Oh, For God’s Sake, We Know He’s Black, Get Over It

If the most significant thing about Barack Obama being elected president is simply the fact that he’s black, we, as a nation, have absolutely nothing to be excited about, or proud of.  I am sick to death of people pimping my blackness just so they can break their arms patting themselves on the back for being better than the nation’s history might suggest they have a right to claim to be.  The nation’s present day reality still suggests that.

Obama is black, he’s president, and that’s never been done before.  We get it.  But, what kind of president will he be?  Is he qualified?  What happens to the nation, to the image of black Americans, if he sucks?  How many “brothers and sisters” will lose their jobs, and/or their homes, in an Obama administration?   Will the ratio of black to whites in that situation still be as disproportionate as it has always been?  Will college admissions for “minorities” go up?  Will less black men be arrested, will those who are receive competent legal representation, will the drug-flow into our “inner cities” dry up, will their trials be fair?  Will schools be equally funded so that they may become less prison-like and actually begin to teach?  Will African Americans suddenly get access to quality health care, maybe even in their own communities?  Will merchants invest in our neighborhoods so that elderly people won’t have to take a cab to buy a tomato as was depicted in CNN’s special, “Black In America?”  Or, is it enough to know that the problems faced by African Americans contribute to the disproportionate number of single-parent families, then, focus on the problems that result from that; the ones that Bill Cosby and Barack Obama get so much mileage out of telling white people they don’t like?

Barack Obama’s election does not invalidate the Civil Rights Movement, in any way, as the media seems so hellbent upon proving, nor does it automatically make it obsolete.  Bullshit statements like this one, printed in a Politico article, are just infuriating:

Like the entertainers and athletes who preceded them as crossover pioneers, Obama and a new generation of smart, well-educated black professionals have unlocked the secret to political success by offering a broad-based, non-threatening agenda to whites while retaining their racial integrity with black voters.

Has the need for the “white power structure” to feel a little threatened really been eliminated when the success of a black politician is still being depicted as a result of the ability of black men and women to sing and dance and dribble a ball?  How much of one’s identity does one have to sacrifice to prevail in “white” society?  And, if all that’s left that relates to other people in one’s ethnic group when one does so is a commonality of skin color, can the resulting racial identification really be classified as “integrity?”  Is “symbolism” or the appearance of progress enough?

We had a word for people who engaged in such behavior when I was coming up during the height of the “Movement.”

We called them “sellouts.”

My question is, was Barack Obama elected to be President of the United States, or was he cast to market what is acceptably “black?”