BMORENEWS.com

(BALTIMORE - Friday, March 7, 2008) - Every week I walk through the halls of Frederick Douglass High School, observing the student body of color, many of whom are engaging in academic and extracurricular excellence. If one randomly stopped them in the hallway and asked for a brief biography of the school’s namesake, many could recite it without hesitation. They take their history seriously, citing heroes from Douglass to Martin Luther King, Jr. to Jesse Jackson.

However, their everyday reality is not lined with such heroes. There are no doctors, lawyers, engineers, architects, scientists, and other positive figures in their midst. Instead, drug addicts and perverts, dealers and pimps, gangs and thugs infiltrate their existence. Fortunately for them they are blessed with their teachers and administrators who provide excellent role modeling and nurturing to secure a learning environment as opposed to a concrete jungle.

Within this context, the possibility of Barack Obama becoming the first black president becomes even more compelling. Suddenly, the prospect of seeing a black man in the Oval Office with people addressing him as Mr. President as he flies around the world representing the United States of America, gives young people of color a vision they thought not possible in their lifetime. Suddenly, they have a glimmer of hope for their future, a belief that they too, with hard work and determination, can become President of the United States one day.

The question is, will we as adults of color do everything we can to ensure that happens, or will we mock the audacity of hope and remain passive? Will we vote for Hilary Clinton because we have tapped her as the Great Black Hope after her husband Bill, the same one whose policies during his administration from NAFTA to the Haitian immigrant crisis have shown him as the opposite?

To put it crudely, alcoholic beer drinkers don’t purchase non-alcoholic beer. Why would we vote for a white female substitute to represent us? It does not make common sense.

This brings another item to mind. We still live in a patriarchal society, where men rule with impunity, from which the impact resonates worldwide. There is a question no one seems to be asking. Is America ready for a first gentleman? Will men nationwide be able to witness a man in the background while a woman runs the country and not feel demasculatinated? How many misogynistic jokes have circulated around the office water cooler when the topic of a potential Hilary Clinton presidency arises?

And for good measure let us examine Bill Clinton’s behavior during Hilary’s campaign. He has been not only vociferous in his attacks on Obama, but he has been so vocal, it seems that he almost campaigning on his record as president, more than backing his wife in her bid. Perhaps subconsciously, which speaks to his tremendous ego, Bill could be campaigning for his third term, rather than Hilary’s first term. How would he respond if she ascends to the presidency? Based on his behavior, could the concern over his image as a former president, and more importantly as a man, compromise her efforts, or could he actually step up and be the true partner that he proclaims to be?

But this piece is not about Hilary. It is about putting a black man in the White House, a domain claimed by the rich white male, the nation’s temple where the mainstream society has felt comfortable serving for over two centuries, from Philadelphia to its present location in Washington, DC. For people of color, however, the mere name of the White House denotes an illusion of white supremacy, something that is engrained in our psyche.

In this light, other daunting questions persist. Is this country willing to share its most precious real estate with a black man, and all that he will bring with him? What will be the attitude toward Obama of those who have devotingly and lovingly served past Caucasian presidents?
How comfortable will the White House culture make him feel, not just whites, but blacks as well? Historically, there are those of us who treat whites better than we treat our own people, especially those house Negroes who feel that we simply do not belong as head of the executive branch of government.

America needs a portrait of a black president in the White House amidst the 43 portraits of white men. It needs it for the healing of a nation. It needs it as a symbol of reparations to people of color in this country, for the Native Americans whose land was stolen and upon its burial grounds a nation was built. It needs it for the Africans who were brought here as slaves to build its wealth.

America needs a presidential face of color to demonstrate to the rest of the world that we are who we claim to be, a multicultural melting pot that treats everyone as equals.

Speculatively, it would be refreshing for a black man to represent the United States as its leader on the world stage. Though the G8 is dominated by European nations, the world population essentially is made up of red, yellow, brown and black people of color. It should not be mitigated the significance and importance of an American president of color meeting with national leaders of color worldwide. There is an unspoken familiarity and comfortability factor when said parties sit down with each other that cannot be ignored. There is no accident that Jesse Jackson as an unofficial ambassador to this nation during the eighties was able to broker the release of hostages from Arab nations when Caucasian negotiators had failed.

For black men in particular, it would be one symbol of long awaited justice from our ancestors who were run over by trains like Malcolm X’s father Earl Little, hung from poplar trees, and savagely beaten and executed like 14-year old Emmet Till. Overall, it would be one symbol to many blacks across this nation that some of us of which are already aware: that white supremacy is indeed an illusion, and we can overcome it.

It’s time. The Supreme Court Justice, National Security Advisor, Secretary of State position is not satisfying enough. Yes, Clarence Thomas, Condoleezza Rice, and Colin Powell have played their roles as first blacks in these positions. However, it must be pointed out that all of them are Republican and have followed the conservative agendas of both Bush presidencies. This is not to say that the Democratic Party is substantially better. They continue to lie in bed with the Republicans particularly in regards to their foreign policies i.e. funding the Iraq occupation, as well as domestic policies such as The Patriot Act. Still, it is time for a black president, and many feel it is time for Democratic hopeful Barack Obama.

Most importantly, people of color, particularly blacks in this country must have a sense of urgency about change. It is not something that will occur through osmosis, or some trickle down effect. All of the progressive change that has occurred in this nation has been by the consistent blood, sweat and tears of the people. So we must ask ourselves, when thinking about Obama’s bid for the presidency, if not now, when? Perhaps we should read Dr. King’s text, Why We Can’t Wait.

However, there are no illusions for Obama and what he can undertake once in office, and he knows this. We live within a corporate controlled system, which exploits the government for their own means and whims, from the lobbyists to the legislators. Against this powerful machine, one man cannot do it alone.

It takes all of us, starting at the grassroots level, to elect local, city, state and national officials to legislate corporations out of their stranglehold of the system under which we live, so their greed does not continue to rob us of our livelihood and consistently place us in deep suffering.
It is we, as citizens and constituents, who have to pressure lawmakers to reverse deregulation of corporations which accelerated during the Reagan administration, and end the domino effect of monopolies and takeovers that crush small and minority businesses as well as hampering the ability of the masses to have their voices heard in all mainstream media forums.

It is we who have to pressure legislators to radically reform campaign financing so that it becomes a true public process and subsequently diminish the need for corporate donations. Critically important is the need for us to pressure Congress to finally eliminate the Electoral College so we will truly have an election of one person, one vote, and to reform the balloting machines so that tampering and other issues will cease to jeopardize the electoral process and disenfranchise citizens, particularly working people and people of color.

It is we who have to do all of this so that someone like Obama will never again have to accept corporate money in order for him to have a chance at an equal playing field, a chance for the masses to hear his voice, and a chance for this nation to engage in true fundamental change.
The byproduct of this process would be rigorous and substantial presidential debates that would include progressive candidates such as Dennis Kucinich, Cynthia McKinney, Mike Gravel and Ralph Nader, those who have been systematically marginalized by the corporate media machine, especially networks like FOX news. It would be a true democratic process that this country has yet to experience.
It is a crime that we as adults, through our neglect and inaction, have deprived many of our young people to dream big as we once did. Through our pursuit of individual wealth and mainstream societal acceptance, we have abandoned the communities from which we sprang, and as result, our youth have been sacked by harsh realities of which we never faced, and of which many of us would not have overcome.

Even more unjustly, we have shirked our responsibilities to support our own like Obama, and have supported candidates who spew the rhetoric, but fundamentally do not support our interests. We do this so we can maintain our mainstream image and receive the crumbs that our elected officials throw at us to reward our domestic loyalties.
In this society, image is everything.

For people of color, particularly blacks, we need symbols of which we can be proud, and with our future hanging in the balance, there is no excuse for us not to elect an image that represents the best of us, in our quest to reestablish our equilibrium. We need to understand and recognize that we are righteous in wanting to catapult a black man to the presidency, and that we should not hang our heads and mumble every time there is an office water cooler joke about Obama. We should hold our heads high, assert our position, and demonstrate how ignorant they are.

Ultimately, for the sake of our children, we should work towards ascending Obama to the White House, so when in 2009 students of color like those at Frederick Douglass High School take a White House tour and view the portrait of President Barack Obama, they will not only be looking at the face of the president, they will be looking at a reflection of themselves.