcher was for women's liberation.