Okay, I will put it on the line – in spite of the recent gains in the polls – I still think Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) will not be President. I could be wrong about this, and in fact it feels like I’m wrong, but my skepticism still doesn’t allow me to think America is ready for a Black President. I still think that race matters to far too many White people in this country. My father who lived through the heat of the segregated South is more optimistic – which on some level causes me to question the authenticity of my own distrust.
In 1982, (Los Angeles) Mayor Tom Bradley ran to become governor of California. The exit polls, a survey that asks people who they actually voted for immediately after casting their ballot, showed Bradley with a wide lead. However, when the votes were tallied Mayor Bradley actually lost. White respondents were reluctant to say that they didn’t vote for Bradley for fear of being thought of as racist. I say it was probably more likely they felt guilty for actually being racist.
The most recent Zogby poll has Obama now only up by 4%, versus 9% just a week ago, these swings seem to follow the volatility of the Dow Jones. Gerry McEntee, AFL-CIO union leader says that he’s spoken to White working class union members who simply say they can’t vote for a Black man. These voters simply say “He’s not one of us” or they still say he’s Muslim. Most of us have probably seen the recent video clip of an older white woman telling Senator John McCain (R-AZ) that ‘Obama is an Arab’. In my opinion I feel like this election is already decided – the pollsters just don’t have the research tools to figure it out with greater certainty.
Beyond my speculation that Obama may lose, I even have a remote desire that he does. Dare I say, it’s because of the naivete of Black people. If the stakes weren’t so damn high for our country, I probably would campaign for McCain for the sole purpose of seeing the pathetic reaction of Negroes the day after an Obama loss. Unfortunately, as necessary as an Obama win is for the country, it reinforces all of the lazy political and fiscal habits that Black people have. I don’t want this present generation of Blacks to think it’s this easy “to get to the promised land.” When confronted with this statement, most Blacks quickly counter by saying ‘of course an Obama candidacy is not going to change everything’ – as though that is a sufficient answer.
When many of us as student activists of all different backgrounds were fighting for free education in NYC and around the country – many Black people didn’t want to be bothered. Over the last ten years I’ve been trying to help Bob Law and others drum up support for Black business districts to help increase the number of times a dollar changes hands within the Black community, so that we can create jobs. Negroes have been cool to that too. And still in 2008, based on all government stats as well as research (SPNS HIV/AIDS Project) I’ve been involved with first hand, Black people still behave as though we’re not in the middle of HIV/AIDS epidemic. Of course there are Black organizations that attempt to solve these ills – but the problem is with the Black masses themselves.
We have a culture that has married the most negative forms of mainstream America’s materialism with our most precious expressions – music and spirituality. The result – an event driven culture puppeteered by the likes of Creflo Dollar and P.Diddy. Blacks tend to get excited for one-time events, anything that may dramatize the notion that the cosmos is either for or against us. Let’s start with the OJ Simpson trial in 1994-95. Blacks were happy that Orenthal the Oreo got off for murdering them two White folks as though he represented the plight of Black men who are unjustly being devoured by a prison-military industrial complex. Next we had the The Million Man March on October 16th, 1995. This event, my own introduction to organizing, was successful by event standards but a total failure by any that measure the efficacy of movements. Ten years later we had [Hurricane] Katrina, an event that dramatized the government’s disregard for Black life as well as our own wretched fratricidal circumstances. Did we actually need a hurricane to expose what every vital statistic consistently told us year after year. And now in 2008 it’s Barack Obama – the “Black messiah.” Obama himself isn’t to blame for this idea, in fact he never asked for or even courted Black support. Far too many black people see his rise to prominence as a part of a divine scheme – and that is precisely my problem.
As a people who are prone to religiosity as well as entertainment, or even more poignant – religion as entertainment we have an appetite for drama. We love waiting on the miracle, the immaculate conception or at least the immaculate concept. Perhaps it’s because we think it was divine providence that caused us to wind up as slaves, the wretched of the earth with kinky hair, Black skin and thick lips – that to this day has many of us saying “what the f#%k”.
Even though we know that an Obama candidacy will not yield any material advantage for the masses of Black people – we still want it and need it for our psyche. We want our White step-brothers and sisters with whom we occupy this land to envy us for a change. We want an Obama presidency to prove we have arrived, even though we need the complicity of the very White people that we want to boast against for our dream to materialize. It is in this paradox that Black America’s vulnerability is exposed. Everything we deem of value requires the participation of other groups; while we neglect the things of real value that requires us to do for self.
Black America has the most inefficient economic model of any ethnic/racial group in United States. It is a model that is fueled by the lack of value we place on each other that causes us to do everything that involves spending money outside of our own community. Nobody pursues diversity at their own expense except the former slave. Economic activity with other Blacks is neither associative or aspirational for most Black people. Therefore our economic foot print leaves tracks outside of the Black community rather than within.
Instead of working on correcting these bad habits on a daily and consistent basis, Blacks see supporting an Obama Presidential candidacy as their blow against the system. It is this worldview that I hear repeated on talk radio and in casual conversation that makes me want to take a bat to most of the damn near 40 million Negroes in America. As a nation, we really need Obama to win, because the alternative in the personage of the McCain-Palin ticket is simply too dangerous.
In the off chance that I’m right and Obama doesn’t win – do we wait another four years for another “Black messiah” to emerge?
