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Books by Amiri
Baraka
Tales of the Out &
the Gone
/
The Essence of Reparations /
Somebody Blew Up
America & Other Poems
/
Blues People
Autobiography
of LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka /
Selected Poetry of
Amiri Baraka/LeRoi Jones
/
Black Music
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The Parade of Anti Obama Rascals
By
Amiri Baraka
We certainly know
the animals of the right, the US Reich, the Foxes and
Klan in Civilian clothes, e.g., O’Reilly, Hannity,
Limbaugh &c and certainly a coon or two Tavis & Andy,
some people even came up with the slogan Strangle
Rangel. Happily w/the departure of Bonnie & Clyde more
of these Negro retainers will replace their “HillJig”
buttons with the shit eating grin of exposed Toms as
they try to ease painlessly into at least the margin of
the masses who support Obama .
But I’m talking
about another substantial pimple of soi disant,
dare I say, intellectuals & self advertised radicals who
are quite audible & wordy in opposition to Obama. You
might say, ‘but how is that, since now there is only the
prisoner of war, McCain, who proves every time he opens
his mouth that he is still a prisoner of the Vietnam
war’ that Obama faces. McCain’s major campaign plank is
that Americans need to keep dying in Iraq and our tax
monies need to keep being fed to Halliburton and the
other oilies and cronies. McCain also holds that we
continue the Bush type savaging of the US constitution
by denying habeas corpus and the legal rights of
prisoners in Guantanamo. Keep it open as a Bush-Cheney
concentration camp. McCain also wants to maintain the
widespread hatred of the US by the world, as well as
making Bush giveaway tax cuts for the super rich
permanent.
Here’s a charming
character who on returning from Vietnam soon dumped his
lst wife who had been severely crippled in an automobile
accident, to run off with, among others, a beer brewery
heiress who cd support his political barn storming.
Here’s a man, who for all the media clap about him being
“an independent” is the spiritual follower of the man
whose seat he sits in as Senator from Arizona, Barry
Goldwater.
I mention all this
because it is criminal for these people claiming to be
radical or intellectual to oppose or refuse to support
Obama. I hope we don’t have to hear about “the lesser of
two evils” from people whose foolish mirror worship wd
have us elect the worst of two evils.
For those who claim
radical by supporting McKinney or, brain forbid, the
Nadir of fake liberalism, we shd have little sympathy.
As much as I have admired Cynthia McKinney, to pose her
candidacy as an alternative to Obama is at best empty
idealism, at worst nearly as dangerous as when the Nader
used the same windy egotism to help elect Bush.
The people who are
supporting McKinney must know that that is an empty
gesture. But too often such people are so pocked with
self congratulatory idealism, that they care little or
understand little about politics (i.e. the gaining
maintaining and use of power) but want only to
pronounce, to themselves mostly, how progressive or
radical or even revolutionary they are.
Faced with the
obvious that McKinney cannot actually do anything by
running but put out lines a solid left bloc shd put out
anyway, their pre-joinder is that Obama will be running
as a candidate of an imperialist party, or Imperialism
will not let Obama do anything different or progressive
. . . that he will do the same things any democrat
would do and that the Democrats are using Obama to draw
young people to the Democratic Party. Also that there is
a sector of the bourgeoisie that supports Obama to put a
new face on the US as alternative to the Devil face Bush
has projected as the American image.
Some of these
things I agree with, but before qualifying that let me
say that no amount of solipsistic fist pounding about
“radical principles” will change this society as much as
the election of Barack Obama will as president of the
US. Not to understand this is to have few clues about
the history of this country, its people, or the history
of the Black struggle in the US. It is also to be
completely at odds with the masses of the Afro-American
people, let us say with the masses of black and colored
people internationally. How people who claim to lead the
people but who time after time tail them so badly must
be understood. It is because they confuse elitism with
class consciousness.
And at this point,
the US body politic has been taken too far in this
present election campaign to easily dissolve this heavy
challenge to its historic race & class exclusivity. The
positive aspect of Hillary Clinton’s candidacy and
commitment to work in the Obama campaign has certainly
shredded some of the gender exclusivity as well, so that
there is in reality a prospect that some substantive
change can be made. Obama is the democratic nominee.
Only repeats of the outright election theft of Florida
in 2000 and Ohio in 2004 can put McCain in the white
house. In 2 weeks, since the Democratic Party primaries
ended, McCain’s poll numbers have dropped from a dead
heat w/Obama to trailing by 18 points.
It is up to
revolutionaries and progressives and radicals of all
stripes to make it difficult for another larceny in
November. We should agitate for serious disruption
across this country and internationally if such a
criminal attempt to steal the US presidency is mounted.
For the so called
left and would be radicals (and some grinning idiots who
say they don’t even care about politics) the McKinney
gambit is to label oneself “Quixote of the loyal
opposition” to pipsqueak a hiss of disproval at the
rulers while being an enabler of the same. Neither
McCain nor McKinney will help us. Only Obama offers some
actual help.
Even the dumbest
things Obama has said re: Cuba and the soft shoe for
Israel must be seen as the cost of realpolitik,
that is he is not running for president of the NAACP and
not to understand that those are the stances that must
be taken in the present political context, even though
we hold out to support what he said about initiating
talks with the Cubans, the Palestinians. After years of
Washington stupidity and slavish support for the Miami
Gusanos and Israeli imperialism, there is in Obama’s
raising of talks with the US Bourgeois enemies something
that must be understood as the potential path for new
initiative. It is the duty of a left progressive radical
bloc to be loud and regular in our demands for the
changes Obama has alluded to in his campaign. We must
take up these issues and push collectively, as a Bloc,
or he will be pushed inexorably to the right.
Some people were
grousing about the father’s day address and the stance
he took lecturing Black men to actually become fathers
not just disappearing sexual partners. But can anyone
who actually lives in the hood, and has raised children
there really claim that what Obama said is somehow an
“insult to half a race.” We need to take up that idea of
making Black men stand up and embrace fatherhood (a
lifetime gig) as men and quit winking at the vanished
baby makers that litter our community with fatherless
children. This is where a great deal of the raw material
comes from for the gangs that imperil our communities.
As I answered one
irate e-mailer who was pissed off at Obama for leveling
that challenge, a Negro man killed my only sister, a
Negro man killed my youngest daughter. I can’t give no
mealy mouth slack about that, we need to Stand Up!
Obama has addressed
the Israeli lobby and the Gusano (anti Cuba) lobby. But
where is the Black left and general progressive, radical
and revolutionary lobby? That is the real job we need to
address. We must bring something to the table. It is
time for the left to really make some kind of Left Bloc
to support Obama. I was at the Black Left meeting in
North Carolina and had to argue with a group of folks
who want to be revolutionary as heck with a
Reconstruction Party supporting Cynthia McKinney. Though
there was some good discussion, nothing concrete has
been offered especially around the Obama campaign.
There were even a
few badly disguised nationalists, posing as part of the
left who think such posturing somehow more
revolutionary than getting Obama into the oval office
and dealing with getting him there and the rocking and
rolling that will go on in this country whether he makes
it or not. We ought to be putting together a left bloc
document that can be circulated as soon and as widely as
possible and in Denver and depending on the
circumstances, beyond. Using this as a means of drawing
the excited masses to the left.
We always knew that
the Obama campaign had the potential to do this. And the
closer we get to the convention and then the election
even more excitement will be generated. We shd not let
our role be to stand on the sidelines and mumble how hip
we are, we can’t be so hip we let this cross roads of US
history pass us by and possibly even let the lobotomized
Robocop of right wing Republicanism serve us up more
Bush’ it.
I am sending this document right after I
finish writing it to the Black Radical Congress who is
meeting in St. Louis this weekend. I would hope it could
be circulated.
6/21/08
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Responses
We find your
argument for voting for Obama over McKinney and
McCain interesting but not convincing. None has yet
persuaded me that there's a dime's difference
between the politics of McCain and Obama. Surely,
McCain has yet to insult all black men from a church
pulpit. He already has the white racist male vote
that Obama seeks.
You have quite
over-simplified the issue of out of wedlock
pregnancies and so-called absent black dads. You
know these deadly tragedies are much more
complicated than you or Obama have drawn them. Both
you and Obama know or should know that poverty is
not an excuse, but rather a crushing reality. I
regret further that you have mixed that issue with
your personal tragedies, for which you have my
deepest condolences.
You also excuse
Obama's give-away of Jerusalem and his sallying up
to the rightwing anti-Castro forces in Florida. Your
win at any cost strategy for Obama you suggest can
be countered by a non-existence left wing lobby. The
aggregates of left wingers have no counter in
actuality to the right wing pressure on Obama to
move farther right than McCain. What would you
recommend if McCain recants and moves to the left of
Obama, which is a possible Republican strategy?
You and many
others seem to have concluded that capstoning the
defeat of Jim Crow with a black president
automatically deals with the problems of labor, low
wages, poverty, peace in the Middle East, a flagging
dollar, and an impoverishing inflation. I am sorry
my dear brother, your eyes are much better than
mine.
I have rendered
my position as an independent—Straying from Official Orthodoxy.
I was enthusiastic during the primaries for Obama,
unlike my dear friend Glen Ford, whom you
have labeled a "rascal." Though Glen and my position
differ, I think that his position and opposition to
Obama is sincere and well meaning. I will withhold
my support of Obama to November until I see more
promise that his election will make a real
difference in realpolitik.
Though I am
reluctant to rubber stamp this present appeal to
vote and support Obama, the pages of ChickenBones
are open to you and other Obama enthusiasts for more
convincing arguments.—Rudy
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Hi, Rudy, I
read your response to Amiri with a lot of interest.
I see where you are coming from. While I wouldn't
presume to opine about the black family, I have some
reservations about Obama, too—I was disappointed by
his stand on the recent
domestic spying legislation, for example.
However, for what it's worth, I am going to work
hard for Obama. Either he or McCain will be the next
president. I see him as far better than McCain on
the war, foreign relations, the economy, the
environment, the public infrastructure (esp.
education), and human rights (in the Malcolm X
sense). If McCain is elected, we are likely to have
an extreme right majority on the Supreme Court for
the foreseeable future. Obama is someone that
progressive folks can talk to. He might not do what
we want, but we will be part of the conversation.
That was not the case with Bush—and won't be the
case with McCain. Best, Jim
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Rudy, I do find Baraka's
arguments convincing. Take care, Herbert
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The personal is
political . . . all people (acknowledged or not) are
directly affected by the things that happen to them.
Folk who claim an objectivity that makes it possible
for them to make decisions, take positions, and act
completely separate from their lived experiences are
fooling themselves and maybe others—but not me.
Just because someone doesn't mention the lived
experience underpinning that (consciously or
unconsciously) help shape their thinking-feelings
about whatever—doesn't mean they don't exist. At
least Baraka's being up front about it—me too
because (and especially after 12 years of college
and seeing up close and personal how degrees are
designed to help folk join the power structure) the
way I see the world has a helluva lot more to do
with what I've lived than what I've read.
White folks in power (others too—it's not a race
thang) have a vested interest in pretending to
reason totally separate from emotional, personal,
lived experience, and beliefs that have no
foundation in what's real—makes it easier for them
to otherize us and anybody else they want to
control.
Yes, Obama's a politician . . . and politics
"everywhere" in the world means to work in the sewer
of humanity a lot---political power is wielded in
the trenches and it stanks down there. All
politicians do a lot of the same stuff to get
elected (i.e., whatever it takes)—all of them do
some good things and some fucked up things, and some
downright wrong things too. For me, it's a choice
between what I know (McCain) and what I don't know
but have real hope in so far at least (Obama).
If enough of us don't vote, or vote McCain . . .
we'll leave samo-samo in power and there'll be no
mystery. Many of my friends think the only way for
systemic change to happen is to take the current
structure down to the ground—4-8 more years of this
regime might accomplish that . . .
P.S. I note that your
issue (mine too) with what Obama said about Black
men has "a lot" to do with Black folks oppressive
lived experience in this country. Peace,
Mary
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It's all about
Michelle, Rudy, not Barack. It's important now to
have a
Race Woman Warrior in the White House, because
she will do good and be good for the entire Nation.
It's about Black grandmothers and mothers and
daughters. It's not about Black males and not about,
once again, Black male envy of other Black men.—Mackie
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STIR DE POT!!—Chuck
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I think
everyone would be better served to look to Mr. Obama
as a tool rather than a vessel. I am convinced that
any persons or organization who truly have well
formulated viable agendas will find a way to use the
Obama regime to their advantage. I am equally
convinced that however you are living now under Bush
will essentially be the same way you're living 8
years from now under McCain. I would vote for
McKinney for President Of New Afrika any day of the
week . . . but it doesn't exist.— Namaskar
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A powerful statement by Baraka,
with which I am in complete accord.—Miriam
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Dear Rudy, I'm going on record
as agreeing with Baraka — Bankie
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Obama's
other Muslim problem—He will not offer even mild
criticism of Israel while wholeheartedly endorsing
Tel Aviv's refusal to consider granting Palestinian
sovereignty over any part of East Jerusalem, which
forecloses any possibility for peaceIt becomes
difficult to see how such views would enable the
kind of "aggressive diplomatic effort" across the
region the senator calls for. Moreover, Obama's much
debated willingness to talk to Iran is undercut by
his support for implementing confrontational
policies. For example, he supported designating the
Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist organisation and
pushing for increased sanctions against the Islamic
Republic -before even sitting down with its
leadership. Most importantly, Obama hedges his
pledge to remove US forces from Iraq, refusing to
commit to a full withdrawal of US troops while
calling for a large expansion of the ranks of the
active duty military.This suggests that as
president, Obama would continue and even increase US
military engagements in the region, against the
wishes of the vast majority of its inhabitants.
Luckily, a burgeoning coalition of people across the
Middle East - in particular, the younger generation
- are not waiting for "President" Obama, or anyone
else, to save them.
Aljazeera
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House of Nehesi Publishers
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posted 24 June 2008 |
