Barack Obama: The Kunta Kinte of 2008

I woke up today thinking about the movie “Roots”. The first scene that jumps out at me is the image of Kunta Kinte being beaten because he wants to keep his real name. With each welt of the whip, he got a little weaker, until he finally changed his name to Toby.

Most of us were hit hard by this scene and hurt by it. I am equally hurt when I see Barack Obama, the political Kunta Kenta of 2008.

With each crack of the right wing whip and even some lashes by Hillary Clinton, Obama is being forced to slowly, but surely rip away everything that has helped him identify with being a black man in America. First he has to put a muzzle on his beautiful, intelligent wife, apologizing for the fact that she “misspeaks” in public. Next, he is distancing himself from Louis Farrakhan, a man with whom he had little prior association. Shortly thereafter, he goes into hiding like a broke baby’s daddy on the date of the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s Assassination, all
because he didn’t want to appear “too black” for the American public.

Now we have Jeremiah Wright. After 20 years with the same pastor, Kunta Obama suddenly realizes that he made a mistake. It wasn’t sermon number 14, 122 or 1,107 that led him to that conclusion. It was Hillary Clinton and Sean Hannity who helped him see the light. They helped Barack Obama finally realize what should have been obvious from the very beginning: His radical wife needed to be put in her place, Martin Luther King is an embarrassment and his pastor can’t possibly be a true American. Thank God for Sean Hannity.

By the time Obama is done with this election, he will have fully apologized for being a strong black man in America. At that point, the transformation will be complete and Kunta will have no feet. I am only waiting for Hillary Clinton to force him to denounce Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey and Harriet Tubman. After all, they were radical too.

This election surely makes Barack wish that all of his friends were white, perhaps even his wife. Those black people are just too much damn trouble. I might start getting rid of my black friends right now. Can I divorce my mama?

As I see the gobs of email coming in from readers at YourBlackWorld, the division within the black community is in full view. Some are angry at Pastor Wright for “messing up the good thing Obama has going”, while others feel that Pastor Wright should “tell it like it is.” The emails remind me of two women fighting hard over the same lying, trifling man who has learned to play them against one another. Rather than focusing on the real target (the man), the women fall right into the man’s trap, as they both so desperately seek his validation.

The truth is that the women in my example are afraid of being alone. They need him to tell them that they are beautiful. They’ve allowed this vulnerability to be exploited by a socially parasitic individual who preys on the insecurities of others. Black people, and Obama, NEED to be validated by White America. We NEED to get into the White House so that we can feel that we have achieved something. It is this need for validation from whites that leads us to sell our souls and do any tap dance necessary to achieve public approval. The loss of integrity, embarrassment, and degradation are all worth it in order to achieve the ultimate goal. I would not compare it to pure prostitution, because even prostitutes have limits.

Call me crazy, but I personally believe in a good old fashioned commodity called “integrity”. Integrity says that you don’t go denouncing your relatives because they say things that are displeasing to your audience. A high school kid doesn’t drop his little brother because the “cool kids” don’t like him. I don’t fault Jeremiah Wright for being the man he has been for the past 40 years. I only question Barack Obama, who is not the same man he was 2 years ago. I question America, a country so drunk with its own arrogance that it cannot tolerate people of color (Michelle Obama, Louis Farrakhan, Martin Luther King and Pastor Wright) who speak their mind about our country’s inequities. Every country in the world sees America’s racism. The United Nations writes reports about America’s racism. But America cannot see its own racism and those who see it are afraid to talk about it. That’s just a damn shame.

Were Obama not running for president, Jeremiah Wright would not be a problem. Barack would be going to church and saying “amen” like the rest of us. But the continuous game of psychological twister being thrust upon him by the right wing has forced him to lie as much as any other politician. Perhaps a young Barack Obama thought, in some idealistic way, that just being a good American could get him elected. Like many black men in America, Obama thought that doing the right thing, working hard and being a good person would be enough. But like the rest of us, he gets slapped with the reality that being a black man in America is one of the most unpopular positions on the social totem pole. Only a complete apology and full extraction from where you came from will do the trick: NBA players go through it, black professors go through it and politicians REALLY go through it.

Barack Obama, in my opinion, is not going to win this election. But no matter the outcome, his soul will be weary, weak and depleted. Kunta Obama will have no feet, and he may not even get to be president.

Dr. Boyce Watkins is an Assistant Professor of Finance at Syracuse University and author of “What if George Bush were a Black Man?” For more information, please visit www.BoyceWatkins.com.

Sean Bell Acquittal - Why We Need to Worry

by Dr. Boyce Watkins

http://www.boycewatkins.com/

Like the rest of the world, the Sean Bell verdict shocked me out of my socks. I was taken aback that the officers in the case were acquitted of all criminal charges. The case hurt me because, like Sean Bell, I am a black man and a father. Also, unlike most others, my father has been in law enforcement for the past 25 years.

When I see cases of black men who are shot by police, my emotions are as torn as a human body being ripped apart by thoroughbred horses. I understand and fight for the plight of black men as part of my human duty. At the same time, I have spent years listening to officers describe the frightening experiences they endure on a day-to-day basis.

Let’s be clear: police officers get scared like the rest of us. It is difficult for us to judge the plight of an officer without knowing what it’s like to be consistently exposed to orphan-makers on a day-to-day basis. One bad move, you can end up dead or paralyzed.

When it comes to the case of Sean Bell, the truth is that I wasn’t there and there is always a possibility that officers were justified in their use of force. So, I am not here to argue guilt or innocence in this particular trial.

At the same time, there is a history of Sean Bell-like incidents occurring throughout our nation, both past and present. It is no coincidence that, in many of these cities, black men are the only ones being shot, arrested and incarcerated by a system of justice that has been a tool for black oppression. I don’t hear much about unjust shootings of white women or people who live in the suburbs. The use of force is not nearly as acceptable or likely in suburbs or on college campuses, where young people get as rowdy as anywhere else. That’s a fact.

Even beyond the Sean Bell case, black people have strong reason to be angry. This black anger is not just about Sean Bell or the possibly unjustified use of force. It is about the cumulative impact of 400 years of the same old lies. If someone kills an officer, even in self-defense, he is sure to get life in prison since the words of other officers carry tremendous weight. For the same reasons, an officer who shoots a black man has a good chance for acquittal. There is something wrong with that. The anger is righteous and justified, since the justice system has earned almost no credibility in the eyes of black people. We can’t tell a lie from the truth and

One cannot deny that there is an historical “blue line” in which officers protect one another, even in the event of wrong-doing. This line, along with the fact that an officer’s word is almost always going to be taken over those who’ve been arrested, has led to thousands of false incarcerations, particularly of black men. The additional notion that some departments do not take abuse complaints seriously adds to the (sometimes correct) perception that officers exist to control poor and black people, who are included in the distribution of true justice in America.

I expect that the summer of 2008 is going to be as racially hot as the summer of 1968. Racial tensions are boiling over from a pile of incidents ranging from the Sean Bell case to the “ghettoization” of Barack Obama’s candidacy for the White House via distorted reporting on Fox News. The sores of our past are beginning to fester, and the reality is that our sick nation will die without proper treatment.

There is no more critical time for an honest dialogue on race. Sean Bell is just the beginning.

Sean Bell Commentary in the Video Below: