Will Obama be killed if he is elected? Is he black? White hypocrisy and much more
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We must not misread the signs or see signs where there is none
Maulana Karenga,
Professor of Black Studies,
California State University-Long Beach,
It is a fundamental lesson of our history, witnessed and inscribed in the hard-rock reality of our daily lives and enduring struggle, that there is no easy walk or way to freedom, no shortcut or quick jump to justice or empowerment of the people and no untroubled and trial-free path to an enduring peace in the world. Every inch of ground gained and every achievement worthy of the name requires serious and sustained struggle. Indeed, Frederick Douglass forever reminds us “Without struggle, there is no progress.” Thus, as we dare the awesome task of repairing and remaking society and the world, we must also remember Amilcar Cabral’s advice to “mask no difficulties, tell no lies and claim no easy victory.”
And so, when we see Barack Obama embraced and voted frontrunner in Iowa, we must not misread the signs or see signs where there is none. Even the most cynical among us can see that Obama speaks to the masses of people needing and longing for another way to understand and assert themselves in the world. They yearn to move away from the Bush-men’s fear peddling and people-hate, their war-mongering and wanton waste of lives and futures, and their polar-cold contempt for the rightful concerns of the masses of people of this country and the world. Certainly, the people would rather send their sons and daughters to college than to die an undeserved death in an unjust and illegal war. They are tired of the crass con-games of Karl Rove, the cultivating of paranoia posing as patriotism of Dick Cheney and the readiness of the crazed right to blow up the world in the name of an imagined superior race, racialized religion or some other illusion on which they self-medicate and sell to others. And Obama lifts the people up; talks hope, healing, unity and change, and offers a chance for everyone to come together on common ground and to act together for the common good.
But there are signs that all is not as it seems here. First, the claims of the maturing of America is code for the maturing of White America thru its media-claimed move beyond racist and racialized thought and practice to endorse a Black man as frontrunner in a 95% White and small state called Iowa. Surely, the problems of centuries of racial injustice and oppression are not solved even by the election of a Black president of the country let alone by the political endorsement of a small Midwestern state. The question remains what will they do in the long run and when they don’t vote by raising their hands as in Iowa but vote in secret and serious remembrance of race and class in states still to speak?
Perhaps, the White support for Obama is softer and more ambivalent than we want to believe and depends for many on his temporary use as a sellable symbol of racial reconciliation without resolution thru struggle; an undeniable asset in party-building, bringing in new voters and those once alienated; and for providing a mask and moral message of change from an African American known for compromise and seeking consensus.
Secondly, one cannot claim political or moral maturity on the issue of race if Obama is compelled to practice ethnic self-concealment as an African American. Much has been made of his being a “Kansas Kenyan”, which is seen as a mixed and “global identity”, free of the “urban identity” that suggests anger, indictment and social justice claims. But this makes as much sense as finding relief and some confused and convenient meaning in Colin Powell’s being a “New York Jamaican”, instead of an African American shaped, like Obama and other mixed race and nationality Blacks, in the crucible of life and struggle in America. And what justice or principled unity is there, if we, as Africans, have to come to the table of common ground naked and in need of White approval rather than fully clothed in the concerns and identity of our own cultural community, not needing permission or sanction from anyone?
Thirdly, when Obama talks of change it must be more than one president and administration replacing another. It must be structural, systemic not simple surface change? This means change in the unegalitarian distribution of wealth and power in this country which are overwhelmingly in White hands and this requires a movement not just an election. Moreover, if we declare the need and desire for real change, we must prefigure in our current practice the future we wish to forge and bring into being. Thus, if he values multicultural and multiracial cooperation for common good, Obama must have more than Whites around him as major advisors and they must be seen and known, recognized and respected. Surely, there are Native Americans, Africans, Latinos, and Asians, conscious, capable and committed enough to merit position and power now. Without such a prefiguring of the future, the message is clear that our identities of color are disadvantageous; Whiteness is normal and thus the solution for us is self-concealment and pathetic dependence on White approval and patronage.
Moreover, Obama, if he is to be at his best, must be allowed to reaffirm his rootedness in the African American social justice tradition in which he is grounded and grew, It is a tradition which is defined not only by an ethical insistence on shared good in the world, but also by a commitment to relentless struggle to achieve and sustain it. Indeed, it is this social justice tradition and the Movement it generated to expand the realm of freedom in this country that offers Obama his most important lessons.
Among these are the lessons that for fundamental change in this country, there must be a progressive multicultural movement that struggles for it beyond electoral politics and the self-masking that elections encourage; that an expansive vision and program that address the critical issues of our time and world are indispensable; and that we must move beyond the conception of America as a White finished product and understand and approach it as what it is, an ongoing unfinished multicultural project. Within this project, each people has both the right and responsibility to speak their own special cultural truth and make their own unique contribution to how this society is reconceived and reconstructed. Anything less is a dangerous self-deception which will, in New Hampshire, New York or some other states retrogress to or simply reveal a racist Jekyll and Hyde hypocrisy of quoting the Constitution in daylight and whistling Dixie in the dark.
http://www.blackcommentator.com/259/259_keeping_it_real_obama_double_speak.html
Double-Speak, Barack Obama and Continuing U.S. Hypocrisy - Keeping It Real
By Larry Pinkney
Black Commentator
What better way to manipulate the masses of people than to propagate lies disguised as truth, and to say nothing of substance in the name of being crystal clear. This is the double-speak by America's latest well known cynical opportunist, Barack Hussein Obama. Indeed, it is being demonstrated yet again that, "America is like a melting pot. The people at the bottom get burned and the scum floats to the top."
The superficiality and racism of white America is amply shown by its current propensity to equate real economic and political "change" with skin color. This is a fact, which for a certainty, does not escape Mr. Obama or his handlers. As a college-educated white woman -- Barack Obama supporter -- recently stated on national television, she wants to see the "color" component of "affirmative action eliminated " because after all (according to her) there is now color equality in America, and she made it quite plain that she felt justified in her racist quest because, as she proudly asserted, she is after-all, "voting for Barack Obama, a black man" for US President. In the very name of supposedly empowering the people, Barack Obama and many of his supporters are actually about the business of disempowering people, most especially Black, Brown, and Red peoples.
The superficiality and racism of white America is amply shown by its current propensity to equate real economic and political "change" with skin color. This is a fact, which for a certainty, does not escape Mr. Obama or his handlers. As a college-educated white woman -- Barack Obama supporter -- recently stated on national television, she wants to see the "color" component of "affirmative action eliminated " because after all (according to her) there is now color equality in America, and she made it quite plain that she felt justified in her racist quest because, as she proudly asserted, she is after-all, "voting for Barack Obama, a black man" for US President. In the very name of supposedly empowering the people, Barack Obama and many of his supporters are actually about the business of disempowering people, most especially Black, Brown, and Red peoples.
Does anyone remember Condoleezza Rice? She is, by the way, biologically Black, and she sure as hell does not represent economic and political "change" in the vein of truly empowering the people. Oh yes, and what about that biologically Black man Colin Powell? You remember him, don't you? The first biologically Black US Secretary of State, who went to the United Nations and told the entire world the big lie that Iraq "possessed weapons of mass destruction" that, in turn, provided political cover for the colossal debacle of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. It must be reiterated that equating genuine and much needed economic, social and political change with skin color is absurd, cynical, and enormously dangerous.
Yet, this appears to be an important part of what Barack Obama and his handlers are cynically counting on. They know that a significant portion of the American people, including many whites, want real change, so why not give them clean-sounding superficiality instead of truth, coupled with a huge dose of double-speak. This strategy serves to please and engender trust of the corporate backers while confusing many potential voters, especially young and/or first time potential voters. It might be an effective strategy but it is also a cynical and dishonest one.
Then of course, notwithstanding the huge dose of political double-speak, there is the Obama-disguise of rhetorically cloaking himself as a candidate of peace when in fact he is a candidate of war who has indicated that he favors "unilateral" US military actions in other nations -- supposedly in "pursuit of the real terrorists." In other words, he favors unilateral, state-sanctioned terrorism in order allegedly to pursue individual and/or organizational terrorists in other nations. While such simplisticly cloaked militaristic rhetoric on the part of Obama might make for tasty media sound bites, it is the stuff of cynicism, betrayal of the people, and madness.
For over seven years now, George W. Bush and clique repeatedly have illustrated the folly of such a dangerous policy, both at home and abroad. Yet, Obama, a so-called candidate for "change," is simply repackaging the same old, dangerous and failed US foreign policy with shiny but perilous rhetoric. He is not a candidate of peace. By his own admission, he is merely desirous of waging war "the right way," i.e. with a more effective killing machine.
Of course, he has never personally been in mortal combat in this nation or outside of its national boundaries, where limbs are broken and life is snuffed out. He has never been confined and tortured in US prisons as have some of his own Black constituents who were tortured by members of the police department in Chicago, Illinois. There is no "right way" to wage war. War is not antiseptic. It is not clean. It is bloody and it is horrible; the only "right way" to wage it is to avoid it, and most especially the use of "unilateral" US military force.
The Democrat and Republican parties long ago divorced themselves from promoting, in any real sense, the interests of the vast majority of the people. The politics of these parties continue to move America, as a nation, from the frying pan straight into the proverbial fire. For Black, Red, and Brown people in America and throughout the world this must be and is of particular concern.
Ironically, the one serious candidate of the people who is outside of the joined-at-the-hip Democrat and Republican parties is former US Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, who had the guts and integrity to leave the mire of the Democratic party and declare her support for the national "Power To The People Coalition," which in turn supports her candidacy for US President. For this, she has been outright ignored and/or repeatedly attacked by the US corporate media. Much of America, collectively, even in the 21st century, simply cannot abide integrity, only hypocrisy.
Nonetheless, real change and real power/empowerment must come not from cynical, corporate and shiny insubstantial rhetoric that is, in reality, callously pimping and manipulating the "hope" of people. Rather, it must come from systemic change that begins with the people - who are fed up with the machinations and hypocrisy of the Democrat and Republican parties.
Nonetheless, real change and real power/empowerment must come not from cynical, corporate and shiny insubstantial rhetoric that is, in reality, callously pimping and manipulating the "hope" of people. Rather, it must come from systemic change that begins with the people - who are fed up with the machinations and hypocrisy of the Democrat and Republican parties.
No matter what occurs in the upcoming and ongoing corporate media circuses referred to as caucuses and primaries throughout the United States, and no matter who the big corporate media presents as the so-called "front runners" in these circuses of, for, and by the Democrat and Republican parties, justice and integrity can never emanate from an intrinsically unjust, amoral and hypocritical US system. Moreover, when viewing the candidates of these parties, including the candidacy of Barack Obama, it behooves all of us to remember and apply the age-old African adage: "Beware of the naked man who offers you clothes."
This is the year 2008 and it is time to truly analyze, organize, educate, and liberate ourselves and our brothers and sisters. It's time to keep it real. Onward then. The struggle continuesŠ.
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BC Editorial Board member, Larry Pinkney is a veteran of the Black Panther Party, the former Minister of Interior of the Republic of New Africa, a former political prisoner and the only American to have successfully self-authored his civil/political rights case to the United Nations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. For more about Larry Pinkney see the book, Saying No to Power: Autobiography of a 20th Century Activist and Thinker, by William Mandel [Introduction by Howard Zinn].
Jesse Jackson and Barack Obama: Blackness Redefined
By Tammy Johnson,
RaceWire
January 14, 2008
January 14, 2008
This week Amy Goodman's Democracy Now broadcast featured a discussion with Reverend Jesse Jackson that focused on race and the primary elections.Much of the conversation centered on the Reverend's support of Barack Obama, and the perceived split of support among Black leaders and celebrities for various candidates. But what was really intriguing was Jackson's take on Obama's political handling of racial issues and his relation to the civil rights legacy which paved the way for his historical bid for the Presidency.
Death to the scary Black man
Goodman kicked off the sequence with a clip of William Bennett trumpeting the rise of the new Black man via Obama's Iowa victory."97% in fact, Iowa, rural white, farming state. Barack Hussein Obama, a black man, wins this for the Democrats. I have been watching him. I watched him on Meet the Press. I watched him on your show, watched him on all the CNN shows. He never brings race into it. He never plays the race card. Talk about the black community, he has taught the black community you don't have to act like Jesse Jackson, you don't have to act like Al Sharpton."
If you have been around racial politics long enough, you recognize the subtext of this argument. Obama's not a scary black man. He won't make white people confront racial inequities, deal with issues of privilege or the structural racism that undergirds this country. You get your chocolate without the calories and perhaps, without the nutrients as well. Reverend Jackson attributes the Iowa victory to the "maturing of America." I can buy into that thinking up to a point. After all, when white Iowans went into those voting booths they did punch the card for a brother. But was that a calculation that he was a safe bet? It takes me back to that scene in Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing, where the Italian, Pino, says of Black celebrities that he really likes, "They're not really Black." In the minds of white voters, is Obama really Black?
The Establishment Goes Black?
Reverend Jackson puts Obama's victory into a larger context of political and social struggle. He rightly runs down the battles that were fought in the streets, the courts, the White House, the jailhouse, the conventions and back rooms for at least four decades prior to the Obama run. What's noteworthy is that in every battle Jackson describes the push and pull that Blacks had to engage with the establishment (read Democratic Party and it's leadership) as opposed to the blatantly racist Jim Crow crowd; from MLK's forcing Johnson's hand on the Civil Rights Act, to challenging the party's values when it refused to demand the release of Mandela in apartheid South Africa. It begs the question: Will Obama, the beneficiary of the struggle, push the party on key issues of race? Will he do what Shirley Chisholm was unable to do, and force the party's platform to reflect the needs of all the people? Will he speak up against three-strikes laws, push for the repeal of welfare reform or stop the unfair the deportation of Haitian immigrants? Or will he play it safe and talk about racial unity with great eloquence, but very little substance? Jackson didn't go there in his public speculation, but somebody should.
Struggle Continues
Some would say that it's good that Obama doesn't address race directly. Here again, Jackson diplomatically puts such thinking into the uniquely American context."Well, there's a sense in which many Americans want to focus on racial reconciliation, and they ignore racial justice and racial equality. And you cannot ultimately get past those concerns...But Barack does not remind America of the unfinished business very much of racial justice, racial equality, but he need not. It's self-evident that that needs to happen."
If it is so self-evident, why does the good Reverend then go into detail about what he called "the state of emergency in Black America?" The list of racial wrongs was daunting: Increased incarceration rates, voting rights violations, mortgage foreclosure crisis and the general abandonment of civil rights for Blacks and Latinos. Jackson is right when he says that you can't take a pass on people's mental and emotional blocks on race. You have to confront it. Isn't that exactly what he is doing with his January 22 march on HUD and the housing crisis? Isn't that what he and countless numbers of civil rights and racial justice leaders have done for decades? Why lower the bar now? Obama may be successful in moving ahead politically by creating an image of being civil-rights-lite, but will communities of color reap the benefits as well? That's yet to be seen. Meanwhile, I'm off to the next coalition meeting.
Tammy Johnson, the Director of the Race and Public Policy Program (RAPP) of the Applied Research Center (ARC) has many years experience as a community organizer, trainer and writer versed in race and public policy.
http://www.blackcommentator.com/260/260_keeping_it_real_pimping_of_black_america_corporate_media_obama.html>
The Pimping of Black America: Why Much of the Corporate Media Supports Barack Obama Keeping It Real
By Larry Pinkney,
Black Commentator
Black Commentator
January 17, 2008
What is the current US corporate media-induced frenzy, regarding the so-called "Obama phenomenon," really all about and why, at this juncture in history, has it become increasingly so important for corporate America's global military/industrial apparatus to have a male face of color as the figure head at its helm?
The actual function of the US corporate media and its allies is to control, falsely depict, and shape opinion. It does not exist to inform honestly the masses of people in order that they/we might truly be an informed people making informed decisions in our own best interest. Grasping this reality is essential to understanding how and why the US corporate media acts in the fashion it does.
The perpetual objective of the US corporate media and its minions world wide is constantly to distort, disinform and thereby disempower and control. Thus, anyone who dares expose the actual avaricious interests of the corporate media and its masters, in favor of the masses of people, such as does former US Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, is vilified, marginalized and/or ignored by said media. Cynthia McKinney is a time tested champion of the people who has demonstrated time and time again that she is no pawn of corporate America's military/industrial complex. Like the late and beloved former US Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, Cynthia McKinney is "unbought and unbossed." She does not have to make a case to the American people about her ethnicity or Blackness, as the essence of who and what she is, is amply demonstrated by her many years of active commitment to the struggle for political, economic and social justice for all people: Black, Brown, Red, Yellow, and White.
Cynthia McKinney has left the morally and politically bankrupt Democratic Party in favor of building and supporting a real grass roots coalition across this nation that is committed to attaining real power for and to the people. Nevertheless, don't plan to ascertain much about her US Presidential campaign or the concomitant "Power To The People" coalition from the US corporate media, for this is not in their interest. You will, however, learn about Cynthia McKinney's campaign and the "Power To The People" coalition over time, as the incessant whispers of every day people grow into the roars of active political coalition building. This is all about real empowerment: exposing, stopping, and ultimately systemically reversing the insidious gains made by the de facto war profiteers and their blood-soaked and greedy corporate partners. This is not about raising false "hopes" or "dreams." This is about people collectively and actively struggling to take control from the corporate maggots of the military/industrial complex who profit from the deprivation and misery of the vast majority of people in this nation and on this planet.
It does not take a rocket scientist to understand, immediately and intuitively, that the very same (and in many respects worse) US corporate media that overwhelmingly vilified both Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X right up to the time of their assassinations, continues today to be no friend of the majority of the people, be they Black, Brown, Red, Yellow, or even White. To the contrary, the US corporate media promotes the interests of the corporate power elite by promoting those who represent those interests.
A Black American reader of The Black Commentator recently wrote to me concerning Barack Obama: "With Obama the system is employing a bait and switch tactic. On the surface the guy looks like he represents all that is new and hopeful, but he is a product of the corporate culture and that is where his heart and interests lie." In my opinion, this reader's observation is correct.
When observing the cynical strategy of Barack Obama's US Presidential campaign, particularly as it relates to Black America, and ultimately to America as a whole, I am reminded of the words of Malcolm X when he said in relevant part, "A man who tosses worms in the river isn't necessarily a friend of the fish. All the fish who take him for a friend, who think the worm's got no hook in it, usually end up in the frying pan."
Be clear about this: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was brutally murdered on April 4, 1968, in the context of his active and outspoken support for the massively exploited sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee, and his crystal clear and adamant opposition to the US war in Vietnam. Dr. King was fundamentally despised by corporate American media and the US military/industrial complex. To portray this otherwise is simply not the truth, and it is accurate that those who do not know their history assuredly are bound to repeat it. We can ill afford to be hoodwinked by the US corporate media and its allies.
Yet, when researching who US Presidential candidate Barack Obama's campaign advisors are, it is clear that they come from corporate America and the military industrial complex and who today remain, more than ever, the de facto enemies of economically exploited and oppressed Black, Brown, Red, Yellow, and White peoples. [Reference: Obama and the American Dream, by Dr. Lenore J. Daniels, PhD, The Black Commentator, January 10, 2008, Issue 259]. We must ask ourselves: are we about to be the "fish" who "end up in the frying pan" of corporate America's military/industrial fish fry?
Whereas Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. abhorred the US war in Vietnam and elsewhere in the world, Barack Obama, cloaking himself in the guise of being a "peace" candidate, has repeatedly stated his support for "unilateral" US military actions in other nations. He has indicated that he opposes how the US is waging the war in Iraq, not the US waging of this bloody, illegal, and amoral war itself. It should be reiterated that Obama has clearly stated that he would wage this war "better," more effectively. This is not the position of a candidate of PEACE. It is the position of a candidate promoting a PIECE of war.
US corporate media clips and sound bites of Barack Obama, shamelessly and hypocritically mimicking and invoking as his own, the legacy of the murdered Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and other Black American women and men freedom fighters as if he embodies the struggle for justice and equality of Black, Brown, Red and other disenfranchised people in America, is patently utterly obscene.
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The blood and collective memory of millions of Black women, men, and baby slaves in America
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Of Denmark Vesey & Nat Turner
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Of many tens of thousands of America's Black lynching victims
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Of the - four little Black girl - victims of the heinous 1963, church bombing by white racists in Birmingham, Alabama
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Of the brutal murders of Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., Emmett Till, and so many untold others of Black America
- to this very day - cry out for justice. And this ongoing struggle is by no means embodied by Barack Obama.
Simultaneously, the hollowness and unadulterated cynicism of Obama's false claim that "America is one nation, one people" is not only inaccurate, it is deliberate distortion of the reality of social, economic, and political inequality in this nation. Such rhetoric represents how Barack Obama seeks to "bamboozle" and negate Black America, other people of color and indeed all of America. It is a terrible charade supported and propagated by a significant segment of the corporate media and a back handed slap in the face to Black America. Moreover, this is also becoming obvious to a growing number of white Americans. There is absolutely no way that Barack Obama and his corporate and military advisors could not know that it is the hopes and dreams of all Americans, and most especially those of us who are Black, Brown, and Red, who are cynically being played upon [i.e. pimped] by this Obama rhetoric. Neither Americans nor the peoples of the rest of the world deserve any more of this.
Bear in mind that Barack Obama is perhaps, more than anything, a trojan horse candidate for corporate America, its media, and concomitant military industrial complex. Thus, a significant portion of the US corporate media is currently about the business of attempting to pimp us all, regardless of our color, on behalf of Barack Obama - sort of like an equal opportunity exploitation on behalf of the US corporate power elite. Of course, Barack Obama is by no means the only candidate being backed by this corporate power elite, but he is, at this juncture, the darling of the US corporate media; this should give us all pause for thought.
Obama revels in stating that he is the offspring of a "Kenyan" father and a white American mother, as if that somehow, in and of itself, is significant or is a qualification for the US Presidency. It is not. Nor does it have any relevancy whatsoever with respect to the important policy questions that he has not seriously answered.
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Why does he support using "unilateral" US military actions in other nations?
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Why are his top advisors from the power elite of corporate America and the US military?
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Why did he not oppose the de facto racist, anti-Black and Brown, so-called Gang Abatement Act - S456 - in the US Senate?
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Why does he deny the existence of a "Black America," while simultaneously attempting to garner its votes?
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Since he highlights that he is of a "Kenyan" father and a white American mother and he was raised essentially by whites, why is he any better qualified than a politically conscious and time-tested Black American of Black American parentage raised inside Black America to understand and relate to the pressing concerns of Black Americans or, indeed, all Americans?
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What does he intend to do about the infamous past and ongoing US Government COINTELPRO [Counter Intelligence Program] and COINTELPRO-type activities to frame, discredit, imprison and often murder those US citizens deemed as political enemies inside America, itself?
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Does he support reparations to Black Americans, the descendants of slaves in America?
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Does he actually believe that poor and disenfranchised people throughout America are being "coddled," as he has indicated he believes about the people of Iraq?
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Other than rhetoric, what qualifications and specific actions make him substantially different from his Democratic Party competitors and better suited for the office of President of the United States?
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Who specifically are the corporate donors to his campaign and how does this influence him?
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Is his demonstrative loyalty to the people of the United States or actually to the corporate elite?
These represent only some of the serious questions that the US corporate media has not pressed Barack Obama to address.
Moreover, as the son of a "Kenyan" father who ultimately left America and returned to his native Kenya, Barack Obama should certainly be poignantly cognizant of the fact that the true and courageous foot soldiers and every day people of the Kenyan movement for national independence from British colonialism and Western imperialism were, in fact, sold out by bourgeois nationalists who were masquerading as being of and for the masses of the Kenyan people. This, coupled with the still-ticking time bombs of ethnic tensions - which were deliberately manipulated and exacerbated by past and ongoing Western imperialism - continue, in one hideous form or another, to afflict, horribly, Kenya as a country and the entire African continent as a whole.
Like some before him in his father's native Kenya, Barack Obama in America has demonstrated that he is very solidly in the camp of the bourgeoisie of 21st century Western imperialism. Thus, the recipe for disaster in the Barack Obama scenario of America is ever so clear, notwithstanding America's enormous proclivity for national and international subterfuge, trampling upon the sovereignty of selected nations, and resorting to military adventurism at the drop of a hat. This is further exacerbated by candidate Barack Obama's repeatedly stated willingness to utilize "unilateral" US military force in other nations [i.e. military adventurism], that would, no doubt, delight the corporate and military elite but continue to utilize vast amounts of people in America and on this planet as nothing more than expendable cannon fodder. The most effective way to substantially reduce terrorism and other bloody conflicts is by refraining from spreading it by our own actions, not by any "unilateral" or "get off my planet by sun down" approach to terrorism or other disputes between nations. Perhaps Black, Brown, and Red peoples in America, due to our collective histories on this continent dealing with genocide, slavery, and territorial thievery, know the accuracy of this assertion better than most. Unfortunately, Barack Obama apparently does not.
Bluntly stated, Black America, in conjunction with other people of color, and indeed with all politically conscious persons of goodwill, must make a viable pact with each other no longer to accept the superficial rhetoric of any candidate, whether it be Barack Obama or anyone else. The "proof of the pudding is in its taste," not in its outward appearance. Far too much is at stake. Far, far too much.
Much needed and real systemic "change" will not be brought about by the Democrat or Republican Parties or by any of their representatives. To expect such a thing would be like expecting the fox to tell us truthfully who ate the chickens. We must take our destinies into our own hands. It is time to be creative in this struggle and stop "going for the ghost." It is, as Malcolm X said repeatedly, time to stop being "bamboozled." It is the year 2008, and time that we realize that cosmetic change is no change at all.
Systemic change demands that we reject the superficial in favor of doing what is real. That is what this people's struggle is all about.
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