Obama’s Schemes to Tiptoe Past the Devil

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by BAR executive editor Glen Ford

Barack Obama likes to pretend that he is a deeply spiritual man, but he failed to sneak past the white gods of retribution when it appeared Obama paid insufficient homage to the greatness of the American historical legacy. The Senator thought he could sneak his way between the National White American Gods, most of them slaveholders and Indian-killers, and the Black guardians of American’s true history of genocide, chattel slavery and constant aggressive war. Obama got caught by both sides, and wound up mumbling gibberish about holding a dialogue between irreconcilable belief systems. In fact, Obama has maneuvered himself into a position of irrelevance to both sides.

In the next weeks and months you are going to hear a great deal from Black Agenda Report and Black Agenda Radio about the various proposals for some kind of dialogue on race in the United States. Let me make it clear from the beginning: we at BAR are not interested in any kind of verbal duel with liars. There are facts, and there are lies. The most important fact relating to the history of the United States is that it was created in a centuries-long project of human extermination, and replacement of those murdered Native American millions by millions of Africans who were then classified as beasts whose only reason for living was to serve the every whim of the white winners of those two continental race wars. Now that, of course, is the truth that is celebrated as a kind of white national religion. The general belief is that God was in favor of killing 19 out of every 20 or so Native Americans, to make way for Europeans to steal two continents, and that God also favored the kidnapping of millions of Africans in order to make the European Americans extraordinarily rich. This White American God likes his people to be rich, and doesn’t much care how they go about becoming so. He blesses the fact that the U.S. spends as much money on weapons as the rest of the world, combined. U.S. imperialism, it appears, is God’s will, according to the American religion.

Barack Obama had a plan. He knew that the only way a Black man could possibly stand a chance of becoming president of the United States was to pledge allegiance to the national white historical narrative, or religion – the Big Lie that says God wanted all those Indians dead and Africans enslaved, for some higher purpose that will be worked out sometime in that sweet by-and-by. Very few Black folks buy into the Ridiculous White Lie, but Barack Obama thought that a combination of his rich backers on Wall Street and the near-universal support among Blacks would allow him to safely walk a thin line between the competing white and Black fires and brimstones of totally opposite narratives on the history and nature of the United States. The two stories cannot possibly be reconciled. One is true, and the other is a lie. Now Obama is caught in between, the mumbling man.

Does Barack Obama really want to engage in a dialogue on the facts of race in America? Of course not. That was never his plan. A real dialogue means solving real problems – problems of unearned white privilege and power. What else is there to talk about? What other change is worth having? One million Black men and women are in prison at any given moment. We have already done hundreds of studies on why African Americans are incarcerated in such huge numbers. We don’t need a dialogue about this great injustice. We need our sisters and brothers set free.

That’s the only conversation I think is worth having with Barack Obama, his supporters, or his detractors.

For Black Agenda Radio, I’m Glen Ford.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaRadio.com
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