Obama and the Hunger for a Black President

Rudolph Lewis

The hunger for a Black President is silly, superficial black politics. It shows our political immaturity and our desperate lack of a real black leader. It shows we prefer symbols to the real substance of black liberation. It shows that we have more faith in political operatives and political collaborators than real black leaders. It shows also the fear these operatives have of being a black leader—poverty, imprisonment, flight, assassination. That is the history of real black leaders; that is the burden they must carry. What we have plenty of is entertainers—black political entertainers and black political pundits—all of which have made their deals with the wealthy and the powerful and have become, as individuals, wealthy and powerful.

I suppose by politics, you mean electoral politics. I do not know that electoral politics is "the" solution, especially in how it is presently conceived and used. I am not against electoral politics per se. We will not be a free people unless we are willing to withhold our vote from both major parties. Most of our leaders, however, are tied to the mainstream parties, even now, the NOI. These ties by individual leaders lead to political corruption. That is problematic for liberation efforts. These ties only serve individual blacks, rather than the masses of blacks.

The masses of working class blacks have lost faith in this strategy, which has been in operation for more than two decades and thus do not go to the polls. In effect, they are boycotting the polls. I am with them in this rejection and support their non-participation. But our leaders have not taken political advantage of this non-participation, rather they have castigated this political act (as ignorance), for it runs against their collaboration with these parties in the oppression of the general black population and it undercuts their influence with these parties and thus their payoff.

There is a general trend that promotes voting regardless. That is, voting for the less of two evils. These cynics used the strangest of arguments to support this waste of energy, time, and political clout. They will use history of the struggle for voting rights and one’s ancestors to demonstrate the obligation to vote and the ignorance of not-voting for one set or the other of their oppressors. Well, such arguments do not lead to the path of liberation. It walks away from true responsibility to our people If you are truly free you not only have a right to vote, you also have a right not to vote. Voting for the less of two evils forces black people to play their oppressors' game. It is like voting whether my slaverholder is more benevolent than your slaveholder.

That does not lead to the parting of the sea or the crossing over to Jordan. It does not cause the walls to fall down. It is this philosophical view that is at the heart of the criticism of black leadership. One has to commit oneself with one feet; that is, one must be willing to walk away from the choice of two evils. None has formulated this as the essential problem of black politics today. They labor to keep the masses in the dark. They do not want to formulate it into words, into a political message.

For me, that's the truth of the matter. You cannot be a slave to the Democratic Party or the Republican Party if you wish to use the full force of the black vote, that is, if you seek an end to black oppression (racism and racial oppression). The Democratic Party cares less whether Negroes are racially oppressed or not. What they care first and foremost about is winning.

We as a people must be free to do whatever is necessary to bring pressure to bear. If that mean disrupting the normal course of electoral politics by boycotting the polls, then that is what we must do. Otherwise, the Democrats will play to white middle class issues and white middle class issues have a subtext, that is, white-skin privileging, which is bad news for us as a people. The Democrats will play to those concerns in their competition with the Republican Right. And black people's issues will be push into a dark corner.

That is the essence of what has happened since Reagan came on the scene and our elected black leaders have played that game. They have negotiated behind closed doors (with corporations and on the congressional floor and backrooms). That strategy in the last two decades of being a slave to the Democratic Party has brought us political losses rather than gains.

We can no longer count gains by counting “black faces in high places” or in political offices. That's simple-minded black politics, the crudest form of a political philosophy. Obama’s presidential candidacy is just another way of pulling us back into voting for the Democratic Party once again. It is a sham tactic; it is a distraction. It pulls us away from our basic concerns as a people, that is, our issues (poverty, unemployment, education, criminalization, discrimination, etc.), what you call a "Black Agenda."

No, there is no "Black Agenda," no "Black Platform" that will be demanded of the electoral parties, including the Democratic Party. And there is not one black insider who is willing to demand one. That shows you how superficial our connection is with the Democrats. For they know, that Negroes are so happy with just having the vote that they will vote for the Democrats, regardless; for obviously the Republicans know that they can win without the Negro vote and so they do not have to negotiate.

Agnew told us back in 1967, who else are you going to vote for if you don't vote for me. And look what he did when he became governor of the state. He treated the Big Time Negroes like niggers April 1968, after the Baltimore riots. He told them that they were not responsible leaders, that they had neglected their duty to keep the Negroes in line, that they had allowed the “militants” to get a foothold within the communities and to cause havoc and damage. He talked to them as if they were his children. And then he went on to become Vice-President of the United States.

Aren't we yet tired of these kinds of political machinations? Don't our people deserve more? -- Rudy

Rudolph Lewis. May 15, 2007