After the morning after, after the night before . . .

[Moya]

I don't feel victorious. I don't feel like we won. I do think that these sentiments are particularly interesting after the early press spin that asked whether Barack was black enough and black people were ambivalent about the answer. Now he's one of us, our hero, our modern day Martin and Malcolm (please people let's really think about what these men did and who they were i.e. not politicians).

A friend's brother said that he's seen more racism on the internet in the last few days than in his whole millennial life, which is interesting in the wake of claims that Obama's win symbolizes a new epoch in racial relations in this country. What I see is power and hegemony at work. The election of a brown face that keeps the capitalist machine going, (not an uncle tom Nader; they all placate those corporations) albeit it a gentler, greener machine (we've been promised) that still does the work of US imperialism.

I wonder how our Indigenous brothers and sisters feel? Is it enthusiasm for the fact that a person of color has reached the white house or is it sadness that a person of color is at the helm of an empire that wrought such pain and destruction among their peoples?

I say person of color deliberately to note that Obama's African American-ness exist in another space than that of other African American's who have sought the nation's highest office (Chisolm, Jackson, McKinney, etc.). He is not marked with the north/south black/white paradigmatic binary we use to understand race in this country. He is not colored by the hallmarks of African American elite society like belonging to a Divine Nine fraternity or growing up in Jack & Jill. His Hawaiian, Midwest upbringing make him an exception to dominate codes of blackness which initially made black people suspicious and ultimately put whites at ease.

It was easier for me when the face of U.S. imperialism didn't look like mine. Will this stem the radical left's radicalness? Will we become complacent because Obama is the new president of the fundamentally illegal, stolen, and pilfered United States? I am worried because as bougie black folk celebrate and rejoice, there are still black people hurting. The "tragedy" in Jennifer Hudson's family captures national attention, even presidential (now) condolences, but how often is that story true for countless other black families living in this country and how often is that story told as one of tragedy rather than a rationalization of stereotypes long held about the black urban poor? Structural racism depends on the exceptions (Obama, Oprah, etc.) to hide the rule that is inequity.

Am I cynical for feeling ambivalent in this moment? I dare not share these thoughts with too many because the retribution is swift. There is no room for quirky black girls casting aspersions at this watershed moment in black history. But I must insist on raising my dis-ease in this moment, my fear for what this may seemingly absolve in the minds of many. And also what might it incite? "Disempowered racist white people can only actually harm people much less powerful than the president elect."

So I pledge to stay vigilant, critical and skeptical. I pledge also to be active, visible, and hopeful for the world I wish to see. It will take more than one man's rise to power to undo centuries old structural oppressions built along the axes of race, gender, sexuality, ability and age. The struggle continues.

Thanks to Summer M., Alexis P., and Ashon C. for helping me think on this and providing pieces of this analysis.

[maia]

moya,
that comment on racewire is hilarious though. i learned such interesting things about myself from that person. lord have mercy, thank god for obama, i now have someone to blame for my miserable life. hahaha...ahem...ha.

[maia]

hey, i am reposting this from uhuru radio...

Omali Yeshitela's statement on the election
of Barack Obama as U.S. president

(Listen to the audio archive of African Socialist International Chairman Omali Yeshitela, Black Agenda Report senior editor Glen Ford, African Socialist International General Secretary Luwezi Kinshasa, direct from London, and Africanist Movement Director Chernoh Alpha M. Bah, direct from Freetown, discussing reaction to the U.S. elections from the U.S. to the UK to Sierra Leone - on UhuruRadio.com)
http://www.uhurunew s.com/radio/ show.epl? show_id=lt

By Omali Yeshitela, Chairman of the African Socialist International

African workers and peoples of the world:

On Tuesday, November 4 Barack Obama became the 44th president of the United States to the obvious joy of millions of African people in the U.S. and around the world, especially in Africa, our national homeland. Other peoples of the world also welcomed the election of Obama.

The jubilation over the election was the result of relief at the end of the hated Bush regime, but mostly it was the result of an assumption that Obama’s election represents a drastic change for the better in the conditions of African people in the U.S. and an end to the United States’ predatory relationship with most of the world.

Sisters and brothers, friends and comrades: none of this is true. The fact is that the election of Obama to the U.S. presidency represents the highest stage of neocolonialism, white power in black face.

As we have seen in Africa and some other places, when our political consciousness develops to the extent that it becomes impossible for imperialist white power to rule us directly, indirect rule or neocolonialism has been employed as a method of undermining our struggle to win our freedom.

Instead of imperialism with the white face that had become so hated by our people because of its history of brutality and humiliation, imperialism donned a black face giving the appearance of freedom and progress while our resources remained in the hands of the same imperialist white power as before.

Sisters, brothers and comrades: some of us are old enough to remember the joy and hope that we experienced with our independence and the emergence of African heads of state in Africa during the 1960s. Others experienced the same elation that accompanied the election of Nelson Mandela as president in South Africa in 1994. Today that joy has been dulled by the reality of our continued exploitation by the same imperialist countries and corporations that have exploited us historically.

Sisters and brothers; friends and comrades: Today our people are swimming in a sea of misery throughout Africa under the indirect rule of neocolonialism. This is true even after Mandela in South Africa where nearly 50 percent of African people are unemployed and thousands are required to live in shanties unfit for human habitation. This South Africa that we are told has overcome its racial past and now constitutes a “Rainbow Nation,” is one where the white ten percent of the population still own 87 percent of the land that they stole with their initial brutal occupation that lasts to this day.

In the U.S., where Barack Obama also told us that racial oppression is no longer a factor in life, the black-white health gap costs the lives of more than 83,000 African people each year. Additionally, African men in the U.S. are incarcerated at rates 8 times higher than white men and one out of three African males in his 30s has a prison record. One out of eight African men in his 20s is now in prison or jail on any given day. This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the conditions of existence for African people, most of whom are workers, in the U.S. Clearly the election of Obama is not a sign that things are better for African people.

Sisters and brothers, friends and comrades: the same thing that made it necessary for imperialist white power to employ neocolonialism on the Continent of Africa has made it necessary for our imperialist oppressors and exploiters to employ neocolonialism globally through the election of Barack Obama, whose presidential campaign cost more than 600 million U.S. dollars.

Throughout the world people are struggling to overturn their oppressive relationship to the U.S. These are struggles that have been ongoing for some time now and were highlighted in the past by the glorious struggles of the Vietnamese and Cuban peoples. Today these struggles are evident in the resistance to U.S. occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan and the challenge to U.S. hegemony by growing numbers of peoples and countries in the Middle East and Persian Gulf.

In South America the growing resentment of the people to U.S. domination and expropriation of their wealth can be found in the policies and popularity of Hugo Chavez, president of Venezuela along with the governments and people of Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Nicaragua and others.

These are some of the myriad of problems the U.S. ruling class has been confronted with for some time now. These are among the contradictions facing U.S. imperialism that we have characterized as a crisis of imperialism.

Sisters and brothers, friends and comrades: The U.S. and world economy is in trouble precisely because of this growing resistance by the world’s peoples. It is true that the world capitalist economy is a parasitic economy that rests upon a pedestal of the oppressive exploitation of the majority of humanity—a parasitic economy that has its origins in part from African slavery and the colonization of Africa and much of the world.

The successful struggles of the world’s peoples to take back their resources and their freedoms for their own use means that these are resources that the imperialists can no longer rely on to feed, clothe and house themselves and their children at our expense.

This is what has made it necessary for our oppressors to employ a global neocolonial strategy. It is a strategy that intends to give imperial white power a new and friendlier face that is not normally associated with oppression and exploitation. It is a strategy to seduce the peoples of the world to compliance with the predatory interests of U.S. imperialism as it becomes increasingly clear that military coercion alone is no longer sufficient for imperialist success.

It is a strategy designed to enhance the U.S.’s capacity in the growing contest with others, especially China, for the resources of Africa that are so critical in determining the economic future of the world. Part of the strategy is to create an international brotherhood of neocolonialism under the umbrella of U.S. imperialism that would allow neocolonial heads of state in Africa to enjoy the prestige of association with Obama in return for favorable treatment of U.S. corporations exploiting the resources of Our Africa.

Another critical component of the imperialist strategy represented by Obama’s election is the Africa Command or AFRICOM, the overt U.S. military intervention in Africa that is designed to protect the oppressive status quo and to oppose its most serious contenders for Africa’s resources that should be going to the development of Africa for African people ourselves. Obama’s presidency provides the necessary cover for cowardly neocolonial heads of state who could not previously openly support Africom because of its obvious colonial connotation.

While Obama is an African this is not a true determination of who he really represents, any more than the fact that all over Africa there are African heads of state that continue to represent the interests of the wealthy imperialists and do not represent African interests beyond those of their narrow petty bourgeois class base.

During his campaign for president, Obama received more money from the white ruling class of the U.S. in the form of Wall Street bankers than any other candidate. While African people flocked loyally to him, Obama refused to raise any of the issues critical to the interests of Africans, especially the issue of police killings of young African men throughout the U.S. Obama also spoke out against reparations payments to Africans for the history of slavery and other forms of exploitation and oppression that have robbed our people of a meaningful economic capacity and the inheritance of the value created by our ancestors.

Sisters and brothers, friends and comrades: All of Obama’s advisors during his campaign and those who he is expected to bring into his administration have histories as imperialist servants, some of them notoriously so, like Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was National Security Advisor with the administration of U.S. President James Earl Carter and Madeline Albright who was Secretary of State with the regime of William Jefferson Clinton.

In addition his campaign financial chairwoman was Penny Pritzker from Chicago, a billionaire heiress who created the predatory lending scheme that targeted Africans and Latinos, resulting in thousands losing their homes while she made a fortune at their expense.

Sisters and brothers, friends and comrades: Elections in the U.S. are simply nonviolent contests by different sectors of the white ruling class for control of the state. The ideas that are presented during these electoral campaigns are simply the ideas of different sectors of the ruling class who use the elections to achieve a popular mandate to use the power of the imperialist state to advance their predatory interests. Although Obama has proved to be quite eloquent in putting forward ideas during the campaign for president, the ideas that he put forward were those of his ruling class sponsors.

Obama will not free Africa. He cannot free Africans either at home in Africa or abroad in the U.S. or the many other places to which we have been shipped by slavery and colonialism. He is not a friend of Africa, nor is he a friend of the suffering oppressed peoples of the world. His interests are the interests of U.S. imperialism, the world’s greatest predator state.

If Africa and Africans are to be free it will be because we stop looking to representatives of our oppressors for our freedom; it will be because we come to understand that our power resides in ourselves as African people who are determined to fight for Africa for Africans ourselves; it will be because we recognize that we must combine our efforts as a people under the leadership of the African working class, organized independently into our own international party to fight for a totally liberated and united Africa and African people worldwide.

Sisters and brothers, friends and comrades: Barack Obama represents imperialism in crisis. He is an imperialist solution to its loss of influence among the struggling peoples of the world. To embrace Obama is to participate in resolving the crisis of imperialism that is responsible for our misery as a class and as African people.

The return of our freedom, resources and happiness will only come with the conquest of political power in our own hands through our own efforts.

We must reject imperialist neocolonialism, whether in Africa or in North America!

We must implement the Revolutionary National Democratic Program!

We must fight for power to the people under the leadership of the African working class!

We must build the African Socialist International as the essential instrument for waging our struggle for national liberation and power to the African working class!

U.S. out of Iraq and Afghanistan!

U.S. hands off Venezuela and all of South America!

Down with U.S. terrorist threats against the people of Iran!

Down with AFRICOM!

All U.S. troops and intelligence agencies out of Africa now!

One Africa! One Nation!

[maia]

yes, i agree his presence and victory implores us to change. and i love seeing my people happy.

LLC.J said:

I am so late on responding to this--but what's new.

I read summers blog last week on this, and honestly, I can appreciate her response and other who agree with her position. There are aspects of her critique which I feel are pretty spot on.

For me, an ardent optimists who looks at the spiritual meaning of things first, I believe that this moment CAN be a good moment. I too was disappointed at the tools used to acquire this "historic moment," but it happened. I think his journey and victory created a moment that cannot be ignored and I saw how it excited people and that is what makes me happy. What I see is that Obama symbolizes the enthusiasm that people CAN and have created in themselves. Obama is not anyone's savior. I don't believe that he will be our shining star and I think the expectations are too great, but I believe that this moment is an opportunity (to be left or taken) for people to wake the hell up.

I am certainly not astonished at the number or racist incidents occuring since Obama's win. I don't think Obama is going to be the change, I think his presence and effect on the world implores us to change.

Yeah I am sipping the Koolaid a bit, but with way less sugar folks.

[Moya]

ha ha way less sugar . . . love that!!!

LLC.J said:

I am so late on responding to this--but what's new.

I read summers blog last week on this, and honestly, I can appreciate her response and other who agree with her position. There are aspects of her critique which I feel are pretty spot on.

For me, an ardent optimists who looks at the spiritual meaning of things first, I believe that this moment CAN be a good moment. I too was disappointed at the tools used to acquire this "historic moment," but it happened. I think his journey and victory created a moment that cannot be ignored and I saw how it excited people and that is what makes me happy. What I see is that Obama symbolizes the enthusiasm that people CAN and have created in themselves. Obama is not anyone's savior. I don't believe that he will be our shining star and I think the expectations are too great, but I believe that this moment is an opportunity (to be left or taken) for people to wake the hell up.

I am certainly not astonished at the number or racist incidents occuring since Obama's win. I don't think Obama is going to be the change, I think his presence and effect on the world implores us to change.

Yeah I am sipping the Koolaid a bit, but with way less sugar folks.

[summer m.]

i'm glad there are more dissenters than i initially anticipated. we should a themed cocktail party.
maia said:

hey, i am reposting this from uhuru radio...

Omali Yeshitela's statement on the election
of Barack Obama as U.S. president

(Listen to the audio archive of African Socialist International Chairman Omali Yeshitela, Black Agenda Report senior editor Glen Ford, African Socialist International General Secretary Luwezi Kinshasa, direct from London, and Africanist Movement Director Chernoh Alpha M. Bah, direct from Freetown, discussing reaction to the U.S. elections from the U.S. to the UK to Sierra Leone - on UhuruRadio.com)
http://www.uhurunew s.com/radio/ show.epl? show_id=lt

By Omali Yeshitela, Chairman of the African Socialist International

African workers and peoples of the world:

On Tuesday, November 4 Barack Obama became the 44th president of the United States to the obvious joy of millions of African people in the U.S. and around the world, especially in Africa, our national homeland. Other peoples of the world also welcomed the election of Obama.

The jubilation over the election was the result of relief at the end of the hated Bush regime, but mostly it was the result of an assumption that Obama’s election represents a drastic change for the better in the conditions of African people in the U.S. and an end to the United States’ predatory relationship with most of the world.

Sisters and brothers, friends and comrades: none of this is true. The fact is that the election of Obama to the U.S. presidency represents the highest stage of neocolonialism, white power in black face.

As we have seen in Africa and some other places, when our political consciousness develops to the extent that it becomes impossible for imperialist white power to rule us directly, indirect rule or neocolonialism has been employed as a method of undermining our struggle to win our freedom.

Instead of imperialism with the white face that had become so hated by our people because of its history of brutality and humiliation, imperialism donned a black face giving the appearance of freedom and progress while our resources remained in the hands of the same imperialist white power as before.

Sisters, brothers and comrades: some of us are old enough to remember the joy and hope that we experienced with our independence and the emergence of African heads of state in Africa during the 1960s. Others experienced the same elation that accompanied the election of Nelson Mandela as president in South Africa in 1994. Today that joy has been dulled by the reality of our continued exploitation by the same imperialist countries and corporations that have exploited us historically.

Sisters and brothers; friends and comrades: Today our people are swimming in a sea of misery throughout Africa under the indirect rule of neocolonialism. This is true even after Mandela in South Africa where nearly 50 percent of African people are unemployed and thousands are required to live in shanties unfit for human habitation. This South Africa that we are told has overcome its racial past and now constitutes a “Rainbow Nation,” is one where the white ten percent of the population still own 87 percent of the land that they stole with their initial brutal occupation that lasts to this day.

In the U.S., where Barack Obama also told us that racial oppression is no longer a factor in life, the black-white health gap costs the lives of more than 83,000 African people each year. Additionally, African men in the U.S. are incarcerated at rates 8 times higher than white men and one out of three African males in his 30s has a prison record. One out of eight African men in his 20s is now in prison or jail on any given day. This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the conditions of existence for African people, most of whom are workers, in the U.S. Clearly the election of Obama is not a sign that things are better for African people.

Sisters and brothers, friends and comrades: the same thing that made it necessary for imperialist white power to employ neocolonialism on the Continent of Africa has made it necessary for our imperialist oppressors and exploiters to employ neocolonialism globally through the election of Barack Obama, whose presidential campaign cost more than 600 million U.S. dollars.

Throughout the world people are struggling to overturn their oppressive relationship to the U.S. These are struggles that have been ongoing for some time now and were highlighted in the past by the glorious struggles of the Vietnamese and Cuban peoples. Today these struggles are evident in the resistance to U.S. occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan and the challenge to U.S. hegemony by growing numbers of peoples and countries in the Middle East and Persian Gulf.

In South America the growing resentment of the people to U.S. domination and expropriation of their wealth can be found in the policies and popularity of Hugo Chavez, president of Venezuela along with the governments and people of Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Nicaragua and others.

These are some of the myriad of problems the U.S. ruling class has been confronted with for some time now. These are among the contradictions facing U.S. imperialism that we have characterized as a crisis of imperialism.

Sisters and brothers, friends and comrades: The U.S. and world economy is in trouble precisely because of this growing resistance by the world’s peoples. It is true that the world capitalist economy is a parasitic economy that rests upon a pedestal of the oppressive exploitation of the majority of humanity—a parasitic economy that has its origins in part from African slavery and the colonization of Africa and much of the world.

The successful struggles of the world’s peoples to take back their resources and their freedoms for their own use means that these are resources that the imperialists can no longer rely on to feed, clothe and house themselves and their children at our expense.

This is what has made it necessary for our oppressors to employ a global neocolonial strategy. It is a strategy that intends to give imperial white power a new and friendlier face that is not normally associated with oppression and exploitation. It is a strategy to seduce the peoples of the world to compliance with the predatory interests of U.S. imperialism as it becomes increasingly clear that military coercion alone is no longer sufficient for imperialist success.

It is a strategy designed to enhance the U.S.’s capacity in the growing contest with others, especially China, for the resources of Africa that are so critical in determining the economic future of the world. Part of the strategy is to create an international brotherhood of neocolonialism under the umbrella of U.S. imperialism that would allow neocolonial heads of state in Africa to enjoy the prestige of association with Obama in return for favorable treatment of U.S. corporations exploiting the resources of Our Africa.

Another critical component of the imperialist strategy represented by Obama’s election is the Africa Command or AFRICOM, the overt U.S. military intervention in Africa that is designed to protect the oppressive status quo and to oppose its most serious contenders for Africa’s resources that should be going to the development of Africa for African people ourselves. Obama’s presidency provides the necessary cover for cowardly neocolonial heads of state who could not previously openly support Africom because of its obvious colonial connotation.

While Obama is an African this is not a true determination of who he really represents, any more than the fact that all over Africa there are African heads of state that continue to represent the interests of the wealthy imperialists and do not represent African interests beyond those of their narrow petty bourgeois class base.

During his campaign for president, Obama received more money from the white ruling class of the U.S. in the form of Wall Street bankers than any other candidate. While African people flocked loyally to him, Obama refused to raise any of the issues critical to the interests of Africans, especially the issue of police killings of young African men throughout the U.S. Obama also spoke out against reparations payments to Africans for the history of slavery and other forms of exploitation and oppression that have robbed our people of a meaningful economic capacity and the inheritance of the value created by our ancestors.

Sisters and brothers, friends and comrades: All of Obama’s advisors during his campaign and those who he is expected to bring into his administration have histories as imperialist servants, some of them notoriously so, like Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was National Security Advisor with the administration of U.S. President James Earl Carter and Madeline Albright who was Secretary of State with the regime of William Jefferson Clinton.

In addition his campaign financial chairwoman was Penny Pritzker from Chicago, a billionaire heiress who created the predatory lending scheme that targeted Africans and Latinos, resulting in thousands losing their homes while she made a fortune at their expense.

Sisters and brothers, friends and comrades: Elections in the U.S. are simply nonviolent contests by different sectors of the white ruling class for control of the state. The ideas that are presented during these electoral campaigns are simply the ideas of different sectors of the ruling class who use the elections to achieve a popular mandate to use the power of the imperialist state to advance their predatory interests. Although Obama has proved to be quite eloquent in putting forward ideas during the campaign for president, the ideas that he put forward were those of his ruling class sponsors.

Obama will not free Africa. He cannot free Africans either at home in Africa or abroad in the U.S. or the many other places to which we have been shipped by slavery and colonialism. He is not a friend of Africa, nor is he a friend of the suffering oppressed peoples of the world. His interests are the interests of U.S. imperialism, the world’s greatest predator state.

If Africa and Africans are to be free it will be because we stop looking to representatives of our oppressors for our freedom; it will be because we come to understand that our power resides in ourselves as African people who are determined to fight for Africa for Africans ourselves; it will be because we recognize that we must combine our efforts as a people under the leadership of the African working class, organized independently into our own international party to fight for a totally liberated and united Africa and African people worldwide.

Sisters and brothers, friends and comrades: Barack Obama represents imperialism in crisis. He is an imperialist solution to its loss of influence among the struggling peoples of the world. To embrace Obama is to participate in resolving the crisis of imperialism that is responsible for our misery as a class and as African people.

The return of our freedom, resources and happiness will only come with the conquest of political power in our own hands through our own efforts.

We must reject imperialist neocolonialism, whether in Africa or in North America!

We must implement the Revolutionary National Democratic Program!

We must fight for power to the people under the leadership of the African working class!

We must build the African Socialist International as the essential instrument for waging our struggle for national liberation and power to the African working class!

U.S. out of Iraq and Afghanistan!

U.S. hands off Venezuela and all of South America!

Down with U.S. terrorist threats against the people of Iran!

Down with AFRICOM!

All U.S. troops and intelligence agencies out of Africa now!

One Africa! One Nation!

[Kismet]

i like that. with less sugar. :) i as well, mujer. i as well.

and LOL at the themed cocktail party idea...

LLC.J said:

I am so late on responding to this--but what's new.
I read summers blog last week on this, and honestly, I can appreciate her response and other who agree with her position. There are aspects of her critique which I feel are pretty spot on.
For me, an ardent optimists who looks at the spiritual meaning of things first, I believe that this moment CAN be a good moment. I too was disappointed at the tools used to acquire this "historic moment," but it happened. I think his journey and victory created a moment that cannot be ignored and I saw how it excited people and that is what makes me happy. What I see is that Obama symbolizes the enthusiasm that people CAN and have created in themselves. Obama is not anyone's savior. I don't believe that he will be our shining star and I think the expectations are too great, but I believe that this moment is an opportunity (to be left or taken) for people to wake the hell up.

I am certainly not astonished at the number or racist incidents occuring since Obama's win. I don't think Obama is going to be the change, I think his presence and effect on the world implores us to change.

Yeah I am sipping the Koolaid a bit, but with way less sugar folks.

[summer m.]

http://wbez.org/Content.aspx?audioID=30209

heard this story on my way to campus this morning.

for those of us who have been critical, suspicious, and/or infuriated by bho's candidacy and subsequent election, this may be a bit hard to get through, but i ask that you stick with it. i think there's more to be said about what we hear (and don't hear) from the interviewees. in fact, it might be helpful to disregard a lot of the narrative the journalists provide. although i always end up on the thumbs down side of this whole thing, processing this matter has been a really complicated task for me. on one end, i'm happy when black folks are happy (as outlined over at mybestfriendgayle), but i'm also really sad for us. i think this piece speaks to some of that anxiety.

really, the piece isn't about bho. before bho got there, and long after he left, there were and are black women doing the work in this community. i'm glad i heard their voices this morning.

[Moya]

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4608192n

can we mst3k this please?! i am really not feelin' the interviewer!

"so how long do you give her . . ." -WTF?!

[webdubois135]

I'm jumping in super late on this, but I've been writing on this since immediately after the election in various forums. I dig the critical attitudes. I praise them actually. That's what this country needs right now. Unfortunately, too many are in a daze, hoping, thinking, praying that someone else will be their savior. Medical sociologists (of which I am one) say that Americans have given the main decisions of their lives over to experts. We seek doctors for what we should eat, how we should raise our kids, when we should take a vacation. It's the journalist, the talk show hosts, the psychiatrists, the teacher, and every other paid professional that can tell us how to be the person we want to be. Now, it's Barack.

I'm not saying to not believe in Barack. Living in a state that voted Democrat for the first time since the 60s, I was proud to be part of the mass that changed history. Nonetheless, him and his family are posed to be tools to the white power structure of America. Instead of contesting the racial structure, Barack has conceded to it and bashed the angry blacks and no-good (black) fathers. Instead of standing in the footsteps of the many strong black women in our community's legacy, Michelle is talking about J. Crew and raising her girls. Yes, they might have an undercover plan for my community's needs, but I am not willing to take the chance that they do not. Conservatives have run America for the last thirty years, and now it is our chance.

It's been hard for me to put my thoughts into words, so I will post an essay I've already constructed on these matters. The main gist of it is that this our moment, not Barack's, not the 60s Civil Rights Movements, not the melting pot motif of America. This is our moment to define. The longer we sit back and watch for what he and his administration will do next is the deeper we fall into the mire that quicksands our feet and our dreams.

I resist every neo-conservative, neo-liberal, and social idealists that says we've made it, that America is no longer a racist society, or that we are now beyond race. As I say below, the statistics do not lie. Revolution!


Transformative Moments and the Continued Saliency of Race

The willingness to believe in the possibilities of America is the social ideology underlying an Obama win. This is my generation's transformative moment—just as MLK and JFK assassinations were transformative for the generation of the 60s, the Harlem Renaissance and the Great Depression for the generation of the 20s, and the Civil War and the end of slavery for the generation of the 1860s. I take this moment to pay homage to my elders who uprooted their families from various parts of the Caribbean under the banner of this hope, to my father who since becoming an American citizen stood in a line for the first time to cast his vote in 2008, and to the generations of Americans—black, white, and in between—who have given their lives to the possibility my generation would see this moment. My deepest gratitude is owed to you.

Undoubtedly, America has taken a definitive step towards racial equality in politics. We stand at the brink of a new history--one whose name is more contested, whose identity is more ambiguous, and whose future has hardly been conceived. The symbolic implications of race are transforming with this election, just as the symbolic implications of race were transformed with the Civil Rights movement. Yet, legal concessions by whites in power (e.g., the Civil Rights Act of 1964) seemed to all but completely regress over the last three decades of the 20th century. While the post-Civil-Rights era was witnessing black as beautiful; black styles as cool and profitable; and black upward mobility as possible, seeds of both dreams and destruction were planted. Hip hop and crack cocaine hit the streets; affirmative action programs and the prison industrial complex blossomed; the size of the black middle class and the black "underclass" grew. Again, the symbolic meaning of race is changing: some whites look beyond race (44% of whites voted for Obama), some blacks with human and cultural capital garner legitimacy (big up Barack, Clarence, Condie, Colin, Thurgood), and some Americans find hope in the new era. This transformative moment seems to be the embodiment of the much-heralded and often-scolded American Dream.

Possibly, forty or so years from now, a new generation of hopefuls will usher in the post-racial America many claim is here. However, even now at the height of our hope, the statistics do not lie. Blacks have higher levels of mortality than other racial/ethnic groups, send their children to less endowed schools, and confront lower reemployment rates at the end of recessions (Note: We're in one right now. Think about what this means for the economic viability of our families). Black men disproportionately trade paying income taxes for sitting behind the walls of jails on petty drug charges; black women bare the brunt of domestic violence and the spread of HIV/AIDS in alarming rates. Black families and children face foreclosure, neighborhood decline, and segregated spaces at higher rates than other families and children. Instead of outright violence, the subtle subtexts of inferiority are etched into attitudes regarding the disloyalty of blacks, the motivational roots of inequality, and the hypersensitivity of those who perceive discrimination. The micro and macro processes of racism remain deeply rooted in the American social system.

As a land of immigrants, the "browning" of America has always been deeply American; thus, this "new" America is indeed the authentic perfect union. Yet, we are still heirs to a society where civil liberties, opportunity structures, and social distresses are racialized. We must remember that blackness has reached the White House, not because of symbolic power, intellect, and equal opportunity, but because of a deepening economic crisis, wholesale disdain for anything Bush-related, and a near-perfectly organized political campaign. Instead of a messiah, Barack is the living and breathing embodiment of American tokenism--a mechanism of racism that has stifled the voices, hearts, and radical ideologies of the very blacks who actually have the power, resources, and networks to leverage change. I challenge this new generation to find ways to organize for racial justice—not just by one act at one transformative moment, but by acknowledging the very essence of race in our everyday lives. Revolution!

[summer m.]

i just read this response over at racewire. thanks!

Abigail A. Sewell said:

I'm jumping in super late on this, but I've been writing on this since immediately after the election in various forums. I dig the critical attitudes. I praise them actually. That's what this country needs right now. Unfortunately, too many are in a daze, hoping, thinking, praying that someone else will be their savior. Medical sociologists (of which I am one) say that Americans have given the main decisions of their lives over to experts. We seek doctors for what we should eat, how we should raise our kids, when we should take a vacation. It's the journalist, the talk show hosts, the psychiatrists, the teacher, and every other paid professional that can tell us how to be the person we want to be. Now, it's Barack.

I'm not saying to not believe in Barack. Living in a state that voted Democrat for the first time since the 60s, I was proud to be part of the mass that changed history. Nonetheless, him and his family are posed to be tools to the white power structure of America. Instead of contesting the racial structure, Barack has conceded to it and bashed the angry blacks and no-good (black) fathers. Instead of standing in the footsteps of the many strong black women in our community's legacy, Michelle is talking about J. Crew and raising her girls. Yes, they might have an undercover plan for my community's needs, but I am not willing to take the chance that they do not. Conservatives have run America for the last thirty years, and now it is our chance.

It's been hard for me to put my thoughts into words, so I will post an essay I've already constructed on these matters. The main gist of it is that this our moment, not Barack's, not the 60s Civil Rights Movements, not the melting pot motif of America. This is our moment to define. The longer we sit back and watch for what he and his administration will do next is the deeper we fall into the mire that quicksands our feet and our dreams.

I resist every neo-conservative, neo-liberal, and social idealists that says we've made it, that America is no longer a racist society, or that we are now beyond race. As I say below, the statistics do not lie. Revolution!


Transformative Moments and the Continued Saliency of Race

The willingness to believe in the possibilities of America is the social ideology underlying an Obama win. This is my generation's transformative moment—just as MLK and JFK assassinations were transformative for the generation of the 60s, the Harlem Renaissance and the Great Depression for the generation of the 20s, and the Civil War and the end of slavery for the generation of the 1860s. I take this moment to pay homage to my elders who uprooted their families from various parts of the Caribbean under the banner of this hope, to my father who since becoming an American citizen stood in a line for the first time to cast his vote in 2008, and to the generations of Americans—black, white, and in between—who have given their lives to the possibility my generation would see this moment. My deepest gratitude is owed to you.

Undoubtedly, America has taken a definitive step towards racial equality in politics. We stand at the brink of a new history--one whose name is more contested, whose identity is more ambiguous, and whose future has hardly been conceived. The symbolic implications of race are transforming with this election, just as the symbolic implications of race were transformed with the Civil Rights movement. Yet, legal concessions by whites in power (e.g., the Civil Rights Act of 1964) seemed to all but completely regress over the last three decades of the 20th century. While the post-Civil-Rights era was witnessing black as beautiful; black styles as cool and profitable; and black upward mobility as possible, seeds of both dreams and destruction were planted. Hip hop and crack cocaine hit the streets; affirmative action programs and the prison industrial complex blossomed; the size of the black middle class and the black "underclass" grew. Again, the symbolic meaning of race is changing: some whites look beyond race (44% of whites voted for Obama), some blacks with human and cultural capital garner legitimacy (big up Barack, Clarence, Condie, Colin, Thurgood), and some Americans find hope in the new era. This transformative moment seems to be the embodiment of the much-heralded and often-scolded American Dream.

Possibly, forty or so years from now, a new generation of hopefuls will usher in the post-racial America many claim is here. However, even now at the height of our hope, the statistics do not lie. Blacks have higher levels of mortality than other racial/ethnic groups, send their children to less endowed schools, and confront lower reemployment rates at the end of recessions (Note: We're in one right now. Think about what this means for the economic viability of our families). Black men disproportionately trade paying income taxes for sitting behind the walls of jails on petty drug charges; black women bare the brunt of domestic violence and the spread of HIV/AIDS in alarming rates. Black families and children face foreclosure, neighborhood decline, and segregated spaces at higher rates than other families and children. Instead of outright violence, the subtle subtexts of inferiority are etched into attitudes regarding the disloyalty of blacks, the motivational roots of inequality, and the hypersensitivity of those who perceive discrimination. The micro and macro processes of racism remain deeply rooted in the American social system.

As a land of immigrants, the "browning" of America has always been deeply American; thus, this "new" America is indeed the authentic perfect union. Yet, we are still heirs to a society where civil liberties, opportunity structures, and social distresses are racialized. We must remember that blackness has reached the White House, not because of symbolic power, intellect, and equal opportunity, but because of a deepening economic crisis, wholesale disdain for anything Bush-related, and a near-perfectly organized political campaign. Instead of a messiah, Barack is the living and breathing embodiment of American tokenism--a mechanism of racism that has stifled the voices, hearts, and radical ideologies of the very blacks who actually have the power, resources, and networks to leverage change. I challenge this new generation to find ways to organize for racial justice—not just by one act at one transformative moment, but by acknowledging the very essence of race in our everyday lives. Revolution!

[Lex]

"The longer we sit back and watch for what he and his administration will do next is the deeper we fall into the mire that quicksands our feet and our dreams."

Yes. Yes. Yes. One of my favorite poets is a medical sociologist.
:) rock on Abigail.

Abigail A. Sewell said:

I'm jumping in super late on this, but I've been writing on this since immediately after the election in various forums. I dig the critical attitudes. I praise them actually. That's what this country needs right now. Unfortunately, too many are in a daze, hoping, thinking, praying that someone else will be their savior. Medical sociologists (of which I am one) say that Americans have given the main decisions of their lives over to experts. We seek doctors for what we should eat, how we should raise our kids, when we should take a vacation. It's the journalist, the talk show hosts, the psychiatrists, the teacher, and every other paid professional that can tell us how to be the person we want to be. Now, it's Barack.

I'm not saying to not believe in Barack. Living in a state that voted Democrat for the first time since the 60s, I was proud to be part of the mass that changed history. Nonetheless, him and his family are posed to be tools to the white power structure of America. Instead of contesting the racial structure, Barack has conceded to it and bashed the angry blacks and no-good (black) fathers. Instead of standing in the footsteps of the many strong black women in our community's legacy, Michelle is talking about J. Crew and raising her girls. Yes, they might have an undercover plan for my community's needs, but I am not willing to take the chance that they do not. Conservatives have run America for the last thirty years, and now it is our chance.

It's been hard for me to put my thoughts into words, so I will post an essay I've already constructed on these matters. The main gist of it is that this our moment, not Barack's, not the 60s Civil Rights Movements, not the melting pot motif of America. This is our moment to define. The longer we sit back and watch for what he and his administration will do next is the deeper we fall into the mire that quicksands our feet and our dreams.

I resist every neo-conservative, neo-liberal, and social idealists that says we've made it, that America is no longer a racist society, or that we are now beyond race. As I say below, the statistics do not lie. Revolution!


Transformative Moments and the Continued Saliency of Race

The willingness to believe in the possibilities of America is the social ideology underlying an Obama win. This is my generation's transformative moment—just as MLK and JFK assassinations were transformative for the generation of the 60s, the Harlem Renaissance and the Great Depression for the generation of the 20s, and the Civil War and the end of slavery for the generation of the 1860s. I take this moment to pay homage to my elders who uprooted their families from various parts of the Caribbean under the banner of this hope, to my father who since becoming an American citizen stood in a line for the first time to cast his vote in 2008, and to the generations of Americans—black, white, and in between—who have given their lives to the possibility my generation would see this moment. My deepest gratitude is owed to you.

Undoubtedly, America has taken a definitive step towards racial equality in politics. We stand at the brink of a new history--one whose name is more contested, whose identity is more ambiguous, and whose future has hardly been conceived. The symbolic implications of race are transforming with this election, just as the symbolic implications of race were transformed with the Civil Rights movement. Yet, legal concessions by whites in power (e.g., the Civil Rights Act of 1964) seemed to all but completely regress over the last three decades of the 20th century. While the post-Civil-Rights era was witnessing black as beautiful; black styles as cool and profitable; and black upward mobility as possible, seeds of both dreams and destruction were planted. Hip hop and crack cocaine hit the streets; affirmative action programs and the prison industrial complex blossomed; the size of the black middle class and the black "underclass" grew. Again, the symbolic meaning of race is changing: some whites look beyond race (44% of whites voted for Obama), some blacks with human and cultural capital garner legitimacy (big up Barack, Clarence, Condie, Colin, Thurgood), and some Americans find hope in the new era. This transformative moment seems to be the embodiment of the much-heralded and often-scolded American Dream.

Possibly, forty or so years from now, a new generation of hopefuls will usher in the post-racial America many claim is here. However, even now at the height of our hope, the statistics do not lie. Blacks have higher levels of mortality than other racial/ethnic groups, send their children to less endowed schools, and confront lower reemployment rates at the end of recessions (Note: We're in one right now. Think about what this means for the economic viability of our families). Black men disproportionately trade paying income taxes for sitting behind the walls of jails on petty drug charges; black women bare the brunt of domestic violence and the spread of HIV/AIDS in alarming rates. Black families and children face foreclosure, neighborhood decline, and segregated spaces at higher rates than other families and children. Instead of outright violence, the subtle subtexts of inferiority are etched into attitudes regarding the disloyalty of blacks, the motivational roots of inequality, and the hypersensitivity of those who perceive discrimination. The micro and macro processes of racism remain deeply rooted in the American social system.

As a land of immigrants, the "browning" of America has always been deeply American; thus, this "new" America is indeed the authentic perfect union. Yet, we are still heirs to a society where civil liberties, opportunity structures, and social distresses are racialized. We must remember that blackness has reached the White House, not because of symbolic power, intellect, and equal opportunity, but because of a deepening economic crisis, wholesale disdain for anything Bush-related, and a near-perfectly organized political campaign. Instead of a messiah, Barack is the living and breathing embodiment of American tokenism--a mechanism of racism that has stifled the voices, hearts, and radical ideologies of the very blacks who actually have the power, resources, and networks to leverage change. I challenge this new generation to find ways to organize for racial justice—not just by one act at one transformative moment, but by acknowledging the very essence of race in our everyday lives. Revolution!

[Moya]

Word Z!