Another problem here is that Obama talks about America, i.e., the U.S., as if it is a living self-existing being, granting blessings because of its loving and nurturing nature. But the U.S. did not give freely; our people fought to open up this space and to expand the realm of freedom and possibility in this country. And they did it, not because they engaged in self-blessing and self-congratulatory conversation about this country, but because they took it to task, courageously confronted it and dared to change it.

Also, Obama represents a tendency of those who believe a declaration of “newly” discovered disorders and damaged psyches among Black people is liberating or at least required to put Whites at ease. Thus, he says that the Black “church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and shocking ignorance, the struggles and success, the love and yes the bitterness and bias that make up the Black experience in America.” This is at best awkward and uncalled for and would most likely not be a way his advisors would counsel him to speak of a Jewish synagogue or even a Catholic church. Mom Mabley’s “We do crimes too” is not appropriate here. And it certainly does not explain his relationship, as he claims with Rev. Wright, unless there’s some mystery in it we’ve missed.

Symptomatic of almost every liberal’s audacity to hope is an accompanying problem of denial of the continuing realities not simply of race, but more fundamentally of racism. Thus, Obama denies that racism is endemic to U.S. society, i.e., native and constantly present, and conflates race with racism. But contrary to popular belief and persistent hope, racism is here in raw and redressed form, brutally evident in the attenuated life chances and life conditions of peoples of color. And this rough racist reality in no way resembles the racial discomfort, insecurity and unease that Obama asks empathy for. Human empathy is one thing, claiming moral equivalence of oppression and unease and failing to deal with the difference is a whole ‘nother thing.

We clearly need a new vision of justice and democracy, one in which we are not what Malcolm calls “victims of democracy”, a racial arrangement in which “we, the people” are defined as White; justice is determined by wealth and power; and the future of our people depends on the patronage and petitioned kindness of White folks. No, this is not what Harriet Tubman lifted us out of enslavement for, what Frederick Douglass and Fannie Lou Hamer sacrificed so much for; nor for what Malcolm, Martin and millions more were martyred. Ours is a more expansive view of human freedom and human flourishing, and we cannot and must not accept anything less than that which our history and humanity demand of us.

Dr. Maulana Karenga n is the Professor of Black Studies, California State University-Long Beach, Chair of The Organization Us, Creator of Kwanzaa, and author of Kwanzaa: A Celebration of Family, Community and Culture, [www.Us-Organization.org and www.OfficialKwanzaaWebsite.org].

Published in : Op-Ed, Dr. Maulana Karenga