26-01-2009, 02:25 AM
I just can’t help posting this essay -- which I think speaks very pointedly to several of the real issues with Obama....
http://chmt.wordpress.com/2008/12/04/oba...ack-power/
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.
The Obama administration, before it officially begins, is shaping up to be the nightmare so many abstainers and McKinney supporters predicted it would. *I told you so’s may make some folks feel better about having been right but that shit doesn’t really matter at all. *What seems important here is the opportunity, maybe an opportunity, to learn and to teach. *Black and Brown communities in the US have represented the tip of the spear of progressive struggle for centuries. *Over the past 35 or so the nature of that struggle has been severely compromised by the phenomenon of Black faces in high places. *My city, Atlanta, is as good an example of it as any Black or Brown city in the country. *Maynard Jackson, in 1974 became the first Black mayor of Atlanta. *Not incidentally, Coleman Young was simultaneously being sworn in as the first Black mayor of the Motor City. *To this day, Atlanta has seen nothing but Black mayors. *From Jackson to Andrew Young to Jackson again to Bill Campbell to Shirley Franklin. *In that time, Atlanta has served as something of the model of the evolution of white institutional power-Jim Crow style-into the new Black face of white power never before illustrated more powerfully than in the placement of Barack Obama in the office of the President of the United States.
On the morning November 5, 2008 I woke to a United States of America that was the same gulag of a country it was when I drifted off to sleep the night before amidst a popcorn symphony of fireworks and pistols celebrating the placement of Barack Obama as the next president of this hellhole. *Okay, okay. *Maybe it’s not a hellhole. *But ask an Iraqi. *Or a Lakota. *Or a Nicaraguan. *If you wanna be precise, there is a long list of people, within and without the US, and from dozens of other countries that will probably sign on to the hellhole moniker. * But that’s another post maybe. *Barack Obama’s melanin didn’t change what this country was or is. *And considering the good mayors like Jackson, Young, Campbell and Franklin have done a major city like Atlanta you must wonder what in the hell we thought Obama would even mean. *Considering what Clarence Thomas in the Judicial and Condoleeza Rice in the Executive have meant to Black people and oppressed people around the world, maybe we should have known better. *The proverbial water is still flowing under the bridge, with the bodies of New Orleans and Iraqis and Afghanis floating just beneath the shimmering, celebratory surface. *What is there to learn here?
The placement, not election, of Barack Obama on the one hand proves that a Black face in a high place is worthless while simultaneously proving that his face is worth it’s weight in gold. *The critical question is for whom. *For us, the people, Black administrators in a system controlled by white corporate power continues to be meaningless. *The system, not select positions within it, is the problem. *For them, the ruling class a Black face is almost priceless. *Black people within and without the United States, have lost faith in the United States. *The nightmare, always marketed as the ‘dream’, had become unbearably harsh for too many. *So harsh that there was a danger that, as with particularly bad dreams, people might be jolted out of sleep. *This is where Obama is needed.
Increasingly hip to the sick game of broken white promises, Enrons, grandmothers drowning in the ninth ward, computers and courts stealing elections, immigration raids sending abandoned kids to hide in the woods, the rich fucks have a crisis of confidence in the whole system on their hands. *And not just the confidence of the usual folks who get fucked but wider now. *White folks were losing faith fast too. *All this makes the placement of a handsome (read light-skinned), articulate (speak like a white newscaster) 2004 Illinois state senator to President of the United States in 2008. *Once the celebration ends maybe we’ll even ask where this guy even came from.
Obama won’t serve us. *He’ll serve those who coronated him. *And but of course. *Will Black and Brown folks take this moment to contemplate and learn or will we drunk on the narrative of those who would continue our enslavement, stand and salute our Blackness turned around to signal our own demise?
http://chmt.wordpress.com/2008/12/04/oba...ack-power/
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.
The Obama administration, before it officially begins, is shaping up to be the nightmare so many abstainers and McKinney supporters predicted it would. *I told you so’s may make some folks feel better about having been right but that shit doesn’t really matter at all. *What seems important here is the opportunity, maybe an opportunity, to learn and to teach. *Black and Brown communities in the US have represented the tip of the spear of progressive struggle for centuries. *Over the past 35 or so the nature of that struggle has been severely compromised by the phenomenon of Black faces in high places. *My city, Atlanta, is as good an example of it as any Black or Brown city in the country. *Maynard Jackson, in 1974 became the first Black mayor of Atlanta. *Not incidentally, Coleman Young was simultaneously being sworn in as the first Black mayor of the Motor City. *To this day, Atlanta has seen nothing but Black mayors. *From Jackson to Andrew Young to Jackson again to Bill Campbell to Shirley Franklin. *In that time, Atlanta has served as something of the model of the evolution of white institutional power-Jim Crow style-into the new Black face of white power never before illustrated more powerfully than in the placement of Barack Obama in the office of the President of the United States.
On the morning November 5, 2008 I woke to a United States of America that was the same gulag of a country it was when I drifted off to sleep the night before amidst a popcorn symphony of fireworks and pistols celebrating the placement of Barack Obama as the next president of this hellhole. *Okay, okay. *Maybe it’s not a hellhole. *But ask an Iraqi. *Or a Lakota. *Or a Nicaraguan. *If you wanna be precise, there is a long list of people, within and without the US, and from dozens of other countries that will probably sign on to the hellhole moniker. * But that’s another post maybe. *Barack Obama’s melanin didn’t change what this country was or is. *And considering the good mayors like Jackson, Young, Campbell and Franklin have done a major city like Atlanta you must wonder what in the hell we thought Obama would even mean. *Considering what Clarence Thomas in the Judicial and Condoleeza Rice in the Executive have meant to Black people and oppressed people around the world, maybe we should have known better. *The proverbial water is still flowing under the bridge, with the bodies of New Orleans and Iraqis and Afghanis floating just beneath the shimmering, celebratory surface. *What is there to learn here?
The placement, not election, of Barack Obama on the one hand proves that a Black face in a high place is worthless while simultaneously proving that his face is worth it’s weight in gold. *The critical question is for whom. *For us, the people, Black administrators in a system controlled by white corporate power continues to be meaningless. *The system, not select positions within it, is the problem. *For them, the ruling class a Black face is almost priceless. *Black people within and without the United States, have lost faith in the United States. *The nightmare, always marketed as the ‘dream’, had become unbearably harsh for too many. *So harsh that there was a danger that, as with particularly bad dreams, people might be jolted out of sleep. *This is where Obama is needed.
Increasingly hip to the sick game of broken white promises, Enrons, grandmothers drowning in the ninth ward, computers and courts stealing elections, immigration raids sending abandoned kids to hide in the woods, the rich fucks have a crisis of confidence in the whole system on their hands. *And not just the confidence of the usual folks who get fucked but wider now. *White folks were losing faith fast too. *All this makes the placement of a handsome (read light-skinned), articulate (speak like a white newscaster) 2004 Illinois state senator to President of the United States in 2008. *Once the celebration ends maybe we’ll even ask where this guy even came from.
Obama won’t serve us. *He’ll serve those who coronated him. *And but of course. *Will Black and Brown folks take this moment to contemplate and learn or will we drunk on the narrative of those who would continue our enslavement, stand and salute our Blackness turned around to signal our own demise?