Can A Black Man Be President?

Adah Ward Randolph

Ohio University

            In 1852, Frederick Douglass said in one of his most famous speeches, “What Is Your Fourth of July to Me?” Douglass argued;

            FELLOW CITIZENS: PARDON ME, AND ALLOW ME TO ASK, WHY AM I CALLED upon to speak here today? What have I ors those I represent to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? And am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offerings to the national altar and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?

            What to the American slave is your Fourth of July? I answer, a day that reveals to him, more than all other days of the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation of the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States at this very hour.

            Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival . . (Meltzer, 1995, p. 75-76).

When Douglass wrote this critique of the United States ideal, because we have to remember that we are not the only America, he emphasized the United States’ failure to live its creed. Unlike other nations in the world, we had been founded on principles and ideals. Ideals that time and time again, people of color, women, and others have expounded on our inability to live up to the creed we so valiantly seek to protect. Often though, we are busy protecting and not assessing whether or not we actually live the creed. We ask men and women of all creeds to give their lives for a value that we hold, but do not live. When will we live it?

            In about two weeks, we will have yet another opportunity to see if we as citizens of the United States can live the creed; Can a Black Man Be President? This is the question I have been asking myself, and I am sure so many others have as well. What is funny, however, is that when I first heard of Obama, I supported him based on his stance on the policies and practices of our country. Many others, White, Black, Latino/a, or many hues, however, did not. Many doubted him and his vision; But, Obama’s vision has a link to our history where people of African descent or people of a darker hue as DuBois would argue have envisioned and fought to create their place in the United States—a free country. Still, the vision is a dream of freedom rather than a lived reality for many of the African diaspora.

            Langston Hughes, another great visionary, asked questions about dreams and the stance of America toward its darker brothers. In “I, Too Sing America,” he wrote:

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.

They send me to eat in the kitchen

When company comes,

But I laugh,

And eat well, And grow strong

Tomorrow,

I’ll sit at the table

When company comes,

Nobody’ll dare

Say to me,

“Eat in the kitchen,”

Then.

Besides,

They’ll see how beautiful I am

And be ashamed-

I, too, am America (Hughes & Bontemps, 1970, p. 182)

Is Obama American? This has been a pivotal question espoused by the Republican machine. And for Obama as it is for so many highly educated, competent Black Americans, the milieu is prove not possibility. Obama has to prove over and over again that he is American. Why? Because the creed built upon democratic ideals within a republic was never meant to include people of African descent. Is this not what Douglass sought to address some one hundred and fifty years ago? Did not Abraham Lincoln embody this sentiment when he too gave a speech on September 18, 1858, one-hundred years ago?

            I will say, then, that I am not nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social or political equality of the white and black races.

            I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, not of qualifying them to hold office, nor of intermarriage with white people; and I will say, in addition to this, that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality.

            Insomuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be [emphasis added] a position of superior and inferior, and I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race (Dickson, 1907, p. 3).

Lincoln dreamed too. But, even more importantly, Lincoln set policy, which limited the freedom of people of African descent whereby it has always been a positionality of prove not possibility. Clearly, white supremacy became a solid rock upon which the United States of America has stood for more than a century. If I asked Lincoln, or Vardaman the former Governor of Mississippi who in 1907 included Lincoln’s treatise in his essay on how “Mississippi Would Solve the Race Question,” Obama cannot be President of the United States of America (Harris, 1907). He is unequal. Has not this been the code word used by newscasters, newspapers, and by the Republican or Grand Old Party (GOP)? They have lived up to the republican ideals and have attempted to conserve (conservative) this land as a “white man’s land.” They have attacked and will probably continue to pull out every stereotype, unsaid black joke, and whatever they deem profitable to maintain their “power.”

In 1907, Harris Dickson in his article in The Saturday Evening Post concluded that the Governor of Mississippi Vardaman contended the “negro should never have been trusted with the ballot. He is different from the white man. He is congenitally unqualified to exercise the most responsible duty of citizenship. He is physically, mentally, morally, racially and eternally the white man’s inferior. There is nothing in the history of his race, nothing in his individual character, nothing in his achievements of the past nor his promise for the future which entitles him to stand side by side with the white man at the ballot-box” (Dickson, 1907, p. 3). Well, well, well. Enough said. Is this not the rhetorical platform of the Republican Party today? Will U.S. citizens of all races wise up? Will they critique our country the way that people of African descent have always had to because they too are American? Or will they too hark back to times of ole’ and believe in McCain’s superiority simply because he is White?

            People of African descent have always had a non-monolithic response to their experiences in the United States. Many never made it and jumped off the boat. Or revolted against their captures and died. Others lived only to never wake up from the nightmare. For those who survived and their descendants, underneath their differences has been the belief in the creed of OUR country. Obama embodies this in many ways. He is a symbol of what could be when Black and White truly live, work, and love together in equality. He is the promise of our creed. Obama is a lived reality. No matter how much U.S. citizens regardless of their position offer up their indecisiveness, it still reeks of part of our tradition as the U.S. which seeks to maintain the power of the few over the power of the many. The power which habitually tarnishes the dream and turns it into a nightmare for many on a daily basis regardless of race, class, gender, sexual preference and age.

            Frederick Douglass understood that “power concedes nothing without a demand.”(Metlzer, 1995, p. 105). OBAMA is demanding that we the PEOPLE decide. We are the GOVERNMENT. WE are AMERICA. And in 1938, seventy years ago, in his poem, “Let America Be America Again,” Langston Hughes professed;

O, yes,

I say it plain,

America never was America to me,

And yet, I swear this oath—

America will be!

An ever-living seed,

Its dream

Lies deep in the heart of me.

We, the people, must redeem

Our land, the mines, the plants, the rivers,

The mountains and the endless plain—

All, all the stretch of these great green states—

And make America again! (Hughes & Bontemps, 1970, p. 195)

Consequently, as Obama was birthed of the American Dream, he too is America. And in an America that lives up to his creed, we must demand, that we too, can have a Black President.

Bibliography

Dickson, H. (1907). ”The Vardaman Idea: How the Governor of Mississippi Would

            Solve the Race Question.” The Saturday Evening Post, April 27, V 179, No. 43,

            p. 3

Hughes, L. & Bontemps, A. (1970). The Poetry of the Negro, 1746-1970: An Anthology

            Edited by Langston Hughes & Arna Bontemp. New York: Doubleday, pp. 182,

            195

Meltzer, M. (1995). Frederick Douglass: In His Own Words. San Diego, CA: Hartcourt

            Brace & Company, pp. 75-76, 105.

The Obama Chronicles

By: Mary E. Weems, Ph.D.

John Carroll University

Last week, Adah suggested that our fourth blog respond to the question: Can a Black man be president? Something she and I have been pondering since we first learned that Obama had won the Democratic nomination and had a real chance at winning. In my head I answered hell yeah! Then immediately thought Where is Shirley Chisholm in the current political discourse?!

            In July of 1971, I was in the eleventh grade when Shirley Chisholm, a Black congresswoman from New York’s Twelfth District began considering a run for president. Back then the political climate for the few women who held political positions was even more sexist than it is today, 27 years later when White men still far outnumber any other group in the political landscape. Chisholm, often criticized by prominent Black men for being more interested in the plight of women, than the issues important to Black people, ran a grassroots campaign that spent approximately $300,000 in contrast to the approximately 1 billion dollars which represents the combined expenditures of the Obama and McCain camps (Freeman, 2008).

According to friend and supporter Jo Freeman, Chisholm, unlike Obama and McCain ran to represent the poor Black people who were and are still being ignored by the major candidates. Her slogan was “Unbossed and Unbought,” (Freeman, 2008), and one of her campaign buttons echoes Obama’s political platform “Catalyst for Change.” (Freeman, 2008). Yet, Chisholm’s campaign was virtually unsupported by the Black political machine of the day, including Jesse Jackson’s Operation PUSH, which according to Freeman, declined a request to allow Chisholm to speak in the building PUSH owned on the South side of Chicago: “I encountered this negative attitude toward Chisholm by black leaders when I went to Operation PUSH, headed by Rev. Jesse Jackson, for help getting [Chisholm] the ballot. Its headquarters was in the First Congressional District, on the other side of the University of Chicago from where I lived. I found no support, just mild disdain” (Freeman, 2008).

This morning (October 18, 2008), in the midst of one of the most challenging periods in America since the Great Depression, I heard a White-man McCain supporter use one sound bite from Obama’s brief encounter with Joe who’s-not-a-plumber, to accuse Obama of being a Marxist. This accusation has no foundation in reality, and like all of the subtle and not-so-subtle racists, anti-American references, smacks of the kinds of fear tactics which seek to tap into the worst in people focusing the eye of this political storm on the way people feel about communism, race, age, and gender instead of an economy on the brink of disaster; rapidly escalating unemployment rates; rampant mis-education in public schools; no-health care for too many; poverty; mortality rates for Black babies at third world levels; AIDS, and a rise in fear; hate crimes; and the exploitation of illegal immigrants.

Obama is a capitalist, and like his republican counterpart he’s barely uttered a sound about the below-middle-working class, let alone the poor since the beginning of his campaign. His reason the same one as every other political candidate for president—he wants to get elected and realizes that a focus on poverty, which in the American psyche remains the fault of the victim, would be the kiss of death. Fact is Obama, a descendant of a Kenyan father and a White American mother is not by blood connected to the institute of slavery. Yet, like the white privilege White folks enjoy though they had no part in its original construction, he has inherited the subtle and not-so-subtle racism that comes with the territory of a Black face still as unwelcome by millions in this country as even the idea of socialism or communism.

            Fast forward 27 years, and note that Jesse Jackson’s name is repeatedly brought up in both positive and negative ways as “the” Black candidate to make two serious runs for president in 1984, and 1988, as well as his desire to cut off Obama’s nuts, because of the comments Obama made in a Black church on Father’s Day regarding the need for Black men to take more responsibility for being fathers.

But, it’s as if Chisholm’s courageous, door opening run never happened, as if Jesse was the first Black to run as fast as his feet could carry him. He was not, and this disrespectful omission places a glaring light on the sexism that continues to have a death grip on this country in spite of Hillary’s run, in spite of Palin’s selection after one meeting with McCain, for the second most powerful position in this nation.

            One thing Chisholm, Jackson, and Obama have in common though is the initial lack of support by the majority of the Black politicians of their day who didn’t believe it was possible for a Black person to win the White House. This in spite of the fact that Chisholm’s run was just 4 years after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, ending an era that brought us the closest we’ve come to uniting as a nation.

In spite of Black politicians like John Lewis, James Clyburn, Julian Bond and many others who had achieved significant political clout by the time Jackson ran in 1984, and in spite of Obama’s political beginnings in Chicago, at the grassroots community level that used to be one of the of dues paying requirements to hold even a local political office—too many Black people, including me, did not believe enough to even dream a Black man could be president.

            Yet, millions of us and many of our White, and non-white counterparts were secretly holding our breaths, praying, and wishing at the same time that some way, somehow, Obama’s desire would manifest into something possible. As James Clyburn articulates in a recent New York Times Article:

Here we are, all of a sudden, in the 60^th year after Strom Thurmond bolting the Democratic Party over a simple thing, something almost unheard of – because he did not want the armed forces to be integrated…here we are 45 years after the ‘I have a dream’ speech. Forty years after the assassinations of Kennedy and King. And this party that I have been a part of for so long, this party that has been accused of taking black people for granted, is about to deliver the nomination for the nation’s highest office to an African-American. How do you describe that?

(Bai, 2008).

During this same interview by NY Times political columnist, Matt Bai, Clyburn recounts part of a brief conversation he had with John Lewis right after the Georgia primary in February. “Lewis told [Clyburn] sadly that after all these years, they were finally going to see history yield to the forces they had unleashed ‘and I’m on the wrong side.’” (Bai, 2008)

            But it was comedian Chris Rock who said it best, just as Hillary was pumping up the anti-Obama volume, when he cracked just before he introduced Obama in Harlem, last November “You’d be real embarrassed if he won and you wasn’t down with it, the comedian Chris Rock joked…You’d say: Awww, I can’t call him now! I had that white lady! What was I thinking? (Bai, 2008)” Encapsulating in a few words how I felt, when I realized this brother was the real deal, that it wasn’t about the hype, it was about a spiritual moment in American history, an unwavering vibe emanating from Obama, his wife, his children and everything around him—that made me realize I was in the wrong camp. The next day, the Obama Chronicle poems started to come.

            From what Clyburn described to Bai during his interview, I believe he had a similar experience with Dr. King when he was alive:

Clyburn…told me that the photo was taken in 1967, nine months before King’s assassination, when rumors of violence were swirling, and somewhere on the side of the room a photographer’s floodlight had just come crashing down unexpectedly. At the moment the photo was taken, everyone…has just jerked their heads in the direction of the sound, with the notable exception of King himself, who remains in profile, staring straight ahead at his audience. Clyburn prizes that photo. It tells the story…of a man who knew his fate but who, quite literally, refused to flinch (Bai, 2008).

Suddenly I felt different. Spiritually lighter, more hopeful (I’m an optimist but had been feeling a cold-to-the-bone sense of despair), as if I were about to get a wonderful gift—the kind you can’t buy. I started re-membering growing up in the 60s knowing there was one thing a Black person could never be, even if we did overcome the blatant, segregated, level of hatred prevalent back then—president of the United States. I could see grandpa, and uncle Butch, and my brother all letting that thought enter then quickly exit their minds, like a wish they couldn’t say out loud. I could picture Sojourner Truth standing in all her regal Blackness in front of all those white folks proclaiming a womanhood reserved for White women. I knew, like Scrooge in A Christmas Carol that I’d been given a second chance to do the right thing. The next day I wrote the first poem, and in the next two days thirteen new Obama poems were in the world. One of the first poems is set in a Heaven where Black people are still paying attention:

Kwansaba for Obama

Malcolm X, Martin, and Moms Mabley meet

in the change center in heaven. Others

shoot the breeze, share stories about earth.

But they read, use their super powers

listen to brothers on the corner talk,

hot debates in barber and beauty shops.

Holla joyful noises, wish they were alive.

Unlike Obama’s white counterparts who have no discernible identity issue, some white folks want to claim Obama based upon his white ancestry. Though Obama identifies as Black, they claim a bi-racial identity for him as if they are his parents and have decided his whiteness will take precedence. Why? Is it a sign of the times? White folks didn’t want to claim Langston Hughes, who was even lighter than Obama—his light skin often making him feel as if he didn’t belong in either world, yet he still believed in America’s promise. I remembered Hughes’ poem “Let America Be America Again,” and realized that America has never been what it calls itself:

Let America Be

No matter how ballets fall

America will never be America

again, people by the tens of thousands

lined up like freedom’s waiting at the end,

different colors come together

wearing white and blue collars, young

people wake up like Rip,

like they have been paying attention.

I started slow, a Hillary

woman, I listened to the old Black

guard, believed it unbelievable

a brother could run faster than

the last three, that white folks

weren’t ready, that mission

impossible was a television

show. Now I know from way rooms change

when he speaks, signs move through air,

way young voices can’t stop talking when asked,

that something has shifted, like earth

before a quake, and nothing in this country

will ever be the same.

According to one political commentator, one of the things that would not be the same was the way the political process would operate once the primaries were over:

Civil War

It’s the a.m. and the political commentator

is white, white shirted, on time.

His comments flow from a well-fed mouth.

I’m sitting in my seat on a natural high, Obama

runs, and he is not hope-less. He follows

a path cut by Chisolm, a Black woman whose

name is never mentioned in the list of men.

I stop a grimace about this as he mentions

Hillary, Obama, and Civil War in one breath

like lyrics to a song. He’s talking war

within the democratic party if Obama

wins the nomination, not the usual

whoever wins the others will support jargon

of every other presidential election—war!

A word I’m familiar with as a child of the city,

the nitty gritty, where everybody’s got a hustle,

the kind of making ends meet occupation

that puts food on tables that stay subject

of white folks’ conversation. I hear cannon fire,

freedom, color of flags, dead soldiers, land grabs,

an emancipation proclamation written by a slave owner.

I see Plan A, B, C, D, designed to address a single “Negro”

problem—hear the sounds ballets make

turned to bullets.

That war within the Democratic Party has not been forthcoming but the not-so-usual war of words between the Democrats and the Republicans has been enhanced by its own brand of fear-based aromatherapy—the smell of race. From the Obama monkey doll, to the celebrity-status construction built with the images of two of the most media-over-exposed, blond, white females of the day—Paris Hilton, and Britney Spears, to using his middle name and association with long-ago militant Bill Ayers to label Obama a terrorist, to a McCain supporters Marxist label after Obama suggested spreading the wealth in a brief encounter with Joe-who’s-not-a-plumber, to the McCain-Palin socialist remark, to the fried chicken, watermelon, rib eating Black man on an Obama Buck, Food Stamp flyer, the shit runs deep as a just filled well hole. The insults are flying and all that’s missing is Al Jolson in Black face.

In spite of McCain camp efforts to turn the focus away from the messed up state of America, people all over the country continue to work in the best organized, grassroots campaign of my lifetime. Today, October 19^th, two weeks before the general election Republican, Colin Powell, a long time friend and supporter of McCain, appeared on Meet the Press to endorse Barack Obama as someone who is seeking a “more diverse and inclusive way across our society…[providing a] calm, patient, intellectual, steady approach” to America’s many problems (Bunmiller, 2008).” While according to Bai, Powell also referenced having a problem with the way McCain has falsely accused Obama of being in cahoots with terrorists, as well as his concern that too many Americans believe Obama is a Muslim, as reasons for his endorsement—I suspect his reasons are also more like I felt the day I shifted my support to Obama—he’s the right man for the job, it’s the right thing to do, and the right time to do it.

Given the current economic climate of foreclosures, stock crashes, unemployment, high food and gas prices all crashing like bowling pins after a strike, at the end of an eight year Bush term, if Obama was white, this campaign would be a horse of a different color—He would be giving McCain a beat down in the polls, and McCain would be dusting off his CV for his next political endeavor. In spite of all the hype to try to convince those who are not paying attention otherwise—race matters, and it matters big time—if not there’d be no need for this blog. I’d have spent the last two days planning the kind of celebration my family’s going to have once Obama’s officially voted into the White House:

Obama’s Eyes

Are so deep brown

I see blue in them

ocean water

bones rising

right fists raised.

In response to Adah’s question: Can a Black man be President? I end with an excerpt from Obama’s speech on race:

…[A]t this moment in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.” This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time, we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can’t learn; that those kids who don’t look like us are somebody else’s problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21^st century economy. Not this time.

…I would not be running for President if I didn’t believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation – the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election (Obama, 2008).

Work Cited

Bai, Matt. August 8, 2008. Obama Rpt: Is Obama the end of black politics? http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/10/magazine/10politics-t.html?hp .

Accessed October, 18, 2008.

Bunmiller, Elisabeth. Ocotber 19, 2008. Powell Endorses Obama. http://www.truthout.org/article/101908Y. Accessed October 19, 2008.

Freeman, Jo. February, 2005. Shirley Chisolm’s 1972 presidential campaign. http://www.jofreeman.com/polhistory/chisholm.htm. Accessed October 17, 2008.

Obama, Barack. March 12, 2008. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88478467&sc=emaf.

            Accessed October 20, 2008.

Weems, Mary E. (2008). An unmistakable shade of red and the Obama Chronicles.

            Huron: Bottom Dog Press.