Is Obama the End of Black Politics? Lord, No
by Mel Reeves
"The author is clearly out of touch with US history and
the history of US race relations."
Through its Sunday magazine, the New York Times asks,
"Is
Obama the end of black politics?" The most obvious problem with the question is that it assumes that
electoral politics is the primary form of black political struggle. Some
clarification is in order.
Most of the struggle for black politics or a black piece of
the pie has taken place outside of electoral politics. Rather, the most
significant black struggle has occurred in the streets. The long list of black
heroes in the quest for justice and equality in the US - the real black
politics - includes very few politicians. In fact, if asked to name black
heroes off the top of their heads, most blacks would instantly nominate Martin
Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X - neither of whom held elective office. If you
asked most blacks to name the top ten African Americans of all time, maybe,
just maybe, a baby boomer or two would suggest former Harlem Congressman Adam
Clayton Powell.
However the author, Matt Bai, limited his version of
politics to the electoral kind. With one exception, he ignored everyone on the
progressive side of the black spectrum. Clearly, his list of promising
black leaders are all elected, relatively conservative Democrats - black
politicos such as Newark mayor Cory Booker, Philadelphia mayor Michael Nutter
and Alabama Congressman Artur Davis. Mr. Bai seems to hope that the ascendance
of the Booker-Nutter-Davis crowd will put an end to black "whining" - and thus,
black politics.
Therefore the very question seeks to put black folks in a
box that we should be very careful to avoid. Electoral politics - often a game of placing black faces in
previously white places - has at best
yielded mixed results in our community. To be fair, black elected officials
have a tough job, but they have seldom succeeded in substantially bettering the
conditions of poor black folks without the corresponding protests of people in
the street. A simple observation of where blacks are located along the misery
index will serve to make the point.
"Mr. Bai seems to hope that the ascendance of the
Booker-Nutter-Davis crowd will put an end to black ‘whining' - and thus, black
politics."
There really is no such thing as a basic conflict between
the "civil rights" generation versus the younger (or "Hip Hop") generation in
our community. Both generations are confronted with racism. There are, no
doubt, generational competitions between those in the electoral milieu who are
jockeying for HNIC spots. However, the author is clearly out of touch with US
history and the history of US race relations when he suggests that, "the
resistance of the civil rights generation to Obama's candidacy signified the
failure of their parents to come to terms, at the dusk of their lives, with the
success of their own struggle - to embrace the idea that black politics might
now be disappearing into American politics in the same way that the Irish and
Italian machines joined the political mainstream"
The Times writer could at least have waited for the
black historical actors to die off before he started revising African American
history. First of all: the Irish and Italian machines were white! Mr. Cai is
comparing apples and oranges. He is trying to wish into existence an historical
transition that has not yet occurred for black people - and my never occur.
Yes, there are more opportunities for blacks in America, but the hurdles of
race remain extraordinarily high. Just look at the foolishness Barack Obama
encounters on an almost daily basis. No matter how much he panders to the fears
of whites, a significant percentage are not quite comfortable with the "colored
boy." Either the author is an ostrich and has been living with his head in the
ground, or a 21st century Rip Van Winkle and has been sleeping
through this government's refusal to rectify or even sincerely address the
damage done to black citizens by institutional racism. More importantly, the
misinformed writer fails to comprehend the importance of the oil of racism to
the capitalist machinery.
The most foolish statement of the article came from the
mouth Cornell Belcher, an Obama campaigner who declared, with astonishing
conceit, "I'm the new black politics.
The people I work with are the new black politics. We don't carry around that
history. We see the world through post-civil-rights eyes. I don't mean that
disrespectfully, but that's just the way it is."
In essence, what the not-so-young brother said, is that he
is blind and ahistorical, yet nevertheless he and others like him are going to
lead black folks into the new millennium.
An incredibly shallow person, Belcher puts Obama at the
center of the African American universe. "Barack Obama is the sum of their
struggle. He's the sum of their tears, their fights, their marching, their
pain. This opportunity is the sum of that."
No, not-so-young man, the struggle has always been for the
full social, economic and political equality of black America as a whole, not
for just a few individual and token achievements.
"An incredibly shallow person, Belcher puts Obama at the
center of the African American universe."
Ben
Jealous, the new elected president of the NAACP, was the only person who
made any sense in this very deceptive article when he said, "It's still a human
rights struggle. This isn't a struggle that began in the 1930's or 1960's. It's
a struggle that began in 1620."
Judging from what we have seen and heard, even if there is
a president Obama in the White House in 2009 the struggle will continue. Unless
Obama breaks with the political-economic-social system we know as capitalism
and attempts to break the bonds of income disparity by redistributing the
wealth and providing real equal opportunity and equal access to quality public education,
universal health care, full employment, affordable housing, an end to military
adventurism, and a fair shake from our justice department, then we will have to
keep our marching boots at the ready.
Mel Reeves is an activist living in Miami. He
can be contacted at mellaneous19@yahoo.com.
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