Does Barack Obama love and respect Black people?
By Tolu Olorunda

photo source

At first glance of the question posed, most readers are already resolved to the conclusion that the writer is crazy. He can't be serious. Some haven't traveled that far down the slippery slope, but any corroborating evidence, put forth in the body of this article, would accelerate the speed of their philosophical vehicles. Why even quibble with such an inquiry? How possibly can a Black man, who married a strong dark-skinned Black woman, and lasted 20 odd years under the canopy of Black liberation theology, not love and respect those whose energy and drive is principally responsible for his election?

To contextualize this concern, it's imperative to revisit the past. Enter: January 2007.

Most Black voters, at initial contact, were unreceptive of the message Obama was offering. As early as Feb. 2007, following his campaign announcement, their mind was made up. In fact, as late as October 2007, Barack Obama still--according to polls--trailed then-Sen. Hillary Clinton by 13 points, among the Black electorate. The excuse registered, was that he wasn't "Black enough." Additionally, the Black community's spell-binding relationship with the Clintons couldn't just easily dissolve, to accommodate a Black man whose cultural credentials weren't, as they saw it, bona fide.

Obama was informed that the Black community's mind was made up, so he took action against it.
He soon scheduled a visit to the heart of the Black freedom struggle--Selma, Alabama. Speaking in March 2007, at Brown Chapel A.M.E. church, Obama wasted no time, making plain his motive. He began by paying homage to the civil rights icons in the room, and without haste, listed the names of Reverends Otis Moss Jr., and Otis Moss III, and yes, Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., as spiritual pillars he leans upon in times of need. Shortly after, the names of prestigious Black liberation firefighters (dead and living), like Anna Cooper, Marie Foster, Jimmy Lee Jackson, Maurice Olette, C.T. Vivian, Reverend Lowery, and John Lewis, tumbled down his lips.

Obama was making a point. It wasn't the mere political thing to do. It wasn't the popular ballet routine aspiring political forces perform perennially in front of Black faces. His mission was far more important.

Those names that found solace in his speech, he stated, brought about the burgeoning of a new generation of Black politicians, like Artur Davis and Keith Ellison. "It is because they marched that I got the kind of education I got, a law degree, a seat in the Illinois senate and ultimately in the United States senate," he said. They are, according to Obama, the "Moses generation." The debt owed to their struggle "is even greater... because not only is my career the result of the work of the men and women who we honor here today. My very existence might not have been possible had it not been for some of the folks here today."

But the sweet-talk soon gave away to frank speech.

"I tried to explain, you don't understand," Obama chided them--the very same people he had just offered up as cultural messiahs. But he was also speaking to a larger audience--the Black mass:
You see, my Grandfather was a cook to the British in Kenya. Grew up in a small village and all his life, that's all he was -- a cook and a house boy. And that's what they called him, even when he was 60 years old. They called him a house boy. They wouldn't call him by his last name. Sound familiar?
In other words: I'm no different! I'm just like you! I don't wear my Blackness as a lapel pin, but that makes me no less shade darker! My Blackness doesn't define me, I define it!

Later on, he reminded the old crowd in the room that "[a]s great as Moses was, despite all that he did, leading a people out of bondage, he didn't cross over the river to see the Promised Land." Translation: your labor and service might not have fielded a realization of Dr. King's dream, but "leave it to the Joshua generation to make sure it happens." The "Joshua generation," you ask? The Barack Obamas, the Cory Bookers, the Artur Davises, the Deval Patricks, and the Harold Ford Jrs.

These are the "Joshuas" of our freedom struggle.

So, though the Moses generation kindly "took us 90% of the way" to equality, "[w]e still got that 10% in order to cross over to the other side." This 10% margin will come courtesy of the "Joshua generation."

For those who missed it, Barack Obama stood up in front of Civil Rights heroes like John Lewis and Rev. Lowery, and, keeping a straight face, informed them that Blacks had come 90% of the way to equal footing with Whites!

Never mind that for every 10 cents a Black family makes, white ones make a dollar. Never mind that a Black family's median income is 61% that of Whites. Never mind that Blacks are, despite being merely 14% of the U.S. population, incarcerated 6 times the rate of Whites. Never mind that the Black unemployment rate is double that of Whites. Never mind! Blacks are still, to hear the president tell it, "90% of the way"!
But even this statement failed to draw any outcry from the leaders Obama spoke before. What had become clear, was that he planned to win the race, and Blacks had better jump on the bandwagon before it was too late.

Still, many Black folks remained unconvinced--that he could win. In hindsight, most Black people would suggest that their conversion from the Clinton to Obama camp came about when Bill Clinton caught the racial Holy Ghost, and began speaking in unfamiliar tongues: "Jesse Jackson won South Carolina in '84 and '88. Jackson ran a good campaign. And Obama ran a good campaign here." Others claim that the tipping point came about with Hillary Clinton's comments that Dr. King's dream could only succumb to fulfillment when President Lyndon Baines Johnson "passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It took a president to get it done." But all those assertions fail to cover up the truth adequately. What they hate to confess, is that the change in their views, concerning Obama, only came about following his victory in Iowa--January 2008.

Michelle Obama, speaking November 2007 on MSNBC, called it the "physiology that's going on in our souls and our heads." It is, she explained, "one of the horrible legacies of racism and discrimination and depression you know it keeps people down in their souls in a way where you know sometimes they can't move beyond it." This "psychological barrier" enables a thought pattern where "some black folks think that Barack won't win because the white people won't vote for Barack." [Sidebar: Now, you see why she was censored by the Obama campaign?] What Black folks were implicitly conceding is that they really weren't as bothered with Bill and Hill's remarks, as they often allege to have been.

Shortly after the Iowa State primary, the Black electorate genuflected to Obama, with 96 percent of it standing firm with him--to the very end. They announced Obama as the long-lost cousin whose face seemed unfamiliar at first, but was recognizable, all the while. They apologized for questioning his Blackness, and begged his forgiveness. Obama smiled, as he always does, knowing his ploy had been successful.

I'm quite different. I judge trees by the fruits they bear. Throughout the campaign, Obama never planned to address the afflictions Blacks have wrestled with for centuries. David Axelrod, the Obama '08 chief strategist, was emphatic in his objective to paint Obama not as a "Black candidate," but one who coincidentally "happened to be Black."

Don't count his Blackness against him--if he could change it, he might! After all, he was raised, practically, by White relatives. So, technically--technically!--his Blackness is what you would consider, arbitrary.
Axelrod had a point. He knew Obama more than Black folks did.

When President Obama did speak on race, save for his much-celebrated Philadelphia Speech last April, he inched as close to the mark of conservatism as the Democratic platform permits. When confronted by reporters to offer a statement on the exoneration of Sean Bell's executors--the murdered husband-to-be--Obama declared: "The judge has made his ruling, and we're a nation of laws, so we respect the verdict that came down." The brutal, 50-shots slaughter of Sean Bell was tepidly explained as "a possible case of excessive force," by Obama. When, later on in August, members of the political community, Uhuru, challenged Obama to address sacred issues like the foreclosure crisis (disproportionately targeting Blacks) and Hurricane Katrina, Obama stumbled, stammered and sputtered his way out of embarrassment. What he didn't tell the protestors, was that in 2006, he rejected "the notion that the painfully slow response of FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security was racially-based." Kanye was wrong: George Bush Does Care About Black People! "The ineptitude was colorblind," he concluded.

These fruits of the blooming Obama tree hung low for Blacks to taste and reflect upon, but they chose not to. They had their chance, but traded it for a mess of pottage.

Now, when Obama's administration tells Black people to wait their turn and pipe down, because its mind is made up, concerning the UN conference on racism, Blacks feign shock. When it asked that all references to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, and reparations, be dropped from the document, Blacks kept tight lips. His lieutenants tell Black folks that the boycott stands because they are "not interested in being involved or associated with fool's errands," and, like always, nothing happens.

In the interim, fantasize about the Office of Urban Policy! And while you're at it, convince yourselves we haven't forgotten about you. We might inexplicably skip a conference held dear to the hearts of you Negroes, but the boss would seek out alternative avenues to affirm his "commitments to combating racism and discrimination."
And after all this, I'm the crazy one?