From a Black perspective, I am of the opinion that the 2016 presidential election process cannot be fairly evaluated unless one also examines Black history, the Barack Obama presidency and the reaction of the American political electorate to the first African-American president of the United States of America.
In making this statement, I have intentionally abstained from referring to President Obama as a Black president, because that is not a term that I can recall him using to identify himself. In addition it is acknowledged that his rearing and socialization experiences were, in his formative years, predominantly influenced by events and circumstances that were very much unlike the “traditional African American racial experience.”
The importance of this distinction is that, for me, it helps to frame the modern “American Dilemma” with respect to what we call race and the challenges that flow therefrom. To that end, the struggle today is not simply about the tension generated by the need to breathe false life into antiquated notions of White supremacy in order to facilitate the economic and political domination of African descendant people.
The struggle today is instead heavily grounded in the need for a very frightened White universe to resist the advance of African Americans, and other so called non-White people, in an effort to hold onto the political space, leverage and privilege that the strategies for White domination and White supremacy have historically provided. The blatant disrespect that has been shown to President Obama and to the Office of the President of the United States since he has occupied it constitutes a patent and un-refutable display of the fear and hatred harbored by the old guard elite class.
There is an additional distinction that we must recognize before proceeding. The distinction is that the political challenge confronting African descendent people and the political challenge facing the collective identified as “people of color” are not the same. The establishment responses are not the same in major part because the establishment responses are targeted at the sub-constituencies within the general classification. Those forces that are aligned to resist social change understand all too well the operational value and impact of the “divide and conquer” strategy. This reality continues to be a major challenge confronting attempts to create and maintain coalitions and build solidarity among ethnic groups in America—and indeed around the world.
After over a half century of engagement in political and social activist’s causes, I am totally convinced that there will be no substantive and sustainable transformative political advancement for African descendant people in America until such time as we can commit to and develop strategies and an agenda for the attainment of collective Black Empowerment. To my knowledge no serious effort at a conversation in that regard has been attempted since the Gary, Indiana grassroots political convention of the early 1970s. Why not?
Fifty years ago, it was understandable that we would be excited and perhaps even overly hopeful about the consequences that would follow the advances made by individual Black Americans who were “breaking barriers” and integrating American society. This was new ground. To see Negro/Black people being appointed to positions in the President’s Cabinet and other top-level government and private sector administrative positions was extremely hopeful. To see military people being elevated to the rank of General, and to see in northern industrial cities, Black school principals appointed, Black policemen and firefighters being hired where none had existed in modern memory; this was the real era of “yes we can.”
