African Americans and others find themselves on the precipice of being unlikely witnesses to an unlikely historical event: the election of America's first African American President.
Now when the Obama Camp dared to reframe America's electoral map, it did so on the premise that America is not white or black, red or blue, Democrat or Republican; rather, it is a diverse nation we call the United States of America. Obama's 50-state strategy was an effort to keep true to his word.
But nearly 143 years after the end of the Civil War, you'd think most of us would finally understand that in fact we are "one nation, under God . . . indivisible, with liberty and justice for all" (written by Francis Bellamy, a Christian Socialist!). The themes, tenor, and tone of the General Campaign have suggested otherwise.
Today's election would be no big deal if Americans of African descent weren't turning out in droves (in the wake of an embarrassingly flawed national electoral infrastructure). Their civic engagement portends to be the deciding factor in a race that shouldn't be as close as it seems. And their zeal yearns for a certain vindication.
Latinos are excused from any recognition here because they seem not to have understood that the Civil Rights Movement was as much for them as for anyone. Their tacit ingratitude and historical preference for the Republican brand reveals a putrid collusion and enmity against black leadership and progress. Free riders with an attitude. Tragic.
My focus then stems from the continuing discomfort that white Americans feel when they consider candidates running for the country's highest office. Since the passage of the Voting Rights Act, it's interesting to note that when African Americans have voted for white candidates, whites don't have a problem. But on the eve of a likely Obama win, many whites have a problem with blacks voting for a black candidate. Simply because he's African American. A disgusting, and hypocritical double standard.
We have to remember that when contemporary whites elect to perpetuate stereotypes and forego apologies and promised reparations on the basis that they had nothing to do with what their forebears did to blacks, blacks are supposed to accept this and not have a problem with it.
It seems not to make any difference to many of them that African Americans were:
1. captured, traded (bought/sold), and shipped to America to suffer the most dreadful of human oppressions: Slavery . . . even the native American Nations enslaved these people!;
2. raped, lynched and worked as free labor without apology or reparations;
3. denied educational, employment, housing and business opportunity;
4. vanquished when they tried to be self-sufficient in their own communities;
5. taken and separated from their families, leaving a fragmented genealogy and historical trail of tears for their descendants;
6. hosed, beaten, tortured, jailed, and murdered in their quest for equal rights, human rights, civil rights, and liberty;
7. stereotyped and humiliated in film, TV and theatre . . .playing vaudevillian characters for the laughing pleasure of white viewers;
8. miscengenated (primarily through rape and sexual trade and bondage) into a mutant race of people with no homogeneous identity, no nation, no rights and privileges, and no self-dignity;
9. conscripted involuntarily as soldiers to fight, bleed, and die for a country that neither respected them nor conferred to them their deserved rights and opportunity;
10. discriminated against in housing and relegated to living conditions of the worst order akin to the ghettos, barrios, and Bantu stands of less-developed countries;
11. denied medical treatment and left to die (not because of their inability to pay for it, but rather because they were African American);
12. victimized, corralled, and imprisoned under various penal policies targeting the societal removal of African American men particularly;
13. caricatured in a way that pits African Americans one against the other based on differences in complexion, hair texture, facial features and other physical attributes, dialect, and social status;
14. subjected to extraordinarily stressful circumstances that have led to a disproportionate percentage of disease, illness, and premature death;
15. denied their rightful payment for their suffering after the so-called "end of Slavery" with the reversal of Sherman's Special Field Order No. 15 (revoked by President Andrew Johnson); and
16. humiliated with having to rely on the passage of Congressional legislation (based on a Constitutional Amendment) to ensure their rights as human beings and American citizens.
Even though these facts are an education to some and reminder to others, they wouldn't make a difference to too many others.
So here we are again; at a moment in America's history when we have the opportunity to live out the true meaning of this country's creed.
If African Americans could survive what they endured by faith, maybe all of us can have a better future with an African American president who knows the faith struggle all too well.
What audacity!
Now when the Obama Camp dared to reframe America's electoral map, it did so on the premise that America is not white or black, red or blue, Democrat or Republican; rather, it is a diverse nation we call the United States of America. Obama's 50-state strategy was an effort to keep true to his word.
But nearly 143 years after the end of the Civil War, you'd think most of us would finally understand that in fact we are "one nation, under God . . . indivisible, with liberty and justice for all" (written by Francis Bellamy, a Christian Socialist!). The themes, tenor, and tone of the General Campaign have suggested otherwise.
Today's election would be no big deal if Americans of African descent weren't turning out in droves (in the wake of an embarrassingly flawed national electoral infrastructure). Their civic engagement portends to be the deciding factor in a race that shouldn't be as close as it seems. And their zeal yearns for a certain vindication.
Latinos are excused from any recognition here because they seem not to have understood that the Civil Rights Movement was as much for them as for anyone. Their tacit ingratitude and historical preference for the Republican brand reveals a putrid collusion and enmity against black leadership and progress. Free riders with an attitude. Tragic.
My focus then stems from the continuing discomfort that white Americans feel when they consider candidates running for the country's highest office. Since the passage of the Voting Rights Act, it's interesting to note that when African Americans have voted for white candidates, whites don't have a problem. But on the eve of a likely Obama win, many whites have a problem with blacks voting for a black candidate. Simply because he's African American. A disgusting, and hypocritical double standard.
We have to remember that when contemporary whites elect to perpetuate stereotypes and forego apologies and promised reparations on the basis that they had nothing to do with what their forebears did to blacks, blacks are supposed to accept this and not have a problem with it.
It seems not to make any difference to many of them that African Americans were:
1. captured, traded (bought/sold), and shipped to America to suffer the most dreadful of human oppressions: Slavery . . . even the native American Nations enslaved these people!;
2. raped, lynched and worked as free labor without apology or reparations;
3. denied educational, employment, housing and business opportunity;
4. vanquished when they tried to be self-sufficient in their own communities;
5. taken and separated from their families, leaving a fragmented genealogy and historical trail of tears for their descendants;
6. hosed, beaten, tortured, jailed, and murdered in their quest for equal rights, human rights, civil rights, and liberty;
7. stereotyped and humiliated in film, TV and theatre . . .playing vaudevillian characters for the laughing pleasure of white viewers;
8. miscengenated (primarily through rape and sexual trade and bondage) into a mutant race of people with no homogeneous identity, no nation, no rights and privileges, and no self-dignity;
9. conscripted involuntarily as soldiers to fight, bleed, and die for a country that neither respected them nor conferred to them their deserved rights and opportunity;
10. discriminated against in housing and relegated to living conditions of the worst order akin to the ghettos, barrios, and Bantu stands of less-developed countries;
11. denied medical treatment and left to die (not because of their inability to pay for it, but rather because they were African American);
12. victimized, corralled, and imprisoned under various penal policies targeting the societal removal of African American men particularly;
13. caricatured in a way that pits African Americans one against the other based on differences in complexion, hair texture, facial features and other physical attributes, dialect, and social status;
14. subjected to extraordinarily stressful circumstances that have led to a disproportionate percentage of disease, illness, and premature death;
15. denied their rightful payment for their suffering after the so-called "end of Slavery" with the reversal of Sherman's Special Field Order No. 15 (revoked by President Andrew Johnson); and
16. humiliated with having to rely on the passage of Congressional legislation (based on a Constitutional Amendment) to ensure their rights as human beings and American citizens.
Even though these facts are an education to some and reminder to others, they wouldn't make a difference to too many others.
So here we are again; at a moment in America's history when we have the opportunity to live out the true meaning of this country's creed.
If African Americans could survive what they endured by faith, maybe all of us can have a better future with an African American president who knows the faith struggle all too well.
What audacity!
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