Voices/Dr. Jean Daniels

Obama: No friend of the Black American!

   King George and Darth Vader have yet to find an impeachment procedure. For the average Black American this is business as usual. The first
“woman” speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi is in on the Agenda as is Harry Reid, the Democratic leader, Senators Feinstein (Gang Abatement and
Prevention Act), and Harmon (Violent Radicalization Act). Senator Schumer (Mucasy), some members of the Black Caucus (with their love for the first
Black President, Bill Clinton), and President Bill Clinton (Yugoslavia, NAFTA, Rwanda, crack cocaine sentencing for Black Americans), endorse
aspects of the American Empire Agenda.
    Corporate media presents the collective face of the American Empire Agenda as if it were innate to world governance. The collective face of
corporate rule, these Republican and Democrats alike, are adjusting for the new phase of old business. They are trying to give us like you” and even
sounds like he’s come up from the bottom in “community organization work.”
    But what is Obama really? What does he stand for? Has he said, like Malcolm X, that the Black American “is victim of economic exploitation,
political exploitation, and every other kind” of exploitation? Has he pointed out, as Martin Luther King Jr. did, how the Black American continues to
experience White backlash and that the “tragedy of racism” is ultimately “the logic of genocide”? No. Corporate media cheers Obama because he has
“transcended race,” that is, he avoids discussing the conditions and struggles of Black Americans. Whenever we Black Americans remain neutral on
the issue of Black Americans we are rewarded with privileges that reflect imperialist interests.
    I invite you to read “The Pimping of Black America: Why Much of the Corporate Media Supports Obama” by colleague, Larry Pinkney, at The
Black Commentator. For while the media parades Obama before us, Obama pimps the Black American community.
    Black America’s lived experiences
can’t be heard in Obama’s rhetoric. It’s no accident that Malcolm and King were assassinated so as to make “absent” the voice of Black America. To
speak of our experiences, our day-to-day existence under imperialism would be “inappropriate” and not so safe or so profitable for Obama. His rhetoric
attracts the attention of the corporate media that represents him as the potential savior of the “American Dream” — a “dream” that King, in 1967,
abandoned because it had long abandoned Black Americans. (See my article, “Obama and the American Dream,” The Black Commentator). This
“dream” for Obama speaks of Reagan and “unilateral” war, of defending the imperialist agenda around the world, and of surrounding oneself with ex-
lobbyists and corporate advisors. As I asked in “Liberation Narrative — Not More Imperialism with a Black Face,” The Black Commentator, will the face
of IMPERIALISM become Black? In The Black Commentator, I quote King: “‘We must come to see now that  integration is not merely a romantic or
aesthetic something where you merely add color to a still predominantly white power structure (my emphasis) (“The Other America”).” And I continued:
“We’ve seen the suit-wearing, shoeshopping articulations of white-lite imperialists, Colin Powell and Condi Rice, speaking like drones of the U.S.’
imperial might. But we have the memory of how we have fought for freedom since the days Black women, clutching our babies and children, jumped
over board, settling free in the Atlantic Ocean among the thousand others, strong. Our memory could sustain us through the image of a Black woman
Secretary State gleefully accepting her anointed by the imperialists with an oil tanker carrying her name above those water spirits.” It is a matter, once
again, of Black American survival. We have been disenfranchised as a people and now, in this era of corporate Empire, we are witnessing the attempt
to disenfranchise our very thought, our very effort to resist the suppression and erasure of our heritage — that is, the history of enslavement and its
benefits to the privileging of white rule.
    Can we, Black Americans, distinguish a difference between Obama, Clinton, and Clinton and King George, Darth Vader, and the Neo-Cons? Will
either a Clinton or an Obama presidency disappoint Lockheed-Martin, Telecommunications, Citigroup or
Morgan Stanley?
    A Black face of imperialism is not change. We have had enough of materialism and militarism destroying the unity of the Black American
community with its message of liberal individualism and might. We have been a people of human rights! Don’t be fooled by Obama’s rhetoric of “let’s
just be Americans.” Americans? Obama’s no friend of Black Americans! His imperialist rhetoric unifies the troops to pledge allegiance to corporate
rule! While his memory can’t recall the struggle of our Ancestors, we can — and we must — or we will find our history and then ourselves as devoid of
humanity as Obama.
    Denounce the Empire Agenda and look into Cynthia McKinney’s Power to the People Campaign on the Green Party ticket. Think change for real!