Staff,
ThyBlackMan

How can they not?

They want IN.

They desperately want to believe the carefully-crafted fiction of American bourgeois democracy – a myth that has been forced into their consciousness since the moment that the shackled feet of their enslaved Afrikan ancestors first touched the soil of that stolen land.

They desperately want to believe that there, indeed, IS a place for Black folks in a fundamentally structurally unchanged, morally bankrupt, unapologetically imperialist, white supremacist, capitalist nation.

Couple this with the fact that Black Americans have been told, in ways too numerous to list here, that the pursuit of radical alternatives that fall beyond the pale of that which is deemed acceptable by the state is essentially an exercise in futility that always results in vicious recriminations (Paul Robeson) and/ or death (Malcolm X) and you can begin to see why the ascendancy of this particular state-sanctioned ‘leader’ was met with such an outpouring of adoration from Black folks.

Unlike the two men whose names I mentioned, brother Barack – Harvard educated, handsome, articulate and, perhaps most importantly, biracial – is SAFE.

When this Black man finally claimed his cushioned seat in the Oval Office, it was as if the very gates of (white man) heaven opened and God himself was there to welcome Black folks in.

Obamania had taken firm hold of the public imagination, as both Black and white Americans took his presidency to mean that maybe, just maybe, change could be achieved without addressing the blood-spattered history of genocidal savagery that forms the never-mentioned crimson backdrop of the American creation fable.

And maybe, just maybe, we’d be able to move forward into a post-racial future pregnant with the possibility of peace, justice and equality without actually having to uproot entrenched systems of unjust authority built around race, class, sexual orientation, religion and gender.

“well, we’re movin on up (movin on up)…we’ve finally got a piece of the pie…”

No-one…and NOTHING (no clear-eyed assessment of Obama’s domestic and foreign policy, no challenging of his continued support of Israel, no questioning of his refusal to specifically address the very real needs of Black people) would be allowed to spoil the syrupy-sweet superficiality that has been a hallmark of the Era of Obama since day one.

As such, any efforts (among Black people) at offering an intelligent critique of the dubious machinations of the Obama administration almost always fell on deaf ears. Black America had made a conscious decision to uncritically embrace the SYMBOL without questioning the SUBSTANCE. Ironically, any criticism of the very oppressive structure that is presently enthusiastically fronted by brother Obama was invariably interpreted by Black Americans as an irrational and unjustified attack on a Black man who has made good and was summarily dismissed as the ranting of criminally out-of-touch, Black-Power era dinosaurs.

Never mind that this very structure ensures the continued disadvantaged status of Black Americans vis a vis their white American counterparts. They simply ain’t tryna hear it.

“Go `head with all that talk; he`s doing the best he can! And if we DON`T support him, you’re siding with the Republicans/ Tea Party! Might as well just vote for Palin….”

Whenever the topic turns to Obama, Black Americans show a disturbing similarity in their response, which has as its main characteristics:

1) the crude over-simplification of the debate; 2) the ‘race-ing’ of Black support; and 3) the disturbing absence of nuanced analysis.

This was – and is – the crucial contribution of (too) many in the Black American community to the maintenance of the savage illusion that is ‘America, the Beautiful’.

So yeah, maybe Obama can’t dance but who cares as long as he is working to insure all Americans succeed.