The Pale Reflection: Barack Obama, MLK...

[brianold]

The Pale Reflection: Barack Obama, MLK and the Meaning of the Black Revolution
Presdential Politics 2008 - Obama
Wednesday, 21 March 2007
by Paul Street

In his "Empire and Inequality Report," the author compares the politics of Barack Obama, who styles himself a post-civil rights era "Joshua," to those of Martin Luther King, the most prominent member of what Obama calls the "Moses Generation." There is no resemblance whatsoever between them. Obama rates "bad on class," "bad on race" and "really bad on empire" - unfit to be mentioned in the same paragraph with King, the "democratic socialist" who advocated a "radical reconstruction of society."

The Pale Reflection: Barack Obama, MLK and the Meaning of the Black Revolution

The Empire and Inequality Report

by Paul Street

"The black revolution is forcing America to face all its interrelated flaws - racism, poverty, militarism and materialism. It is exposing evils that are rooted deeply in the whole structure of society. It reveals systemic rather than superficial flaws and suggests that radical reconstruction of society itself is the real issue to be faced." - Martin Luther King, Jr., "A Testament of Hope" (1968)

"My Very Existence"

One of the most alarming things about Barack Obama's March 4th 2007 speech at the legendary Brown Chapel AME in Selma, Alabama was the Senator's recurrent self-reference. Sometimes it almost sounded as if Obama thought the essential purpose of the famous 1965 Selma Voting Rights March (1) - formally commemorated each year at the Brown church - was to put the Great Barockstar on the national stage.

In the fifth paragraph of his speech, Obama said "I'm not sure I'd be here today" if "it were not for" legendary civil rights activist and now congressman John Lewis.

In the sixteenth paragraph, Obama credited the people who marched in the face of state repression for the fact that "I got the kind of education I got, a law degree, a seat in the Illinois Senate and ultimately in the U.S Senate. It is because they marched," Obama added, "that we [meaning black Americans] elected councilmen, congressmen."

In the seventeenth paragraph, Obama said that "my very existence might not have been possible had it not been for some of the [civil rights veterans] here today." Thanks to the civil rights movement, Obama claimed, his white mother and Kenyan father "got together and Barack Obama, Jr. was born...I'm here because somebody marched. I'm here because you all sacrificed for me."

"So don't tell me I don't have a claim on Selma, Alabama," Obama added. "Don't tell me I'm not coming home to Selma, Alabama"(2).

"The blue-pen drawing Obama doodled on his newspaper during fundraising calls was a portrait of himself."
Reading Obama's speech the other day, I was reminded of one of the strangest passages I've ever read in the pages of political journalism. It came at the end of a laudatory essay on Obama in Atlantic Monthly in the summer of 2004. In the next to last paragraph of this article, titled "The Natural (Why is Barack Obama Generating More Excitement than John Kerry?)," Ryan Lizza offered a disturbing observation:

"If there is a knock against Obama, it is that he is perhaps a little too enchanted with all the attention and acclaim. During the Democratic primary campaign he raised eyebrows by sweeping an opponent's wife into an embrace - a moment captured by a Chicago Tribune reporter. The opponent's staff was sufficiently piqued to complain. And I couldn't help noticing, when we sat down to talk in the dilapidated storefront that houses his Springfield campaign headquarters, that the blue-pen drawing he'd doodled on his newspaper during fundraising calls was a portrait of himself" (3).

"Not Really All That Black"

All of which raises an interesting question: what's so great about the existence of Barack Obama from the perspectives of racial inclusion and social justice? How well is Obama honoring his "claim on Selma" and the "sacrifices" made for him by the Civil Rights Movement? Where does Obama - introduced to the Brown Chapel crowd as "living proof that a person of color can become anything they wish" - stand in relation to that towering hero of the Civil Rights Movement, Martin Luther King Jr. and the black revolution that King helped lead?

As was painfully evident from Obama's forced drawls and other attempts to sound and look more culturally "black" (3), Obama has never been an especially African-American public figure. The man does not say "y'all" in his normal discourse. He deletes such terminology when addressing the AIPAC Policy Forum or the Council on Foreign Relations - to reassure them of his deep commitment to the predominantly white ruling class's imperial ambitions and to the apartheid state of Israel (4) - or the Caucasian masses in Des Moines.

One of the dirty little secrets about Obama is that he owes no small part of his popularity with many whites to the fact that many Caucasians don't think of the biracial Senator as being "all that black" (5).

Bad on Class: "The Virtues of Capitalism"

Obama made positive reference in his Brown Chapel speech to "the principles of equality that were set forth" by the Civil Rights Movement and "have to be fought for each and every day." He criticized some blacks for thinking that "the height of ambition is to make as much money as you can" and embracing "materialism," thereby turning away from Jesus' "golden rule" (paragraphs 28 to 30). He called for "absolute equality in this country in terms of people being treated on the basis of their color or their gender" and bemoaned the stubborn persistence of racial health, education (achievement and school funding), empathy and hope "gaps" in the U.S. "We've got 46 million people uninsured in this country," Obama observed, "despite spending more money on health care than any other nation on earth. It makes no sense" (paragraph 33).

But he prefaced his critique of "materialism" by saying that "it's a good thing" to "drive the biggest car and have the biggest house and wear a Rolex watch and get your own private jet" and "get some of that Oprah money" (paragraph 29). Obama, it is worth noting, is a freshly minted millionaire (6) who recently purchased an opulent Georgian Revival Mansion below price at $1.65 million thanks to some help from the felony-indicted political fundraiser Tony Rezko (7).

"Obama's book refers to the United States' rapacious, savagely unequal and fundamentally

[brianold]

another good piece on obama...

Barack Obama