Margaret Kimberly at The Smirking Chimp:
Should Black America Want a Black President?
by Margaret Kimberley | May 16 2007 – 12:58pm | permalink
When Colin Powell considered running for president, the question on everyone’s mind was whether or not he could win. In other words, would white people who said they liked him really vote for him? Powell eventually decided to shoot for a high profile gig with the next Republican administration, and the question remained unanswered.
Unlike Powell, Senator Barack Obama has entered a presidential race. He is the candidate with all the buzz, and he has raised a ton of money. Hillary Clinton thought that being the boss’s wife would be enough to waltz into the nomination. All she had to do was bask in the Clintonian after-glow and presto, instant oval office residency.
Sadly for her, she shares her husband’s politics of meaninglessness but none of his personal charisma. She can’t get away with fence straddling, triangulating, or insulting the party base. Along comes Obama, a living reincarnation of Clintonian political charm straight from the glory days. Now that Hillary has been out Clintoned, she looks less like a sure thing.
Obama has mastered the art of political bullshitology, and proven campaign fund-raising prowess. He does look like a contender. The likelihood of white people voting for him is still open to question, but that may not be the most important question. Black Americans will again support the Democratic nominee, but is Obama more worthy of that loyalty than any other Democrat?
If he is a winner, it will be in large part because he is willing to throw black people under the bus. He proved as much in his overrated speech at the 2004 Democratic national convention. “There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America – there’s the United States of America.” Of course there is a black America, and most of us don’t want to pretend otherwise.
Obama’s 2004 speech does not mention racism, not even to say something bland such as, racism is bad. Obama sells color blindness in a country that is all about the color spectrum. It makes no sense for black America to embrace this obvious canard. Will we purchase a lemon if the seller looks like us?
Kimberly goes on to make a convincing case for Obama’s lemonosity.
It’s a dilemma many citizens around the world face: now that we’re able to see and hear, read and minutely dissect for ourselves what those who aspire to lead us do and say, the more they appear lacking. So, faced with such lacklustre aspirant leaders, do we make the best of a bad job and try to mould less-than-ideal candidates to our will once in office, a la Polly Toynbee’s injunction to hold your nose and vote Labour?
The Labour party in the UK and the Republicans in the US both tried that already, and look where it got us. No, let’s hold them to account before the election, let’s have it all upfront. No more pigs in a poke.
Barack Obama has always appeared to me to be right out of central casting for any given West-Wing type drama. He’s the pacific, calm president who goes on tv and reassures the nation. He’s Morgan Freeman.
I’ve yet to see that he gives a real shit about injustice or poverty or anything much except sucking up to the DLC and getting the nomination. On the other hand that’s the realpolitik game all candidates have to play in the current system. At this point we just don’t know. But then I don’t get to choose – it’s not my opinion that’s relevant here. It’s thinkers, commenters and voters, people like Margaret Kimberly. It’s a black thing.
Or is it? Whoever wins the presidency is in control of an economic and political behemoth that distorts the world’s political gravity. So indirectly we in the rest of the world of whatever race or nationality, do have a stake.
For the US to elect a black president would send a clear and deeply symbolic message to the world that America is prepared to change its ways on any number of levels.
But if that black president appears to support or supinely accepts US political corruption, media manipulation, and world economic and military bullying as usual, then his colour will become entirely irrelevant, except as an epithet to throw at him.
