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…

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…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.”

It seems incredible to me that anyone can make a case for white male disenfranchisement with a straight face.  Yet it is equally inconceivable to me that a “black man” can ascend to the nomination for president on the backs of black people, claiming the historic achievement of his nomination to be one of pride for black people without acknowledging the realities of race that the country still faces today.  Whether one directly benefits from Affirmative Action or not, we cannot allow our hard won victories to be compromised, just as women cannot allow our right to choose to be infringed upon, even if we never have occasion to make such an agonizing choice.  To do so starts us down a slippery slope of further marginalization.  Obama’s positions on both issues is “nuanced.”  On August 10, 2008, Politico wrote:

In the 2004 Democratic Convention keynote speech that catapulted him onto the national stage, he began publicly offering a broader view on race, famously saying, “There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America — there’s the United States of America.”
In his 2006 tome, “The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream” — the difference in tone is nicely captured in the subtitle’s repurposing of the word “dream” — he wrote, “An emphasis on universal, as opposed to race-specific, programs isn’t just good policy: It’s also good politics.”

African American support for Obama cuts across class lines, however.  Poor blacks as well as wealthy celebrities who support Barack Obama with often-times incomprehensible logic and language, do so without a clear understanding of black American history.  Even in recent times, racism has often passed itself off as progress, especially in our popular culture.  In the late sixties and early seventies, a rash of “blaxploitation” films flooded the market.  And while increased opportunities for black artists and unprecedented mass exposure provided a boon of sorts to our community, it came with a heavy cost.  As I said in a private e-mail to my “sister of the blogosphere,” Sugar, most of these movies were horrific in concept and execution, yet were “foisted upon an image-starved people who, like any starving person, gobbled it up without caring whether it was good for them or not.  Unfortunately, politically and pop culture-wise, we’re still in the same boat.”

Case in point, Mandingo.  While it was one of the best of the blaxploitation lot, hardly qualifying as such, given it’s major-motion-picture-company adaptation from a best-selling novel, it still presented uncomfortable stereotypes, born in slavery, that bleed into our collective consciousness to this day.  The title refers to a corruption of the name of a West African tribe, the Mandinka, whose legacy was to be later claimed by Mr. T. One of the sub-plots of the film dealt with inter-racial sexual attraction, and the attendant racism inflicted upon such unions by our shared historical culture.

Today, Nancy Pelosi seems to obviously have a “Mandingo” fixation when it comes to Barack Obama.  Her gushing, adoring praise is often downright embarassing:

“Did you ever see anything like that?” asked Pelosi. “Transferring the mantle from John F. Kennedy to Barack Obama. It was the most stunning thing. I mean, I couldn’t take my eyes off it.

“Here we have a leader for the future, really a great leader for the future and one that comes along only every now and then, and they know it so they have to undermine him.“

“…a leader that God has blessed us with at this time.”

Why?  Pelosi, like many Obama supporters, rarely has any concrete reasons to give for her devotion.  He’s “fresh and new,” he’s “bright and clean,” he’s a “black man.” These proclamations from delighted, yet delusional, white politicians, unable to list accomplishments or even justify claims of Obama’s potential, are clearly motivated by something other than honest appraisal. Blacks who support Obama are no better.  “It’s time for a brother,” “he’s not running for president of black America,” “we’ll make him accountable after he’s elected” provide not only excuses, but approval for what arguably could become the biggest example of Kennedy-esque tokenism ever attempted to be perpetrated on eager, willing victims.

Putting a black face on white oppression of blacks is as old as the “house Negro” epithet being flung at those African Americans bold enough to question the racial implications of an Obama presidency.  Slaves were often kept in line by “drivers,” or black “overseers.”  Though unpaid, these “drivers” had rank and privilege unknown to “field hands” or “house Negroes.”  From Answers.com

Drivers were another story. They were slaves appointed by masters to positions of authority on the plantation. Where masters were resident, black drivers often replaced overseers. On larger plantations, especially in the Lower South, black drivers worked under the supervision of white overseers. The drivers’ jobs were manifold, but they were expected above all to maintain discipline in the fields and order in the quarters.

Like overseers, drivers were subjected to competing pressures that demanded both technical skill and a strong measure of self-confidence. But the pressures on drivers were different in important ways. Drivers were a part of the slave community, but they were especially favored by the master. To maintain the goodwill of the master without losing the respect of one’s fellow slaves was no small achievement. Yet the evidence suggests that the drivers often succeeded where the overseers failed. They were chosen for their intelligence and abilities; they often understood how to manage a plantation more effectively than the overseers. Accordingly, drivers often held their positions for decades. The masters came to rely on the drivers for their competence; the slaves came to expect the drivers to moderate some of the harshness of the regime.

While the above provides an overview, further reading proves the subject of “drivers” to be far more complex.  However, with Barack Obama’s tendency to take on right-wing tones when scolding us for our perceived lack of “personal responsibility,” he renders his historic accomplishment meaningless in my opinion.  Proclamations of “Hallelujah” from prominent African American politicians like James Clyburn, seem to me to be motivated more by their desire to protect their own legacies and propel their own careers, than to commemorate a true milestone.

“If Obama is elected president, it would mean the dreams and aspirations and the hard work over the last 45 years would have been realized,” said Clyburn, a pioneer himself as the third-most powerful Democrat in the House. “After wandering in the wilderness, we will have reached the mountaintop, perhaps the promised land.”

The way I see it, true progress would include the ability to embrace one’s ethnicity without fear of repercussion in any arena, and would allow us all the freedom to demand full representation for, and acknowledgment of, black people from black men, too.  A presidential candidate should be judged for his ability, not on a desire to rubber-stamp an illusion of progress.  A nation on the brink of electing a black president should never have to ask if saving black communities is worth it.  Or if that president-to-be really cares.  If the view from the mountaintop sucks, what’s the freaking point?

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