Don’t get me wrong, I am so happy to have a new President in office. A president who can pronounce words and give inspiring speeches, believes in things like “the common good” and, hopefully, has assembled a team of experts to help pull this country out of the current economic mudslide. I am excited about all of these things, but I also am worried.
The inauguration ceremony last night was a fiasco. I actually sat and watched old people dance on television– We The People, watched bad dancing on prime time television and didn’t even get to call in our votes for who should be eliminated from next weeks competition. I insisted that Kim not change the channel as Ray Romano execute the finest example of bombing DC has seen since 9/11, in front of the whole country because I felt sorry for him. 2 million people assembling in the freezing cold to witness the peaceful change of government and not one cheer for Ray. He had a successful show for 9 years but not one fan among the 2 million Obama supporters. Tragic.
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I have to smack my hand when I think this: “How long before mainstream black leaders turn their backs on Obama and call him an ‘Uncle Tom’?”
I am hesitant to say these words because vocalizing these kinds of thoughts sometimes says more about me than it does about Black America. I don’t deny that these words imply some overtones of racism on my end. Surely, it seems as if I am making assumptions and generalizations about a large group of people. Well I am. The point is that I am not directing this generalization at an individual. I don’t believe that all African-Americans walk around with a chip on their shoulder and a sense of entitlement (in fact, based solely on my own black friends I’d say none of them do), but the spirit of the Civil Rights Movement in the ’60’s somehow perverted the words “equality” and turned the meaning into “special treatment” and there are those leaders who frequently parasitize (yes, that is a word) the noble spirit of that movement for their own gains and momentum. Say what you want about his policies and views, Mr. Obama fought a long and hard battle for most of his life to get where he is right now, and there are those who would take advantage of that hard work… white people and black people.
My backpeddaling aside, I’ll simply say that I don’t believe in special treatment based on ethnic background (though a leveling of the playing field is sometimes needed) and I do not believe President Obama believes in this either. At some point, I predict that Black America is going to wonder why they aren’t getting any special benefits from having a black man in the presidential office and the name-calling is going to begin. I want to be wrong about this, but I expect at least one prominent black leader to flip the script on Obama citing a priority for the President to fix “white problems” over “black problems” before this administration is over (I’ll give it 2 years).
My obvious racism notwithstanding, I think what’s most strange about today is that I was so much more optimistic about this new administration on Election Day than I am now. Upon hearing the news that he’d beat McCain, I was even more optimistic than now. Today I am totally arms-folded-skeptical and waiting for the big changes to come. Maybe it’s my own personal defense mechanisms crossing over into my political world view, but I am just uneasy right now. I want people to get their heads out of their ass and start facing the music. One man is not the cure for the country, and never was. We simply cannot live the collective lifestyle we’ve lived for the last 15 years and expect everything to come up roses. Four years ago we felt helpless and impotent and the reason was because we didn’t participate in our OWN political system and get someone in office who was the right man for the job. Now, suddenly… “Yes We Can.” Nothing in the system changed except us.
Every time I turned on the local news during the election there was a 70 year old+ African-American who was excited to vote in their first election. These people should not be applauded or commended. They should be chastised, because they’ve had the right to make history ages ago and passed it up. America’s first black president is not something that just happened to you. We (the People) got the President We asked for, just as we did four and eight years ago.
Before this election, I used to think that voting was too important for the uninformed and apathetic to participate in, but now I see it more like jury duty. It’s an obligation for every American. Once you view voting as a duty, its amazing how much more informed and opinionated you become.
I’m about the most skeptical of govenmental leaders of just about everyone I know (especially since the Bushes are menstrual-blood-drinking reptilians), but I have to admit that over the last couple of days I’ve liked what I’ve seen. Obama just got rid of Guantanamo Bay and said that government should be transparent and run by the rule of law. And he’s got a Middle East envoy that seems to be intelligent and actually believes that peace can be achieved. Not an easy task, but at least he’s optimistic. Just those two things are better than anything from the last eight years, so hopefully we’ll see more.
I agree with Brett, but would argue that the evidence supports them having merely been Nazi sympathizers rather than Illuminati.
If I could have been bothered to set up my own blog during this, I might have pointed out some of the significance of the heavy racial emphasis the post-election coverage has had. I’d have pointed out that the majority of our contemporaries, even many of them labeled ‘black’ (the race concept is a farce), recognize the historical nature of the supposed fulfillment of MLK Jr.‘s dream, but also identify this obsessive harping on his skin color as part of the problem, and a phenomenon nearly unique to the boomers who grew up with the struggle for civil rights and its aftermath. It is that generation that are calling the editing room shots and presenting what passes for news — you’ll find the more youth-oriented news sources relegating the significance of Obama’s skin as it pertains to his election to the presidency as merely noteworthy rather than revolutionary. You’ll occasionally see this trend mentioned in the mainstream press: the further below the age of 40 you are, the less you could give a damn that Obama is black.
I, for one, am optimistic about what the future holds as our generation ascends to take hold the reigns of power. Just as it is increasingly acceptable to be an atheist (did you note the ‘non-believers’ being appended after the big-4 religions in the inaugural!?), so shall it be increasingly acceptable to have open discussions concerning matters of race. You’re right, of course, the worst of the post-60’s civil-rights movement have an entrenched ideology…but the growing irrelevance of skin color is going to see that ideology marginalized: their efforts to “level the playing field” will be seen as increasingly counter-productive and their attachment to the very idea of race a self-imposed limiting factor.
I might not normally emphasize this, but because I’ve raised the topic of generational perception, I’ll point out that I reject the sometimes suggestion of MLK as (in any meaningful way) belonging more to so-called-African-Americans (a relic-term from the idiotic 90’s political correctness movement) than to someone like me to whom he was merely a good man…not a ‘black man.’ And that’s the only way his vision is going to come to pass…when race as a concept, is finally dead.
Part of effecting that CHANGE is challenging these outdated, divisive ideologies which (in keeping with my dogma of dogma-free-ness) starts with examining the origin and relevance of our own.