Cornel West & Ayman al-Zawahiri

What do they have in common? Both of them think Obama is a sellout. The Guardian reports on Zawahiri while TruthDig has the West comments.

I vainly tried (on this blog & in person) to encourage people to think critically about the Obama candidacy. His race is not a help to America's black population. It is in fact a buffer that blunts criticism and insulates Obama and the government from being held accountable for the bailout, education and high unemployment among African Americans.

Race and Obama 3 years on

Three years ago President Obama gave one of his most important pre presidential speeches. You can find audio and text here. It concerned race in America and was (mostly) prompted by videotaped remarks by a pastor at his church.
Obama said, " ... we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems - two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all."

Real Time

On a recent episode of Real Time (a political talk show on HBO) the host asked Tavis Smiley if he would, "...rather take 80 cents on the dollar or be beheaded?" Tavis did not answer. He may have been considering the propiety of the host breaking out a plate of fried chicken to make a point about the budget.

Just because something isn't as bad as it could be doesn't make it good.

Why have a black president?

As I see it the failure of the Barack Hussein Obama presidency is that he does not move African Americans toward liberty. To be sure he is successful as a symbol of what can be achieved in America. He is inspiring. Like his predecessors he has governed and warred effectively enough for the union to hold. Yet the cost of his presidency weighs against his value.
As John A. Powell of the Kirwan institute notes, "On race, he clearly mutes the conversation and confuses people."
Muting that conversation costs tens of millions of African Americans a great deal and has so far gained them nothing that a president of another race or gender could not have produced.

Young, Gifted and Black

"The inheritance of talents is no different , from an ethical point of view, from the inheritance of other forms of property of bonds, of stocks, of houses or of factories. Yet many people resent the one but not the other."

Milton Friedman

Poverty of the Mind

"Today they say that we are free, only to chain us in poverty"

Bob Marley & the Wailers



Black History Month grew out of Black History Week. Carter G Woodson, author of the Education of the Negro and the more popularly known the MisEducation of the Negro recognized the need for all Americans to know the history of their country and those who contributed to it. He believed that ignorance contributed to the atmosphere of race prejudice. In 1920's America it must have been difficult to imagine Obama's America but he did.

One of the horrors of the Slave Trade was the cultural disconnection experienced by the captives. Language, religion and other aspects of cultural identity, the very heritage that many take for granted were no longer theirs. Their descendants for generations were barred by law from learning to read or write. Opportunities to profit from their labor was sharply curtailed.

Poverty and wealth are typically viewed in material terms. Ayn Rand offers another perspective in her novel Atlas Shrugged. Therein a character named Francisco offers that , "Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think."

Indeed it is. At one time Bob Marley accounted for half of Jaimaica's GDP. It wasn't oil wells or gold ore but his beautiful mind that produced it. A mind that sought out it's history.

Ronald Reagan and Obama

Ronald Reagan's son Michael argues in this FoxNews.com posting that his father was more of a friend to blacks than Obama. He cites lower unemployment, rising wages, an increasing middle class and the MLK holiday to prove his argument. He then contrasts that with Obama's record (16% black unemployment and rising).

His thoughts dovetail with this article in the Mercury News. According to Eugene Robinson Black America has splintered into four distinct groups. The groups are

1. The Mainstream - 9 to 5ers


2. The Abandoned - languishing in economic, cultural and mental poverty


3. The Transcendent - Obama, Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, Oprah


4. Emergent - also Obama, Colin Powell, Lenny Kravitz

How does this relate to the first black president? Obama as a Trancendent Emergent black would never sign an MLK bill or affirmative action legislation (both produced by republican presidents). He is (as noted in a previous post) sensitive to reverse discrimination.