A Different Sort of Racism II

Trey Smith

At our October 12 affair at Harlem's Riverside Church, Black Agenda Report's executive editor Glen Ford said that the most damning and lasting result of the Obama presidency might be that black America was losing its moral compass

Those of us, this author included, who reached adulthood in the brief eight or nine year heyday of the modern Freedom Movement got to see our elders shuck the shackles of what was proper and legal and take to the streets in defiance of evil in authority. We learned that going door to door, organizing our friends, our neighbors, our fellow workers on the job, calling meetings and demonstrations, and standing up to unjust authority, at whatever cost was the highest duty of citizenship and the only way things ever changed.

During the eight years Obama will have served in the White House, Ford observed, black youth can expect to see nothing like this. Where we learned to be skeptical of what our government, and often our elders told us, they are learning to believe, or pretend to believe whatever they're told. Where we learned the highest goal of the struggle was improving the lives of ordinary people, they are learning that the highest goals are the big house, the prestigious career, the large lifestyle of those who serve the power and unlock the mysteries of the Market.

They'll go through a period as long as the zenith of the Freedom Movement without witnessing one major instance of black defiance of unjust power, of illegitimate authority, or illegal war. And of course it's not as though injustices of class and race, or illegal and genocidal wars waged with our tax dollars and with our lives have gone away; they have not.
~ from Doing Us Proud: Black America Has Lost Its Moral Compass by Bruce A. Dixon ~

It is hard for me to imagine that the great civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would be very impressed with the first black president. I'm sure he would have been proud that a black person had been elected; I just don't think he would have been too happy it happened to be this specific individual!

King was all about speaking truth to power and Obama is far more about sucking up to power. He has set the progressive movement back by generations.

Because so many black progressives don't want to criticize someone they insanely believe is "one of their own," they have shoved a rag down their own throats! They sit idly by as Obama calculates how to destroy the last vestiges of the progressive vision.

Of course, it's not just black progressive who have gagged themselves; it's the vast majority of progressives, regardless of race or ethnicity. By voluntarily standing down, Obama and his minions fear little backlash and so they can now out-bush Bush...and few will be the wiser!