From The Publisher
Posted: 30/09/2008 - 02:21 PM
Author: Evan X
“A new and unusually comprehensive AP-Yahoo poll that takes a look at racial attitudes offers this unsettling news: ‘Statistical models derived from the poll suggest that Obama’s support would be as much as 6 percentage points higher if there were no white racial prejudice.’”
- Clarence Page on pg. B9 of the HOUSTON CHRONICLE, Sat. Sept. 27, 2008
I was watching Chris Rock in an HBO special on Saturday night, and he said that white people who had black employees, should not expect them to report to work the day after if Barack wins the election. I’d been looking at it differently. I thought that if Barack won, there’d be a spontaneous international celebration, featuring black people, of course.
It would be symbolic more than anything else, you know. Barack Obama would win because he’s the candidate of the American power structure, which is white. Blacks are only 10 percent of the population in the United States, and, in fact, it is the Hispanic vote which will decide the winner in November.
But how did a black man become the candidate of the white power structure? Barack is the son of an African father from Kenya and a white American mother from Kansas. Barack was raised in Hawaii and Indonesia. He is not your typical black American. But in Mississippi and other Dixie states, they don’t differentiate between niggers – a nigger is a nigger is a nigger …
I’m trying to tell you that when Barack Obama took the stage last Friday night in Oxford, Mississippi to debate the Republican candidate, John McCain, it wouldn’t have mattered if Barack was raised in Antarctica. He knows what the hell Mississippi is. In the words of the late Nina Simone, “Mississippi, goddam.” When I was gong to school in New Hampshire, 40 odd years ago, they were still lynching us in Mississippi.
So, there was a lot of stress on Barack which you could not see on the television screen. ‘Cause Barack is cool. But there is no place on planet earth where black people have been hated as much as we have been in Mississippi. And Barack Obama was supposed to talk back to a white man in front of hundreds of millions of people in a quest to become the president of the United States? Are you kidding me?
I only watched the debate for 15 or 20 minutes. When the host, Jim Lehrer of PBS, began to try to have the candidates speak directly to each other, I knew this was a big time crock of s—.
The following day, all the commentators were saying how McCain refused even to look at Barack. It’s the Mississippi thing, Jack. If McCain as much as looks at Barack, then he becomes the next worst thing to a nigger in Mississippi – a nigger lover!
The closer America gets to the election, the more race is becoming a factor. A black man is aspiring to lead the most powerful nation in the world. Obama is already in uncharted territory as the first black presidential candidate of a major political party. He truly is a phenomenon.
The two American presidents whom black people, both in the United States and the world, loved the most, were John Kennedy (1960-1963) and Bill Clinton (1992-2000). Kennedy promised Guatemalan president Ydigoras Fuentes that he would get British Honduras if Fuentes allowed the Cuban exiles to train in Guatemala for their 1961 invasion of Cuba, and Clinton was indirectly responsible for the worst genocide in human history – a million Tutsis and Hutus in Rwanda in 1994. What’s my point? In Belize, we are going to go crazy if Barack wins. So then, do you believe Obama would support us against Guatemala? As president of the United States, he could not afford to side with us. For Barack to reach as far as he has, the power structure had to know that he was not “black conscious,” so to speak.
The only reason McCain stands a chance, is because in Dixie and some other areas in the United States, they will refuse to vote for Barack simply because he is black.
And yet, America has made great strides forward. In the sixties, a Barack candidacy would have been unthinkable. The Jesse Jackson candidacies in the nineties were jokes, and everybody knew it. For Barack Obama to have a serious shot at the presidency of the United States of America, is already a great accomplishment.
I think a Barack victory would be a good thing for America, and for the world. But, of course, politics is not about good and bad. It is an exercise in power dynamics.
There is a lot of hate in the world today. If Barack wins, a deal of that hate would be replaced by hope, if only for a night of celebration.
Early in Barack’s campaign for the Democratic Party nomination, there was a lot of grumbling in black American communities that he was not really one of them. But with the election less than six weeks away, I know that everybody black in Uncle Sam is riding with the “brother.” Likewise in Belize City, in Kingston, in Bridgetown, in Port-of-Spain, in Georgetown, in Accra, in Lagos, in Addis Ababa, in Mogadishu, in Kinshasa, in Harare, in Johannesburg … The question now is: what say Mexico City, Managua, San Salvador, Panama City, La Paz, Bogota, Quito, Lima … Guatemala City is no doubt saying McCain. Caracas is probably saying Barack. It’s a global village. Everybody’s watching, and many are praying…
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