Let's Be Real Now

The one thing I really enjoy about Barak Obama’s speaking is that he doesn’t sound like a character on THE BOONDOCKS - not a straight-up coon like Uncle Ruckus, a white-washed chump like Tom DuBois, a foolish old negro like Robert "Grandad" Freeman, a clown hip-hop nigga like Riley or "down for the cause" kid like Huey. All stereotypical examples of how niggas talk, but Barak evades that -- which makes him acceptable to all non-African Americans, whether they get down with his politics or his meesage is another story.

Don’t get me wrong, I love that show, but far too many African-Americans SOUND like African-Americans when you throw a mic in their face; more aptly, they sound like niggaz.

Senator Barak Obama delivered a Victory Speech in Wisconsin the other night, a speech with the grace and power of man who knows how to wield power and influence for the greater good (whether that’s true is anyone’s guess, but I have to hope so…) and it just really began to usher in a new era in America’s socio-cultural landscape.

Obama’s popularity among white women is the most contested constituency in the entire race (one that Hillary Clinton has been winning hand-over-fist in the early voting), and it has been the deciding factor in the big prize contests, but that seems to be eroding as witnessed in the Potomac Primaries just yesterday. In addition, Obama pulled something like 56% of white male voters… something that Clinton has, is and will struggle with.

What does this say about the transracial nature of America? That the one country founded on the hatred of another racial/ethnic group is now finally able to set aside that element of “otherness” – or at least publicly – an embrace a Man who stands for change and camaraderie across traditional dividing lines? Surely since the complete acceptance of Michael Jordan and Bo Jackson as the appeal-to-all Pitchmen, the understanding that their could be an African-American president was tickling some peoples minds… enough so for the people behind Fox’s 24 put a Black man in the White House for multiple seasons dealing with crisis after crisis, and he never failed from the foibles that many would unjustly hang on a Black man’s ability to lead and to make cognitively

The odd thing about Obama is that he’s not a born-n-bread American nigga… because there is a TREMENDOUS amount of baggage the goes with that. Of being part of the constituency that is ever the socio-economic underdog. The burdens attributed to American Blacks are like Atlas’s impossible burden – difficult to shake off because they define that person. To be in the “struggle” typifies what it means to be Black, but it’s not a mutually exclusive moniker.

To look at it from another angle, the new majority of so-called Minorities (the people of color who are non-African American) ascribe to and aspire to be what was dubbed “white” for 88% of the last 100 years – a whiteness that rings of truth and realism in terms of what it means to be societal and financially successful. Yet that same group of People of Color looks to stand on the shoulders of what American Blacks created culturally and side-step any and all malapropism that go hand in hand with being “urban.” It’s a known fact that 50% of all Hispanics consider themselves “white” when walking the streets of America.

Racism, misogyny and character assassination are all ways of distracting voters from the issues, and people who care about the issues have a shared interest in making the politics of hatred unacceptable.