-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [AFAMHED] FW: Dr. Maulana Karenga On Obama
Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2008 10:39:42 -0500
From: Coates, Rodney D. Dr. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: Coates, Rodney D. Dr. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
An Ambivalent Embrace of Obama:
The Maturity or Masking of America
Los Angeles Times, 01-10-08, p. A-7
Dr. Maulana Karenga
It is a fundamental lesson of our history, witnessed and inscribed in the
hard-rock reality of our daily lives and enduring struggle, that there is
no easy walk or way to freedom, no shortcut or quick jump to justice or
empowerment of the people and no untroubled and trial-free path to an
enduring peace in the world. Every inch of ground gained and every
achievement worthy of the name requires serious and sustained struggle.
Indeed, Frederick Douglass forever reminds us Without struggle, there is
no progress. Thus, as we dare the awesome task of repairing and remaking
society and the world, we must also remember Amilcar Cabrals advice to
mask no difficulties, tell no lies and claim no easy victory.
And so, when we see Barack Obama embraced and voted frontrunner in Iowa,
we must not misread the signs or see signs where there is none. Even the
most cynical among us can see that Obama speaks to the masses of people
needing and longing for another way to understand and assert themselves
in the world. They yearn to move away from the Bush-mens fear peddling
and people-hate, their war-mongering and wanton waste of lives and
futures, and their polar-cold contempt for the rightful concerns of the
masses of people of this country and the world. Certainly, the people
would rather send their sons and daughters to college than to die an
undeserved death in an unjust and illegal war. They are tired of the
crass con-games of Karl Rove, the cultivating of paranoia posing as
patriotism of Dick Cheney and the readiness of the crazed right to blow
up the world in the name of an imagined superior race, racialized
religion or some other illusion on which they self-medicate and sell to
others. And Obama lifts the people up; talks hope, healing, unity and
change, and offers a chance for everyone to come together on common
ground and to act together for the common good.
But there are signs that all is not as it seems here. First, the claims
of the maturing of America is code for the maturing of White America thru
its media-claimed move beyond racist and racialized thought and practice
to endorse a Black man as frontrunner in a 95% White and small state
called Iowa. Surely, the problems of centuries of racial injustice and
oppression are not solved even by the election of a Black president of
the country let alone by the political endorsement of a small Midwestern
state. The question remains what will they do in the long run and when
they dont vote by raising their hands as in Iowa but vote in secret and
serious remembrance of race and class in states still to speak?
Perhaps, the White support for Obama is softer and more ambivalent than
we want to believe and depends for many on his temporary use as a
sellable symbol of racial reconciliation without resolution thru
struggle; an undeniable asset in party-building, bringing in new voters
and those once alienated; and for providing a mask and moral message of
change from an African American known for compromise and seeking
consensus.
Secondly, one cannot claim political or moral maturity on the issue of
race if Obama is compelled to practice ethnic self-concealment as an
African American. Much has been made of his being a Kansas Kenyan,
which is seen as a mixed and global identity, free of the urban
identity that suggests anger, indictment and social justice claims. But
this makes as much sense as finding relief and some confused and
convenient meaning in Colin Powells being a New York Jamaican, instead
of an African American shaped, like Obama and other mixed race and
nationality Blacks, in the crucible of life and struggle in America. And
what justice or principled unity is there, if we, as Africans, have to
come to the table of common ground naked and in need of White approval
rather than fully clothed in the concerns and identity of our own
cultural community, not needing permission or sanction from anyone?
Thirdly, when Obama talks of change it must be more than one president
and administration replacing another. It must be structural, systemic not
simple surface change? This means change in the unegalitarian
distribution of wealth and power in this country which are overwhelmingly
in White hands and this requires a movement not just an election.
Moreover, if we declare the need and desire for real change, we must
prefigure in our current practice the future we wish to forge and bring
into being. Thus, if he values multicultural and multiracial cooperation
for common good, Obama must have more than Whites around him as major
advisors and they must be seen and known, recognized and respected.
Surely, there are Native Americans, Africans, Latinos, and Asians,
conscious, capable and committed enough to merit position and power now.
Without such a prefiguring of the future, the message is clear that our
identities of color are disadvantageous; Whiteness is normal and thus the
solution for us is self-concealment and pathetic dependence on White
approval and patronage.
Moreover, Obama, if he is to be at his best, must be allowed to reaffirm
his rootedness in the African American social justice tradition in which
he is grounded and grew, It is a tradition which is defined not only by
an ethical insistence on shared good in the world, but also by a
commitment to relentless struggle to achieve and sustain it. Indeed, it
is this social justice tradition and the Movement it generated to expand
the realm of freedom in this country that offers Obama his most important
lessons.
Among these are the lessons that for fundamental change in this country,
there must be a progressive multicultural movement that struggles for it
beyond electoral politics and the self-masking that elections encourage;
that an expansive vision and program that address the critical issues of
our time and world are indispensable; and that we must move beyond the
conception of America as a White finished product and understand and
approach it as what it is, an ongoing unfinished multicultural project.
Within this project, each people has both the right and responsibility to
speak their own special cultural truth and make their own unique
contribution to how this society is reconceived and reconstructed.
Anything less is a dangerous self-deception which will, in New Hampshire,
New York or some other states retrogress to or simply reveal a racist
Jekyll and Hyde hypocrisy of quoting the Constitution in daylight and
whistling Dixie in the dark.
Dr. Maulana Karenga, Professor of Black Studies, California State
University-Long Beach, Chair of The Organization Us, Creator of Kwanzaa,
and author of Kwanzaa: A Celebration of Family, Community and Culture,
[www.Us-Organization.org and www.OfficialKwanzaaWebsite.org].
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/scifinoir2/
<*> Your email settings:
Individual Email | Traditional
<*> To change settings online go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/scifinoir2/join
(Yahoo! ID required)
<*> To change settings via email:
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
