Obama: Martin, Massah or Mandingo?

Yahoo News asks:

Gustav revives question: Is New Orleans worth it?

Those who love New Orleans say Hurricane Gustav is proof that the billions of dollars spent to protect the city and bring it back to life after the devastating 2005 storm season was worth it.

Why on earth would it not be “worth it?”  Can you measure a person’s home strictly in a “dollars and cents” sense?  Why depict a suffering black family in conjunction with such a question, as this article does?  Where does this fit into the current American narrative of Barack Obama being the realization of “The Dream?”

The Nation says white folks are using Hurricane Katrina to push black people out of their neighborhoods.

“It’s been like a wildfire,” said Lucia Blacksher, general counsel for the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center, an advocacy group that has been leading the fight against post-Katrina housing discrimination. “Local governments have been creating legal barriers–legal, in the sense they created laws–to prevent people who are African-American from returning. And I’m saying that because we all know what we’re talking about here. Affordable housing or multifamily housing is where African-Americans lived. And if you don’t let that kind of housing back, you’re not going to give people who are African-American or Latino an opportunity to live [here].”

This seems to co-sign, or verify, the allegations put forth by Black Agenda Report’s Glen Ford that Hurricane Katrina provided cover for an insidious, racist agenda, and that Barack Obama has no plans to do anything about it, at least not the racist part.  From Obama’s Senate website statement on Katrina Sept 6, 2005:

I’ve said publicly that I do not subscribe to the notion that the painfully slow response of FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security was racially-based. The ineptitude was colorblind.

Senator Obama tends to run away from questions of a positive agenda regarding race.  On February 9, 2007 he said:

“If I’m talking about the issues that matter to people, if we do a good job in letting people know who I am and what I stand for … they’ll make their judgment not based on my race but based on how well they think I can lead this country,” Obama told USA TODAY.

Yet when one enjoys almost unilateral support from any group of people, shouldn’t those people be able to expect something in return?  Can the fear of an imagined backlash from white voters justify a black heir to a dream of racial equality avoiding putting black issues of any sort on the table?  An aspect of this question was discussed by Dr. Julianne Malveaux and Dr. Cornell West on the Tavis Smiley Show, regarding Obama’s acceptance of his historic nomination as Democratic Party candidate for president on the forty-fifth anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech.  When asked if she thought Obama’s speech lived up to the hype, Dr. Malveaux replied:

Not at all. My heart’s broken, actually. I hoped to hear more about Dr. King. As we’ve talked about before we came on, I hoped to hear more about the poverty numbers, about the third anniversary of Katrina, but also hoped to have this brother hit one out of the park…

edit

…But beyond stumbling, that he could not mention the name of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., that Dr. King was reduced to some preacher from Georgia, is just a disappointment.

Senator Obama wants to have his cake and eat it too, and black voters, by giving unconditional support, are allowing him to get away with it.  But to whose ultimate benefit?  The Huffington Post is putting out the “Ward Connerly wants to end Affirmative Action” stuff again.

With Barack Obama officially nominated as the Democrats’ Presidential nominee, is it time to re-think affirmative action? Ward Connerly, a long-time affirmative action opponent , thinks so.

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“I think that in some quarters, many parts of the country, a white male is really disadvantaged,” Connerly, who considers himself multi-racial, tells NOW. “Because we have developed this notion of women and minorities being so disadvantaged and we have to help them, that we have, in many cases, twisted the thing so that it’s no longer a case of equal opportunity. It’s a case of putting a fist on the scale.”

GOP Message to Donna: Stay Home

The Washington Post is reporting that Donna Brazile was hit by pepper spray at the Republican convention:

Donna Brazile was hit by pepper spray as she walked to the Xcel Center at the start of the Republican Convention here.

The well-known Democratic pundit and strategist confirmed the incident, but declined to comment further. Protests outside the convention center led to 56 arrests earlier in the day.

Brazile is the Chair of the Democratic National Committee’s Voting Rights Institute and was a delegate at the Democratic National Convention in Denver.

Originally from New Orleans, La., Brazile has worked on several presidential campaigns and was the campaign manager for Al Gore in 2000. She frequently appears on CNN as a political commentator.

What the hell was she doing there, visiting her BFF, Karl Rove?  Story’s kinda sketchy, isn’t it, but that’s all I could find anywhere.  Was it about being on the wrong political turf or “WWB” (walking while black)?  Or did Donna mouth off to somebody about the “rooolz” and “cheatin’”?  I guess her mama never told her about pepper spray.  Maybe she should call her “boo.”

PUMA

Just Say Whatever