
WARNING!!! Everything is not going to immediately get better should Barack Obama become President of the United states. Below are a few things that I think we need to be wary of, and prepared to sober-mindedly address, in the eventuality of an Obama Presidency. I’m not saying that these things are destined to happen, but you never know. Hey, prepare for the worst and hope for the best.
- White America will think and act as if America has finally overcome its race problem.
- Black America – myopic and forever looking for the next messiah figure – will verbally chide/dismiss/tar and feather President Obama, after only 6 months in office, for not immediately addressing every specific need of the Black community.
- Because President Obama shoots hoops, he will be able to relate to, and inspire, Black boys from coast-to-coast to become president — of the NBA.
- The symbolic image of a brotha as President will inspire/cause black folks (particularly the youngsters) to believe that they can do or be anything. This is not a bad thing. It’s great, but go on to #5…
- There will be a knee-jerk White backlash/push-back against those “uppity negroes”. Segments of White America won’t immediately take too favorably to Black folks playing out of their socio-historical position. I’ll let the late/great literary giant, James Baldwin explain what I’m getting at. In a letter to his nephew he writes:
“They (white folks) have had to believe for many years, and for innumerable reasons, that black men are inferior to white men. Many of them, indeed know better, but, as you will discover, people find it very difficult to act on what they know. To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger. In this case, the danger, in the minds of most white Americans, is the loss of their identity. Try to imagine how you would feel if you woke up one morning to find the sun shining and all the stars aflame. You would be frightened because it is out of the order of nature. Any upheaval in the universe is terrifying because it so profoundly attacks one’s sense of one’s own reality. Well, the black man has functioned in the white man’s world as a fixed star, as an immovable pillar: and as he moves out of his place, heaven and earth are shaken to their foundations.”
- from “The Fire Next Time” by James Baldwin, 1962
Forward;
kdizo