President Obama & "Us"

I don't know how many times it has to be said to Black folks to unify and put their money where their mouth is to press our issues for the change we need. Folks seemed to think President Obama was the messiah or Black Santa Claus who was going to give them everything they ever wished for, or at least "hook a brotha up". NO, he's a politician not a magical genie and it doesn't work like that. He was never going to just "hook us up". You have to force politicians to work for you or they will gladly take your votes and put others before you that make their voices heard with their money. If you voted them into office that means you are their employer, so make them work for you or take action instead of just complaining. The reason others got what they got was because they made him work for them while we just keep marching, singing, rioting, and doing more of the same.

No, he didn't call the LGBT, Hispanics, Asians, or Whites "thugs", but they're in a position to make him mind his vocabulary concerning them, so he watches more closely what he says. Yes, President Obama is a black man but he has no reason to respect the Black Community because we haven't made ourselves a unified voice or economic power to be respected, and as a result we get neglected. This is politics, not "homie hookups". Nationwide we have more Black elected officials than we've seemed to ever have and yet we've made little to no progress. Where's this mythical "Black Power"? At some point we have to learn our lesson, because if we do get another Black President but remain the same then we should expect the same. I'm not an Obama supporter but the truth is the truth. A Black man finally got to run the country after White folks had broken it real good and didn't want the job but were looking for a "scapegoat". Here comes the perfect one, the chosen one, "a nigger named Barack".

I know you don't like me saying that, but I said it for effect because that is how he has been treated by this Congress since he came into office, and how he was even viewed by the Clinton family; who many of us in the Black Community worship as if their farts have the "new car smell" with a hint of baby powder. No scandal or moral failing has plagued President Obama like those before him, but no President in history has been treated as disrespectfully as him, and the high degree of racial inequities and incidents we've witnessed are consequences of it because those who oppose him with racist, white supremacist, bigoted sentiments are contagiously paranoid & angry. It is senseless for us to keep marching to only end up going nowhere but in circles to keep doing more marching for the same things. We're the only group who after we finish protesting go back to our communities and don't put finances behind what we just protested for to dictate the politics of our communities. 

The purpose of a protest is to show a unified front focused on the same goals, but it is an empty action that becomes nothing more than emotional symbolism and wasted spectacle if not followed through with unified economic actions. We are entering the election year of 2016 and some of us are going to vote along traditional party lines like we always have, or for a "first" of something like a woman President regardless of whether or not the folks we're voting for give a care in this world for our condition as a people. I guess we're just hardwired to be gullible?!? In any case, if we don't change then there will be no change no matter how much the person running for any of these offices shouts "CHANGE!" in their speeches like President Obama did. I blame us, and it's time we started taking the blame to be accountable for the changes not happening that we can make first among ourselves.  ~ I.J. West   

MATTHEW 11:16-17 (CEB); “To what will I compare this generation? It is like a child sitting in the marketplaces calling out to others, We played the flute for you and you didn’t dance. We sang a funeral song and you didn’t mourn."