Simple Things/ Lang Kenneth Haynes
Barack Obama
Barack Obama
He’s Mr. Obama; Barack Obama, Esquire; former Senator Obama; Barack Obama, former president of various organizations; and now he is Barack Obama,
President of the United States of America. Some say that he is the most powerful person in the world. What does this mean to me, a 60-year-old Black man? Here
are a few thoughts:
Harry Truman was President of the United States of America in 1949, the year of my birth. He didn’t look like, talk like or walk like anybody I knew even
though it was common for, even, Black adults to tell kids that they could grow up to be president. Nice sentiment, but I believed it to be one of many lies that
adults were in the habit of telling kids to prevent us from self-destructing right on the spot.
Harry Truman was followed by President Dwight Eisenhower. I remember trips that I took to Washington, D.C. with my grandmother in those days. I was not
explicit in the Washington landscape — at least not in a positive way — but I was implied. I genuinely believed that the theater where Lincoln was murdered, the
Treasury Building, the Washington Monument with the long, narrow pool lined with cherry trees and blossoms, and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier had
something to do with me. The truth of my contributions to this nation weren’t out there, but I could taste it.
I could taste it while Black people were being hung, beaten and burned to death before lynching was even considered a crime. I could smell it during the
days — not so long ago — when Black people braved fire hoses, vicious dogs and worse, to vote. My imagination could see the wrongfulness of the many ugly
ways that belief in racial superiority played out and that to diminish the humanity of anyone perceived as different by whomever the alleged majority happened
to be was a bad idea. It was a bad idea then and it’s a bad idea now. It’s a bad idea for religions to designate sinners. It’s a bad idea for governments to single out
groups of individuals with characteristics in common and proclaim this group or that to be responsible for whatever disharmony exists. Because while the finger-
pointing is going on, the handful of genuine bad guys laugh all the way to the bank as they congratulate themselves on their cleverness and uncanny ability to
pit the struggling masses against each other under the banners of religion, skin color, gender or any other “difference” that is commonly regarded as a weakness
and not a strength. And they laugh even louder when they observe that the masses are so caught up in being right and hating that they fail to realize that skin
color is perhaps the easiest way to separate people, but it is not the only way. If you have a perverse need to hate someone for reasons other than skin color, you’
ll have to probe a little deeper. Hate and ignorance are powerful and devastating allies. McCarthyism is alive and well in 2009, we just call it different things.
The cry, “You’re either with us or against us” still resonates throughout the land. The question remains: Who is “us”?
We don’t look the way we used to. The President of the United States of America certainly doesn’t look like any president who went before him. What does
this all mean? It means many things, but one thing it means is that there is something that takes precedence over race. Barack Obama won the presidential
election for many reasons but, to my way of thinking, a central reason was that voters felt that he could genuinely hear what they were saying and feel what they
were feeling and that many previous administrations went through the scripted motions but never really got it. They didn’t have a clue what it felt like to be
hungry or have a home foreclosed on or to be told that their apartment was being torn down to make way for new housing for rich people. They didn’t share the
knowledge that there is more than enough wealth to go around if greed is checked. They didn’t share the wisdom that you can only drive one car at a time the
same way everyone puts on pants one leg at a time.
Did Barack Obama become President of the United States all by himself? Of course not. He won the presidential primary and the general election. But his
election to the highest office in the land goes way beyond that. The list of people to thank would more than fill the hull of one of the horrible ships that made the
mid-Atlantic passage just a few hundred years ago. The list would include people like Mary McCloud Bethune, W.E.B. DuBois, Harriet Tubman, Marcus Garvey,
Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., Thurgood Marshall, John Brown, Crispus Attucks, Emett Till, Rosa Parks, Carter G.
Woodson, James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, all the people who risked life and limb to support the Underground Railroad, and the countless
people whose names we’ll never know who believed, without question or doubt, that no human being had the right to own another and that the very notion that a
human being could be considered property was an affront to the essence of all human beings.
Can President Obama end racism instantly? I don’t think so. Can he render the economic system more equitable with one wave of his magic pen? No. Can
he erase all the disparities that exist in health, healthcare accessibility, incarceration rates, unemployment rates and wealth accumulation? No. Can he lead a
nation that recognizes that many of its wounds are self-inflicted? Yes. Will we listen when he insists that the government is made up of the people and that we
are the people? I sincerely hope so. Does he understand that the “rightness” of an idea (like healthcare for all) is insufficient to bring it to fruition and that it is also
essential to understand how the political apparatus works? He gets it. Is his battlecry of “Sí se puede” an empty slogan? I don’t think so. Even his detractors are
unlikely to define him as empty or shallow in any way, shape or form.
President of the United States of America. Some say that he is the most powerful person in the world. What does this mean to me, a 60-year-old Black man? Here
are a few thoughts:
Harry Truman was President of the United States of America in 1949, the year of my birth. He didn’t look like, talk like or walk like anybody I knew even
though it was common for, even, Black adults to tell kids that they could grow up to be president. Nice sentiment, but I believed it to be one of many lies that
adults were in the habit of telling kids to prevent us from self-destructing right on the spot.
Harry Truman was followed by President Dwight Eisenhower. I remember trips that I took to Washington, D.C. with my grandmother in those days. I was not
explicit in the Washington landscape — at least not in a positive way — but I was implied. I genuinely believed that the theater where Lincoln was murdered, the
Treasury Building, the Washington Monument with the long, narrow pool lined with cherry trees and blossoms, and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier had
something to do with me. The truth of my contributions to this nation weren’t out there, but I could taste it.
I could taste it while Black people were being hung, beaten and burned to death before lynching was even considered a crime. I could smell it during the
days — not so long ago — when Black people braved fire hoses, vicious dogs and worse, to vote. My imagination could see the wrongfulness of the many ugly
ways that belief in racial superiority played out and that to diminish the humanity of anyone perceived as different by whomever the alleged majority happened
to be was a bad idea. It was a bad idea then and it’s a bad idea now. It’s a bad idea for religions to designate sinners. It’s a bad idea for governments to single out
groups of individuals with characteristics in common and proclaim this group or that to be responsible for whatever disharmony exists. Because while the finger-
pointing is going on, the handful of genuine bad guys laugh all the way to the bank as they congratulate themselves on their cleverness and uncanny ability to
pit the struggling masses against each other under the banners of religion, skin color, gender or any other “difference” that is commonly regarded as a weakness
and not a strength. And they laugh even louder when they observe that the masses are so caught up in being right and hating that they fail to realize that skin
color is perhaps the easiest way to separate people, but it is not the only way. If you have a perverse need to hate someone for reasons other than skin color, you’
ll have to probe a little deeper. Hate and ignorance are powerful and devastating allies. McCarthyism is alive and well in 2009, we just call it different things.
The cry, “You’re either with us or against us” still resonates throughout the land. The question remains: Who is “us”?
We don’t look the way we used to. The President of the United States of America certainly doesn’t look like any president who went before him. What does
this all mean? It means many things, but one thing it means is that there is something that takes precedence over race. Barack Obama won the presidential
election for many reasons but, to my way of thinking, a central reason was that voters felt that he could genuinely hear what they were saying and feel what they
were feeling and that many previous administrations went through the scripted motions but never really got it. They didn’t have a clue what it felt like to be
hungry or have a home foreclosed on or to be told that their apartment was being torn down to make way for new housing for rich people. They didn’t share the
knowledge that there is more than enough wealth to go around if greed is checked. They didn’t share the wisdom that you can only drive one car at a time the
same way everyone puts on pants one leg at a time.
Did Barack Obama become President of the United States all by himself? Of course not. He won the presidential primary and the general election. But his
election to the highest office in the land goes way beyond that. The list of people to thank would more than fill the hull of one of the horrible ships that made the
mid-Atlantic passage just a few hundred years ago. The list would include people like Mary McCloud Bethune, W.E.B. DuBois, Harriet Tubman, Marcus Garvey,
Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., Thurgood Marshall, John Brown, Crispus Attucks, Emett Till, Rosa Parks, Carter G.
Woodson, James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, all the people who risked life and limb to support the Underground Railroad, and the countless
people whose names we’ll never know who believed, without question or doubt, that no human being had the right to own another and that the very notion that a
human being could be considered property was an affront to the essence of all human beings.
Can President Obama end racism instantly? I don’t think so. Can he render the economic system more equitable with one wave of his magic pen? No. Can
he erase all the disparities that exist in health, healthcare accessibility, incarceration rates, unemployment rates and wealth accumulation? No. Can he lead a
nation that recognizes that many of its wounds are self-inflicted? Yes. Will we listen when he insists that the government is made up of the people and that we
are the people? I sincerely hope so. Does he understand that the “rightness” of an idea (like healthcare for all) is insufficient to bring it to fruition and that it is also
essential to understand how the political apparatus works? He gets it. Is his battlecry of “Sí se puede” an empty slogan? I don’t think so. Even his detractors are
unlikely to define him as empty or shallow in any way, shape or form.