White Folks Are Something Else

What I would like understood as a black American is that black Americans loved and had faith in this country even when this country didn’t love and have faith in them, and that’s our legacy. Condoleezza Rice


The New York Times article “Where Whites Draw The Line” subtext is so blatantly racist that you would not expect it in America’s paper of record. The title and article suggest that white America has some built in right to determine how far blacks go in expressing their grievances. The Oppressor tells the Oppressed when and where it is appropriate to express himself. Even the pulpit on Sunday morning is now off limits.

But let’s not get it twisted. I reserve my right to continue to challenge the institutional racism that is ingrained in our system. White America does not dictate to black America when and where we state our grievances or when and how we petition for relief

What I found particularly troubling was Jessie Jackson Jr. comments that somehow our failure the last 40 years has been about language. Jackson insults his father by suggesting that between Martin Luther King and Barack Oboma, we have been deficient in how we communicate with white people. That only King and Oboma has figured it out.

First of all that is historically inaccurate. King died on a balcony despised by white America and abandoned by much of the black leadership. It was his language that had caused the rift. In condemning the Vietnam War King called America the “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world. The New York Times that now seeks to recast King as a comforter of white folks, called his speech an “error.”

Only a slave would mute his right to demand equality in order to curve favor from the Slave master and we ain’t no slaves. Niki Giovanni said “we always need someone in society who will call a motherfucker a motherfucker.”

The nomination of Barack Oboma does not relieve America of its responsibility to resolve the continuing conflict between its founding principles and its behavior over the last 200 years. To his credit Oboma has consistently stated that his political career grants America no such pass.

I am proud of Barack Oboma. I am voting for him to be President of the United States, not to free black people, or codify our grievances. I understand that he is seeking to be President of all the people. He sees Martin Luther King’s American dream. Many black Americans see Malcolm’s American nightmare. As James Cone in Martin and Malcolm and American Dream or a Nightmare wrote, it is a vision of nuances not a chasm.

It is that duality in which our greatness has been defined but also our dysfunction.

HISTORY WAS MADE

HISTORY WAS MADE. Three speeches and this is what I saw. Barack Oboma is the one, a generational leader for the 21st Century. John McCain is sweet old man and he is going to get the shit beat out of him. Hilary Clinton will more than likely be the VP. She has a strong case that she has earned it. But she ain't got no class.

You Watching Mama

I thought about my mother tonight. I lost her ten years ago. Along with the overwhelming grief of losing my mama. I was angry. I kept thinking what a waste. This incredibly bright and driven woman who was born 40 years too early, into a country that saw her no more than a serf. I thought about how our mama’s brought us to this day. I wish she would have been here to see this incredible man, sitting on the cusp of leading this incredible country. Tonight I knew that my mama’s life, our mama's life has not been in vain.

You watching mama.