First, sorry about the silence. I was away for 4 days with my 6 and 10 year old boys camping in Carbondale, IL. We, along with a large group of other Black folk, were hosted by the Land for Learning Institute. It was a blast – bugs/spiders in our cabin, fishing, canoeing, zip-lining, cliff diving, swimming, hiking, caving (not no tourist cave either. I’m talking mud, giant cave crickets, 3-4ft deep pools of 50 degree water, jagged rocks, belly crawls, 20ft climbs and descents…). It was dope. Anyhoot – the topic of the hour, Barack Obama….
I’m gonna attempt to make this short and sweet. I’m really really NERVOUS about Barack’s chances. On the one hand, there are alot of negroes still running around taklin’ about they aren’t going to vote for Barack becuase he ain’t Black enough. That’s just plain dumb. I thought we were more sophisticated than that. On the other hand – I REALLY don’t trust White folk. This racism thing is a bitch. During my camping trip, I was listening to some podcasts from CNN, NPR, etc., that i downloaded into my IPOD. All the podcasts were about Barack and Election 2008. What did i hear over and over again in each podcast? White folks talkin’ bout they don’t know Barack (after he done bent over backwards to reach out to them). White folks talkin’ about they still, despite evidence to the contrary, believe that Barack is a Muslim. And, this is the one that really makes me nervous, White folks talkin’ bout how Barack doesn’t share their working/lower-middle class values (which implies that the super-rich/wealthy McCain does. Amazing.) This sentiment reminds me of an interview that Tavis Smiley did years ago with actor Warren Beatty who was promoting the movie Bullworth. During the interview, Tavis asked Beatty what does he consider to be the biggest political/social challenge that America faces. Beatty responded by saying it’s the issue of race and specifically, that White working class Americans believe that they have more in common with rich White folk than they do with working class Black folk. Word Up Mr. Beatty. How do we deal with that?
kd
