Obama at the Gate

I am watching the Obama Arising with interest. It is really interesting to reflect back on my initial musings about the potential of the Obama Administration by completing this post which I started writing in 2008. Much of what  I feared and some of what I hoped has manifested itself. This has not been surprising or unexpected. But, again, often, disappointing and sometimes encouraging.

 As I watched the Obamamania sweep the progressive political community and the reactive dominant community I saw two things. Each is an aspect of an experience that informs my worldview. While not wholly or totally the same but similar to the situations that I will share.

First, Barack Obama's election reminded me of two earlier electoral political events. The earliest, and possibly the most similar, example was the election of Harold Washington. The other was the election of Nelson Mandela. Both these events had similarities to the election of Barack Obama.

There were several features of the election of Harold Washington that foreshadowed or reflected the Barack Obama experience. One of the similarities between Barack Obama's election and Harold Washington's election was their status as a "first." Harold Washington was the first African-American elected as mayor of Chicago. Of course, Barack Obama was the first African-American elected as President of the United states.

I remember the actual election day for Harold Washington. There was a huge turnout of voters. This was possibly one of the highest voter turnout of African Americans since the founding of Chicago by the fur trader of African descent, Jean Baptiste DuSable. Reflecting on that day evokes images of elderly voters leaning on canes standing in line with voters on hospital gurneys pulling  hospital equipment along with them. There were stories of long lines and long waits, polling places that ran out of ballots and hours that were extended to accommodate voter turnout.

We saw similar pictures of the response to Nelson Mandela's election in South Africa. There were the same, or similar, long lines with elderly voters leaning on canes, voters discharged from hospitals leaning on canes and lying on gurneys, first-time young voters and, ultimately, one time only voters. The fact that the election held promise and reflected a vision of equity and inclusion brought out and engaged sectors of the electorate that had been disengaged and disenfranchised with the hope, and expectation, that their vote would make a difference. One significant difference between Chicago, a municipal election, and South Africa, a national election, was that it was the first time that many Mandela supporters were able to vote; whereas Chicago voters felt for the first time that their vote could matter.

Barack Obama's election brought a similar type of energy for voters of African descent across the nation. Partly there was the notion that he (Barack Obama) could actually win. Based on the essentialist notions that are a basic premise of race certain expectations and assumptions regarding values were a major motivating factor. In all three cases the promise reflected by electoral promise was stunted by the institutional demands of white supremacy. The need to maintain the basic social and economic structures that reflects the European onslaught that began in 1492 constrains and contains the possibility of change.




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Coming home to myself

What's up world? I am announcing my arrival into consciousness this morning. We are alive and in color with a mission and a purpose. What next for me? What next for you? What next for the world?

We are in a place that is uncharted. We are in today. We have yesterday as an indicator and tomorrow as a possibility. But we have not lived through the time or had the experiences that await us today. This is an adventure and an opportunity. What we seek and find may confirm our insights or confound our expectations. We choose so much.

What about the current situation with Pres. Obama? This is an interesting time. I think that Pres. Obama will face many of the same challenges that all of us see in any president. We were cracking jokes about baby Bush and spitting out spiteful comments that stopped just short of being treasonous. The man is now in the machine. He is as much hostage as he is the decider. All around us there are things going on and we attribute the responsibility of them all to the president.

We just came out of an "Undoing Racism" workshop this past week. It was interesting. It was attended by a number of people who were not particulary interested in being there. I think they came well armored and ready to resist the ideas that were put forth by the trainers. Maybe it will bear fruit in the future. Maybe not. But I can tell you that the future awaits each of us pregnant with possibilities.




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Tomorrow never comes

I have been absent from the blogosphere for too long. Well, maybe not too long but a long time nonetheless. Since I last posted there have been a few things that have significance for me both physically and psychically. Of course, there is the communal electoral event that resulted in the rise to prominence (and some would say power) of President Obama. Other issues include the deepening crisis of the economy (both domestic and international) and the role of the new faithful opposition in American political society.

It is with great trepidation mixed with the air of celebration that we view the ascendancy of our man, Barack Obama, to the pinnacle of political power. Not knowing what is behind the door of the future and who Obama has, or will, find behind the curtain that shields the wizards that wield the levers of society today, we all express some degree of satisfaction and anticipation of the future. Embedded in the consciousness of the Black experience and the white reality is the role and potential of Africans both in America and in the World. It has been noticed that the choice made by both Blacks and whites (and apparently Obama himself) to identify a man that had one white parent and one black parent as a Black person is a reflection of the ongoing power, prominence and preeminence of externalized White superiority and internalized Black inferiority in European society. If indeed he (Obama) is half and half then he is just as much one as the other. The idea of who is black and who is white is reflected in the embeddedness of the "one drop rule."

The identification of Obama as a Black man and the first "Black" president is an acknowledgment of the continuing state of the world where those of European descent define and dictate what is reality through force of arms, thought domination and resource control. Is Obama's parentage a reason for Blacks to celebrate as an accomplishment of social progress that a person who has both a "white" parent of European descent and a "Black" parent of African descent has been elected President? Is Obama's parentage a reason for white people to celebrate as an achievement of social enlightenment that a person who has both a "white" parent of European descent and a "Black" parent of African descent has been elected President? We will leave it to you to answer.

But why can't we celebrate the victory of the "best man" for the job, the most qualified by American opinion, as reflected in the vote, for the job or the victor of the political race? Why must we see the event in terms of biological race? The embeddedness of the concept in the culture persists despite scientific objections to it and declarations of its irrelevance, inaccuracy and ineffectiveness as a social, political or biological concept of any specificity and clarity.

Specious is what I think most of the scientist that ogled and ahh'ed the "inconvenient truth" about climate change and the harm caused to the environment by the obstinate and backwards refusal to acknowledge and face the truth of the physical world chocking from the economic waste products of the contemporary European expression of life and its concomitant lifestyle. Yet ol' Al did not venture into the inconvenient truth that lay nestled in a wood pile in his old Tennessee home which is choking the social world with the emotional waste products of the contemporary European expression of society and its concomitant social practices of internalized oppression and externalized colonization of the minds, bodies and spirits of both white and non-white people.

This rant is all about Obama. It is slowly preparing the back story for the saga that he will write unless he flips the script and gets rid of Rahm Emanuel, Larry Summers and Tim Geithner along with their associated social and economic philosophies. Now even after looking at the links that I have provided you may wonder what I am objecting to. After all these guys are about as mainstream and embedded in contemporary society at the highest levels as you can get. But then that is my complaint or rather concern.

The economy. What can I say that hasn't been said? Are we experiencing a seismic shift of the old order giving way to the new? Is America joining the Soviet Union on the dustbin of economic history? The Funkadelic music group released an album years ago named "America Eats its Young." I think it is becoming clear that we can say the same thing about capitalism.

I have my grandson in my lap now and he demands my immediate attention so more later.




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