This year’s presidential race is being conducted as a referendum on racial prejudice. If, the theory goes, Barack Obama can be elected to the highest office in the land, that would “prove” once and for all that America has moved beyond race and we, as a nation, have truly become “post racial.”
I’m not nearly so sure that’s true. Hell, I’m not even sure the two things have anything to do with each other. Obuhbuhbuh could be elected and America could still be racially intolerant. Buying into the racism be-gone! magic and mystery of the Obama hype is largely dependent on the magician’s tricks of misdirection and smoke and mirrors.
I don’t think it’s any secret that the anniversaries of Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech and the assertion by Robert Kennedy in 1968 that a black man would be president within 40 years are strong motivators for the powers that be to promote a black candidate this year. I’m also pretty sure that the substance of the candidate chosen as well as the substance of the civil rights struggle that both American martyrs championed is not nearly as important as the exploitation of the symbolism attached to them is. Read the rest of this entry »
