I am enthralled with the 2008 primary election coverage in both parties. To say the least, there are some very interesting personalities in the contest. I am routing for Senator Barak Obama. A highly intelligent, capable candidate that can easily assume, and better, the role now played by President George W. Bush. And he happens to be a black man! I stopped being one of those Negroes who feels like we have to continue proving our worth to (white) people in this society. We have done that to my satisfaction long ago. The first black this or that does not excite me any longer. Barak Obama does.
Despite the professionalism with which Senator Obama carries himself, this easily mainstrean candidate is being corralled by the corporate media into their favorite saga -- the state of race relations among whites and blacks.
Barak Obama is too classy to take offense over such ridiculous questions as, "How do you respond to the notion of Bill Clinton as America's first black president? Obama handled the idiocy of the question with aplum. Yet, the nerve of it all! A ridiculous assertion by anyone, including Toni Morrison. Senator Obama has been subjected to this scheme from the start of his campaign. Indeed, many personalities on the African American cultural-political scene expressed early suspician over Obama's authenticity as a candiate representative of the aspirations of "the black community." Much of this had to do with his relatively late arrival on the national scene. Some of it to his popularity among whites in his home State of Illonis, but much of it was about their own jealousy of him. We even heard baffoonish comments from a former Atlanta mayor, Andrew Young, about Senator Obama's less than black-enough identity. Let me make one thing perfectly clear. There has never been a man in the history of these United States that looked like Barak Obama that was not considered (unequivacally) a black man.
Race not withstanding, Senator Obama has gone out of his way not to run a racially divisive campaign. He does not have to because he has broad apeal, and he is driven by a vision. Young voters across the nation are attracted to him. He is a huge favorite among white democrats in places like New Hamshire and Iowa. And tonight's outcome in South Carolina showed that he is preferred, by 1 in 4, among white voters there. Nevertheless his supporters, and hopefuls like me, have to listen to Tim Russert go on incessantly with a distracting racial analysis each night. Russert , Fox'Sean Hanity and race-intoxicated pundits like them, are ignoring the many prominent political endorsements for Senator Obama, as if they are not influential white people with diverse constituencies.
It is always hard for a black person to break the constraints of American racism and ascend to equitable ground. Frederick Douglass said that power concedes nothing without a demand. The Clintons are showing that to Barak Obama in this presidential campaign. Marcus Garvey explained the rascist tendencies of white supremacists to diminish the progress of the Negro race by redefining them as other than. Watch the mainstream media try to force Senator Obama to all but deny his heritage, before he can win the Democratic nomination for president.
1 comment:
I don't disagree, "C." Liberals are just as bad as "conservatives" in this respect. White supremacy runs deep. The majority in this country are reluctant to consider that a Black man could be at the helm of the country they call their own. "Will he be too strident in his heriatage for us?..." We will see how much further he has to modify himself in order to get the nomination or presidency.
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