Archive for March, 2008
Four Words on Kwame Kilpatrick
Black power is dead.
Radio Interview with Minister Faust tomorrow (easter sunday)
Minister Faust is an sf writer, a Pan-Africanist public intellectual, and a thinker deeply immersed in both the wisdom of the Ancients and the geo-political realities of the present day. And if it sounds like homeboy is from Detroit (or maybe brooklyn), you’re showing your Americentric roots. Faust is Afro-Canadian (currently living in Edmonton). Anyway, he’s supposed to be interviewing me tomorrow, either for his podcast or for his radio show. If it is a live joint I’ll let you know. We’re going to be talking about the Obama speech, and Pastor Jeremiah Wright among other things.
Back in the Barbershop (Obama, Kilpatrick, and more)
After a bit of a hiatus I was back on the barbershop doing the thing. Among the topics of discussion were Obama’s speech, Kilpatrick’s chances in Detroit, and the LeBron James Vogue cover with Gisele.
The Obama Speech–Coming Back to Earth
One of my colleagues (Adolph Reed) called Obama’s speech The Philadelphia Compromise, tying it to Booker T. Washington’s Atlanta Compromise. One of my friends argued that he gave a “placating speech.”
I’d like to see Reed’s reasoning in full.
But I could make the claim that just like Washington, Obama purposely ignored the contemporary structural problems that have us in the situation we’re in now. And in talking about “race” rather than “racism” and “understanding” as opposed to “politics” he moves us towards “unity” rather than structural change.
When I heard Obama’s speech yesterday I felt it was the best campaign speech I’ve heard delivered. I still think it represents a powerful template upon which other candidates can build upon. But when I read this interview it gave me pause.
What I don’t like about Obama and Harold Ford and other black candidates who seek high office and have to rely on white voters to do so, is the way they every now and then throw black people under the bus. I remember when Harold Ford made it a point to criticize the move towards Ebonics in Oakland without prompting AND without seeking to understand the nuts and bolts of the issue.
When Obama mentions his distaste for the “black community’s” behavior in the OJ verdict, unprompted, it upset me. You’d be hard pressed to find a case that concludes in a guilty verdict where the police are caught redhanded lying on the stand. Obama, unprompted, was either saying he disagreed with the verdict black jurors rendered or with the elation some black people evinced when they heard the verdict.
In either case this places him on the wrong side of the law. The wrong side of history. The wrong side of white supremacy.He’s got a tough road ahead, granted. And I appreciated the way he made the interviewer realize how looking for white analogues to Wright’s speech are simply impossible. But my high is now gone. And while I’m not quite back to square one, I’m closer than I was at 1pm yesterday.