Abandon Hope (Letting Go of Obama)

There is an idea among American Negroes that the president is our president. Just as much as the president is the president of the entire US he is the president of black people. As much as a group of people can 'own' a political candidate the Negroes in America own Barrack Obama. He is ours. We joined together in a way we have never done before behind a candidate and we voted for him and we supported him and we came out to washington dc to stand in the glow of such a historic moment of his swearing in and we all became president with him.

In the jobs fair of the Congressional black caucus we get to see first hand the frustration of the American Negro with the first black president. Obama has us right where he wants us. We are no strangers to being disenfranchised and ignored, we are no strangers to being taken for granted, and victimized for a few loyal votes. It is the blind loyal obedience of the Negro to the democratic party that motivates Negroes like Condelezza Rice to join the republican party. 

I say that Obama has us right where he wants us because for the first and what many of us fear will be the last time in American history we have a president who self identifies as black. The American Negro is hesitant, albeit fearful, of standing against what many of us heralded as our hope, as our collective dream and we realize with a 16% unemployment among our people that our hope has deserted us and our dream is a nightmare. 

The New American Negro needs to let go of President Barrack Obama. We will look past his race and look at his politics. Obama has abandoned not just the Negro in the United States but in Africa Obama has begun to topple African governments which look to unify with each other. Do not look at President Obama as a black man, look at him as Ronald Reagan, that is what America has done when they slap him next to Reagan on their magazine covers. 

As Maxine Waters said we are hurting, we are hurting and the president is in Iowa with the republicans. Our children live in poverty and the President vacations with the elite in Massachusetts. We have no health insurance and the president is in campaign mode looking to sell us more broken Barrack hope. 

The New American Negro will lend their voice to the crowd that shouted to Maxine Waters "Let him go!" Let the bum go!

Mr. Obama

The Negro in America has been personally let down by President Barrack Obama. There is no denying that Negroes felt a personal victory in America by electing a half African half American president, Never mind that some American born Negroes take issue with identifying with Africans. The president he ignored and largely pushed aside the issues that largely concern us negroes. He has instead focuses on pleasing NATO, our old European colonizers Goldman and Sachs, our wall street oppressors and the homosexual community.

The President heaps honor and respect European colonist oppressors while largly ignoring the African international plight. He has beers with the Irish and bombs for the Libyans. He is reducing troops in Afghanistan just to send them home to homelessness. There is no employment for those once deployment. It seems the only steady jobs is for going to war. And what's the point Bin Laden is dead. Bin Laden is dead yet we are at war against a faceless enemy. 

The President would rather steer this nation into war than help our hungry and poor. It cant cost more for peace than it does war. It feels like America has declared war on the Africa and ignored the African American.

Obama won't even go to the nation of his heritage, Obama does not visit our Negro economic battlefields of New Orleans, Detroit and the negro section of DC. He doesn't go to inner city DC. He doesn't see your children's schools. He doesn't  see the disillusion of the Negro. 

President Obama does not care about black people, instead he cares about Iowa, instead he cares about Wall street, instead he cares about Nato and making sure that America continues to exert it Imperialistic influence on the world instead of improving the lives of its citizens inside its borders.

The Fear!

I am sick and tired of living in fear here in the United States. This culture this idea that we are always vulnerable always at risk to be attacked or for mass chaos to be afoot at any moment. 

It seems to me to be more of a prison than actual freedom. It seems to me that if the ideology of terror is what we are fighting than subway security brandishing rifles is going to do little to deter it. If we believe that this ideology has traveled thousands of miles to reach the American shores do we really believe that the subway police man is going to stop it? Let us think about it in this context. If the American marines are right now fighting the ideology of terrorism with full automatic assault rifles and the best technology the United States armed forces can muster and yet the ideology of terrorism is not deterred from attacking them in fortified bases why do we Americans think that the NYPD can deter terrorism? 

What is being deterred is not terrorism but our liberties that we are watching being intimidated away. The police patrol our streets with fully automatic weapon and we welcome it as protection of our freedoms! Is this how we in the United States fight ideas, with weapons? Further I am tired of living in fear having to be on the guard for this ethnicity and that. What I find ironic about the elevated alert nature is that the national news media warns us of threats from three men from Pakistan. Now I should wonder exactly how they would warn us of a threat from three Americans. Would the news media have us weary of white men? I think not. The news media feeds into our fears by giving us a specter to chase. The American news media knows full well that the Average American cannot just by looking tell the difference between what is known as an Arab, a person from the larger middle east, and someone from India. Now thats because of America's cultural ignorance we have effectively cast suspicion on an entire population and religion. Does that make us safer? Does suspecting our fellow Americans make us safer? What have we given up just so that we can feel safer? What do we now lack in the name of safety?

These things, these police, this intimidation does not fight the ideology of terrorism. There are better ways to fight the idea and practice that is terrorism. However putting  the citizens of America in a constant state of fear by having the police patrolling out streets as if it was a war zone is not the way to go about it. Is this what we have to look forward to when the government feels like it is being threatened? Is this what the government does in the name of our protection. We must understand that no matter how many police sat at the base of the twin towers September 11th would have still took place. It is also true that since that time the planned attacks have been thwarted not due to the police but to civilians. Now one could say that it is because of the United States citizens alerted senses that such attacks have been thwarted. Never mind that the most credible and closest attack was thwarted by a European. The most absurd assumption on the part of the government is that someone who subscribes to the terrorist ideology will actually be de moralized from carrying out a suicide attack despite having gone to great lengths to plan and carry out such an attack. Have not the so called terrorist blown themselves up well before the planned target if it looked as if the police where close to neutralizing him or her? 

I ask sincerely will this culture of fear dissipate or will we forever fear the boogiemen from the imagination of the United States that can only be fought with more money and more personal restrictions.

Honorary Americans

In being a new American Negro I think about a lot of old things. What I want the reader to have is a clear understanding of who and what a New American Negro is. The reader needs to understand that a new American Negro is not just me but others fitting the mold and ambition of an American negro wanting to do more than gain wealth to flaunt or horde it. The new American Negro wants to gain wealth and give it, wealth of money, wealth of knowledge, and wealth of time particularly to those Negroes needing it most. If we are to pick our leaders from the future generation we must start planting them now.

A Negro that does not know his story does not know himself. A man not knowing himself cannot love himself or others, instead the Negro finds things to apply to himself so that they may define him. Materialism the curse of western capitalism defines him and his self worth. His job, a white woman, all will be used to define a negro and used to set him apart from other Negroes. It gives him a sense of self worth. In some cases, the elite Negroes allows all three, possession, job, and white woman to define who he is. The elite negro reaches a demigod status of honorary American. To be clear I'll name two honorary Americans that can be used as standard to judge others. Clarence Thomas and Condoleezza Rice. 

Allow me to be clear once again membership to the republican party does not automatically label a Negro a uncle tom, traitor, house Negro or any of the sort. I for one do not believe in such terms. These negroes do not believe themselves white (as far as I can know inside anyones mind) instead they believe that they transcend race and the traditional term of "black" or "Negro" as used to describe someone of low class standing and little political and social influence. These elite Negroes, honorary americans, or super Negroes as they will be henceforth called feel far removed from the American Negro image that America sells around the world. Either through money, or through marriage, or through job they feel that the worries and concerns of Negroes do not concern them, or at least enough so that they bring attention to them, rather they want to bring attention to their own success. 

What is worth noting about the two honorary American examples given in this essay is their own personal experience with  discrimination. Having lived through the age of MLK and having experienced discrimination and having to often out preform the Americans around them we can assume that the Super Negroes are under no illusion about how they are seen in American eyes, or in the very least what it means to be a Negro in America. 

So what is it that makes these Super Negroes who were sometimes the only Negroes in their class, the first Negro in their family to graduate college to then turn away from the race and reach for all the symbols of success in capitalist America? Is it their shame, does one need to self explain why they made "success" and so many others did not. Or is there a "selling of the soul" needed to have so much success in America? Does the Negro need to seem less threatening to America to have certain positions of prominence prestige and promise. Are the super Negroes simply doing what is needed to survive in America. Racial unity isn't exactly a hall mark of strength in the black community. Can the Super Negroes be blamed for turning and embracing American wealth and power? Do not so many Americans do the same toward their fellow countrymen? So what it is, is it shame, is it greed, is it the American way of life?

It is a combination of all these things but for the Negro one thing is very clear and very sure. We cannot afford more super Negroes. My generation must not produce the kind of money loving, status worshipping,American greed capitalist that continue to take from us and give little back. It is true that a rising tide lifts all boats but we have serious leaks in our boat and we wont get any higher until our leaders, until our elite until, our speakers of our race help mend the leaks that plague us as a community and as a Nation. 

If it is safe enough for a white woman..

If it is safe enough for a white woman to cross the street then it is safe enough for me.

Sometimes I notice that I will only dart across the street risking my neck to cross the road a few seconds faster if I see a American person casually strolling down the way. 

America has taught me that is is dangerous to try to live your life by the example of American women. 

What I mean is this that as a young Negro male I cannot do the things of a young American woman. Now, of course no man can do exactly the things of the a woman and visa versa. The things that the American woman can do cannot be done by that of a Negro woman. I speak not of mental or physical limitations. I speak not of inherit genetic differences that disallow certain behaviors and capacities, I speak of social restraint. I speak of being free white and twenty one. 

The freedom that is offered to a young American woman is not the freedom offered to a young negro woman. Now, we must ask ourselves how can this be if we indeed live in a land of fully free people with blind justice and equality to all under the law. How can this be?

America has taken down the colored only signs but now instead of de jure segregation we now have de facto segregation. Our national highschool lunchrooms are evidence of this. We see evidence of this in the fact that the national media will scowere the world in search for a missing American woman. 

There is a certain invisiblity when it comes to the white race. It is my firm belife that we know how aggressive the United States will behave towards the Negro in watching how the United States behaves towards its own Americans. 

Black Mistrust

When I first arrived in Washington DC I was romantically in love with Howard University. Since my arrival more than two years ago my relationship with the school has cooled considerable. Where I once day dreamed of myself as one day attending the school I now think I would haver trouble going to the school even if I was given a free ride. 

I know that is saying a lot given the soaring price of a college education now a days, not to mention that Howard is a private institute. Still there is something that repels me from the school, it is the same things that attracts me to the school. At a young age and more than once I learned the fallacy of choosing a school or making academic decisions based on lust or based on pursuit of a woman. (Something i oddly enough may yet do again) I cannot go to Howard because in short I know that I would be distracted by the woman. I say this not because I am strikingly handsome, I say this not because I think myself irresistible. My modesty and self deprecation allow me to say the contrary, and yet the reason that I cannot go to the school still remains because of the women. Regardless of the fact of my level of attractiveness would not stop me from finding their dress and very basic womanly nature attractive. I knowing myself as what I would regard as a weak man do not even want to put myself in the direct line of fire of the lustful walk and appearance of the woman of Howard.

However that would all be very immature just for me to say that I cannot go to Howard because the woman are too attractive and I am to much of a weak man to control my sexual urges. It is more to it than that. It is the fact that black run anything has the stereotype of being ill run. I find through recounts of first hand experiences that Howard suffers from black mistrust and mishandling. In my attempts to gain employment I saw first hand how unprofessional the staff is and how the tint of ones skin garnishes one extra attention. This is disgusting. One thing I will never have is patience for the practice in the black community of racism within its self. But this is not an essay so I will not rant in that way. I will admit that I am harsher on Negroes than I am on any other race. Yet that is a reason why i want to take at least a few classes of some kind at the school.

I know from hearing stories from the several professors and students that the social life of Howard is demanding. I have long given up on trying to be social at school, if a friendship develops it develops but I am not one for going out and drinking with classmates. I am not one to really care about the latest clothing trends or trying to impress my class mates with how "cool" and uncaring I can be about certain topics. I learned the hard way that employers do not care about how cool you are or how fashion forward you may be, just as long as you have the education to back up your presence in their office. That is my motivation in school now, education. Yet I want to be challenged by Howard, I want to be held to a higher standard that Negroes will hold to each other when Americans are not around.

It feels me with dread and a bit of self loathing to know that I am thinking of not going to a historically black school when I have the chance all because I do not trust the Negro education system.(Or the American one for that matter) So what does that make me? A traitor? A sell out? The dreaded uncle tom? 

We should be free

There is a museum in Baltimore. A slave museum which I have heard from two separate negroes is moving and inspirational. 

I am afraid to visit it. I am too impressionable, the things that seem to stir nothing in my fellow Negroes seems to send me into a blind rage, no anger, no it feels more like righteous indignation. See I don't look to hurt nothing I look to change everything.  I wish to erase the shame that seems to follow my race like a cloud of disgrace. Like we did something before our father's father grandfather time. Why haven't we done our time, why are we always in chains, why are we always slaves. Why are we at the bottom of a trade we ourselves invented. 

I guess this is our fault eh? For being the first to use it we get the full abuse of it? That excuse is old as Noah. We have no limitations, there should be no intimations or false interpretations of ancient words. We are not descendants of slaves and have no where to go but up. The top may be lonely as the rich man is no friend of God. But we at the bottom, we at the bottom who are last, to us he says we shall be first! Because the Lord is our shepherd, the lord is the fighter for the meek, the shield for the humble and the glory of the last. 

It is not us who shine but the Lord shining through us. 

It is what scares me away from that museum, see it is in the history of our complete defeat as humans I see our strength as a people. We needed to be free and free we became. We need to be united in our freedom and united we will be. It is the hope of every single slave that never made it to America. At the bottom of the Atlantic are drowned dreams of unity. And those dreams drowned in the transatlantic ocean have been slowly washing themselves ashore. It is now our great pleasure, it is our gift, it is now our honor to live the dreams of sacrificed negroes.

 It was not the ambition of the enslaved Negro to live a better life in this new land. That was the dream sold to the American Negro. It was the one and only goal of the Negro to unify himself with the others most like him and take his humanity back! It was the motivation of the Negro to not live in bondage and let us remember that bondage is not always done with chains one of the first chains we endured was the mental bondage of inferiority. The first in is the last to go as it is in all things. We negroes with our spirit near broken and our union in taters still cuddle on to the security bondage of inferiority. We believe this is how it will always be we cannot do any better so why bother making a change, just run for the cash and run out the hood. We can not stand each other like everyone else cannot seem to stand us. 

Our safety and security of our unity is gone, we are in a full blown civil war and outside interference keeps us fighting. Negroes, Black people, African-Americans they use to call us colored and a whole bunch of other names but it is all one in the same. They all identify a group of people as much as they are used to try and infer a status or certain behavior. 

We have nothing to fear of our past and have only to work towards our future, and our children's future and their grandchildren's future so that they do not have to live in a world where they wonder what you did wrong to God to make the negro race so low. It could be worse however, there could soon be no Negro at all. And then future civilizations will name underfunded sports teams after us.

Stay Black

As a young American Negro I sometimes find it hard not to detest my nation of birth.  I understand that my country does not always see me as a full citizen such truths have come to light for us all to witness due to the presidency of Barrack Obama. When things like "He is a muslim" would be said it was actually code words that means "He doesn't like white people." When the American thinks black muslim they  think Louis Farrakhan, the American thinks of Malcolm X. 

America feels threatened by African American males in part due to what they know is a 'justice' that deserves to be paid out to it. In the collective minds of Americans they are well aware that the sins of this nation has yet to be atoned for. What I mean is this, collective white guilt is a very real thing and the United States has a guilty conscious. The United States figures that surly its former slaves and current lower class must hate America. Why if America where in the Negroes shoes it would plot revolution and hold executions for everybody. 

This leads me to admit that I have a deep mistrust for Americans. I am sure that Glen Beck would love to get a hold of this. Yet if we do not admit that America has a mistrust of Negroes what good is it for me to admit such prejudice? Is the Negro the only one capable of holding a grudge? It is racist to think that just because America no longer holds slaves that America no longer is angry or violent towards Negroes. Why, America was upset with Negroes just for being freed slaves. There is no hiding the fact that since the Negro has arrived in the western world the western world has been hostile to the Negro. 

And yet at the same time I wish to move on and move forward. I do not wish the same ignorant pitfall of prejudice to befall the Negro as it has befallen the Americans. Take note that I do not say white, but i freely say Black, or Negro. That is because that when one says "American" one thinks of a white. No doubt, free white and twenty one, is the hallmark of being American. Being free, being white, and being old enough to drink and vote. That is what being an American is all about. I do not conclude that I am less American or that blacks are not American. No, I am indeed the new American negro. keenly aware that I am American and yet also more aware that I am still black as ever, and my country will never let me forget that.