[News] Barack Obama versus Black Self-Determination

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=636&Itemid=1

Wednesday, 28 May 2008

by BAR executive editor Glen Ford

One of the great ironies of the current campaign season, is the 
assumption by so many Black voters that by supporting Barack Obama 
for president, they are making a real contribution to African 
American self-determination. Nothing could be further from the truth. 
The candidate, himself, is mightily opposed to the principle of 
African American self-determination, as he revealed in great detail 
and beyond doubt in rejecting Rev. Jeremiah Wright's narrative on 
America's origins. Obama also has no more respect than other 
corporate politicians for principles of international law and the 
sovereignty of nations. Should he win the presidency, U.S. 
militarization of African will continue, as will American bullying of 
its Latin American neighbors.

Barack Obama versus Black Self-Determination
by BAR executive editor Glen Ford

"Obama has repeatedly telegraphed his contempt for any worldview that 
fails to glorify the U.S. rise to global dominance."
Obama-ism - a thoroughly corporate political concoction soaked with 
banalities and wrapped in fraudulent brown packaging - presents a 
clear and present danger to perhaps the greatest legacy of the Black 
Freedom Movement: African Americans' embrace of their right to 
self-determination.  Although African American yearnings for 
self-determination are evident in all previous eras, the general and 
dramatic emergence of this fundamental understanding among Blacks of 
their distinct "peoplehood" and inherent right to shape their own 
collective destiny, free of veto by or need for validation from 
dominant whites, marks the Sixties as a transformational period in 
African American history.

Barack Obama, whose disdain for what he calls the 
"<http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=501&Itemid=1>excesses 
of the 1960s and 1970s" is palpable, seeks to eradicate all vestiges 
of Black self-determination, root and branch. The Senator has never 
made a secret of his intentions, dating from his 2004 Democratic 
National Convention declaration that "there is no Black America," to 
his categorical 
rejection<http://www.inrich.com/cva/ric/news.apx.-content-articles-RTD-2008-04-30-0129.html> 
of the Black counter-narrative of American history, as preached by 
Rev. Jeremiah Wright and understood by most African Americans.

Obama has revealed himself as a rabid nationalist of the standard, 
white America variety. "I categorically denounce any statement that 
disparages our great country," says Obama - which pretty much says it 
all. The candidate has repeatedly telegraphed his contempt for any 
worldview that fails to glorify the U.S. rise to global dominance - a 
ritual that collides instantly with truth as it actually exists, with 
history as Black people have known it, and with Black aspirations to 
make their own way in the world unencumbered by the burden of white 
lies. Obama promises that he will oppose, with all the powers of his 
office, those who, like Rev. Wright, "use incendiary language to 
express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial 
divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness 
of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike." 
(Philadelphia 
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/18/obama-race-speech-read-t_n_92077.html>"Race" 
speech, March 18.)

If Obama were already president, dissidents would have cause to shop 
for a safehouse or foreign getaway.

Victims as Perpetrators

Clearly, if the United States is inherently good, then Black people 
and Native Americans must have done something catastrophically wrong 
to bring down upon themselves such suffering at the hands of the U.S. 
government - not to mention the sins committed by Vietnamese, 
Nicaraguans, Angolans and all the other peoples that have gotten in 
the way of white American Manifest Destiny.

President Obama will wage war against the heresies of deviant 
worldviews that dare to question America's moral superiority - as 
exemplified by Rev. Wright's "profoundly distorted view of this 
country - a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates 
what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America."

If racism is merely an aberration in American life, as Obama believes 
- and which is the greatest concession that general white society is 
prepared to make to Blacks - then all the fuss about institutional 
racism, endemic police brutality and such are insults to the 
"national honor." Certainly, Obama behaves as if he thinks so. Every 
manifestation of Black entitlement to self-determination - that is, 
the right to rely on one's own people's collective memory and sense 
of the truth - must, from Obama's standpoint, be resisted, denounced 
and suppressed as "divisive" and, in general, against the national interest.

In order for Obama's vision of America to be true, most of Black 
America must be liars, Black self-determination equals treason, and 
the Sixties era was the Mother of Corruption.

Sixties Transformation

A half-century ago, in a veritable end-of-marathon sprint to 
self-emancipation, Black Americans not only achieved full legal 
citizenship within barely the space of a decade, but in the process 
threw off the chains of subservience to the oppressor's national 
historical narrative, the legitimizing mythology of white American 
Manifest Destiny. Inevitably, and in the glare of a global 
anti-colonial firestorm, African Americans finally perceived en masse 
the true nature of the centuries-old crime still-in-progress - that 
distinct and peculiar monstrosity, U.S. imperialism. Born of the 
Middle Passage and Pilgrims making bonfires of Pequot Indian women 
and children, 20th Century U.S. aggression against mainly non-white 
peoples abroad was inextricably linked to chain gangs and street cop 
justice at home. African Americans focused their "third eye" that 
could see across oceans and centuries, a political optic that 
discerned not just blood kin on The Continent, but peoples on other, 
distant shores, also victims of Euro-American predation, and equally 
deserving of Black solidarity.

"U.S. aggression against mainly non-white peoples abroad was 
inextricably linked to chain gangs and street cop justice at home."

African American solidarity with continental Africans - and with 
Vietnamese who "never called me nigger" - grew in tandem with the 
Black domestic struggle for self-determination: the fight for 
political rights with which to defend, control and shape the futures 
of Black communities. It is a truism that those who are engaged in 
struggle for their own people's self-determination are most sincerely 
empathetic towards others seeking liberation - especially when it is 
understood that the two peoples share a common antagonist. The period 
loosely defined as The Sixties saw not only unprecedented popular 
mobilization on domestic issues (10,000 separate demonstrations in 
1965, alone, the vast bulk of them "civil rights" related), but 
soaring Black identification with liberation movements elsewhere in 
the world. African Americans were preparing themselves to become full 
fledged citizens of the planet, not just the United States.

The language of self-determination, always a strong current in 
historical Black political thought, entered the popular Black 
vocabulary through Malcolm X. "We assert that we Afro-Americans have 
the right to direct and control our lives, our history, and our 
future rather than to have our destinies determined by American 
racists," declared Malcolm's Organization of African-American Unity 
(<http://www.malcolm-x.org/docs/gen_oaau.htm>OAAU<http://www.malcolm-x.org/docs/gen_oaau.htm>), 
in a document scheduled for release on the day of his assassination, 
February 21, 1965. "[W]e are determined to rediscover our true 
African culture, which was crushed and hidden for over four hundred 
years in order to enslave us and keep us enslaved up to today...."

Self-determination was item number one of the Black Panther Party for 
Self-Defense<http://www.marxists.org/history/usa/workers/black-panthers/1966/10/15.htm> 
Ten-Point 
Program<http://www.marxists.org/history/usa/workers/black-panthers/1966/10/15.htm>, 
promulgated in 1966:

"We Want Freedom. We Want Power To Determine The Destiny Of Our Black 
Community. We believe that Black people will not be free until we are 
able to determine our destiny."

Two years later, 100 Black nationalists in Detroit declared the 
founding of the Republic of New Africa 
(<http://socialjustice.ccnmtl.columbia.edu/index.php/Republic_of_New_Afrika>RNA<http://socialjustice.ccnmtl.columbia.edu/index.php/Republic_of_New_Afrika>), 
to further Blacks' entitlement to the full rights of a nation. 
Following the Nation of Islam's ideological lead and citing Malcolm X 
as the "Father of the Black Nation," the RNA identified five southern 
states - Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina 
- as the "Promised Land" for Black Americans.

The embrace of self-determination was not limited to the Black Left 
and land-seeking nationalists, but resonated throughout Black 
society, from Black capitalists to Marxists and everyone in between. 
There can be no doubt that the people who Dr. Martin Luther King was 
certain would 
"<http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkivebeentothemountaintop.htm>get 
to the promised 
land<http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkivebeentothemountaintop.htm>" 
were on a conscious, mass journey of self-determination. It was up to 
Black people to decide precisely where the ultimate destination might 
be - a question over which Dr. King agonized during the last years of 
his life. "I think we'll be integrating into a 
burning<http://www.michronicleonline.com/articlelive/articles/2384/1/Keeper-of-the-Dream/Page1.html> 
house," King told entertainer/activist Harry Belafonte, in 1968 - a 
clear acknowledgement that African Americans were not simply a darker 
variety of citizens, but a distinct people within the United States. 
King imagined that Blacks would play the role of firemen in the 
"American" house - but at any rate, that would be their choice to make.

"The call to self-determination was not limited to the Black Left and 
land-seeking nationalists, but resonated throughout Black society."

By definition, the right to self-determination is independent of 
minority or majority status - otherwise, no such right can exist in 
the face of white majority power. Therefore, self-determination 
transcends simple one-man, one-vote rule which, in the United States, 
affords historically hostile white majorities a permanent veto over 
Black aspirations. U.S. history has provided ample proof that 
electoral "democracy" is no cure for institutionalized suppression of 
racial minorities. With Voting Rights legislation secured by the 
mid-Sixties and understanding the limits of winner-take-all ballots, 
African Americans, including Dr. King, insisted on the right of 
Blacks to exercise effective power over their own lives as Blacks.. 
Naturally, such rights would obtain in the growing number of 
localities in which Blacks were emerging as majorities. However, the 
principles of self-determination, as interpreted at the time, 
demanded that Blacks and others claiming "peoplehood" be entitled to 
control those resources necessary for the development of their group 
independent of the majority's wishes - "rather than to have our 
destinies determined by American racists," as Malcolm's organization put it.

The domestic Black American application of self-determination 
principles were adapted from United Nations language that states: 
"All peoples have the right of self-determination. By virtue of that 
right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue 
their economic, social and cultural development."

The UN's International Covenant on Economic, Cultural and Economic 
Rights fit the Black liberationist sentiments of The Sixties to a 
tee. Just as small nations have rights that powerful nations are 
required to respect, so the Black minority in the United States has 
the right to speak and act for itself, and to claim a share of the 
national treasure for itself, regardless of majority claims and 
sentiments. In a world of evolving standards of civilization, true 
"democracy" does not allow the big to lord it over the small.

Although there was not to be a land-based Black "nation" within U.S. 
borders, the core principles of Black self-determination have been 
largely incorporated into the political outlook and expectations of 
African Americans, and grudgingly acquiesced to by most whites. 
Blacks and, later, other minority groupings in white institutions, 
most notably academia, demanded and received resources based on their 
standing as Blacks within the larger body. The autonomy of Black 
political sentiment has, until recently, been at least paid 
lip-service by whites throughout U.S. society. Indeed, much of what 
some whites mean-spiritedly call "playing the race card" is simply 
Black assertion of group rights and prerequisites that should not be 
curbed by white majorities. Television programs produced by and for 
Blacks, now nearly extinct, were responses to demands that Black 
people be allowed to speak for themselves - a right under the 
umbrella of self-determination. In Democratic Party circles, at 
least, "the Blacks" cannot appear to be left out of decision making 
exercises, which usually require the (cosmetic) presence of 
trustworthy African Americans as a semblance for Black group 
inclusion. The moral authority of Black caucuses (including that 
which has been frittered away by the Congressional Black Caucus) is 
derived from the larger authority of self-determination principles.

Solidarity

The 1960s Black embrace of political self-determination freed African 
Americans from the burdensome inheritance of United States' enemies. 
As<http://timesonline.typepad.com/comment/2007/01/mad_and_bad_or_.html> 
Muhammad 
Ali<http://timesonline.typepad.com/comment/2007/01/mad_and_bad_or_.html> 
is said to have declared in 1966, "No Vietnamese ever called me 
nigger." Self-determination meant the right to declare solidarity 
with whomever one chooses, to side with African kin in the struggle 
for decolonization of the continent while the U.S. thwarted true 
liberation at every turn; and to identify as friends those who shared 
status as designated enemies of the U.S. government, abroad.

"International law is treated as a dead letter, by corporate 
Democrats as well as Republicans."

During the Sixties, it was discovered that African Americans, whose 
foreign policy opinions had previously been only sporadically 
surveyed, were more opposed to American military adventures abroad 
than any other U.S. ethnic group. The basis of Black anti-war 
sentiment was rooted in, not some vague group pacifism, but the 
conclusion that Washington is a bully who revels in abusing persons 
of color (and gets rich doing it).

African Americans had amassed centuries of experience as victims of 
U.S. government policy, treated as foreigners in their own land. 
Blacks, therefore, harbor the healthiest skepticism about U.S. 
motives, especially regarding non-white peoples. The right of 
self-determination, as African Americans understood it, liberated 
Blacks from any obligation to support Washington's depredations 
around the world. Moreover, bonds of solidarity with Africa required 
active opposition to U.S. foreign policy.

For many Blacks, the "newfound" knowledge of self-determination 
principles meant, literally, the right to enjoy freedom of speech for 
the first time! African Americans had always understood that 
Washington cared as little for the interests of foreign non-whites as 
it did for "colored" folks at home. Now, they could shout it, without 
fear of being branded traitors - at least, not by other Black people. 
By 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King found 
his<http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm> 
true 
voice<http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm> 
and began speaking in what was essentially solidarity with the 
Vietnamese people.

Two generations later, the contradictions of ailing U.S. imperialism 
become ever more acute. The United States challenges as never before 
the rights of smaller nations to manage their own resources and 
political affairs as they see fit. International law is treated as a 
dead letter, by corporate Democrats as well as Republicans. Barack 
Obama is no different - except in the imaginations of his fans.

Obama plans to leave 60-80,000 U.S. troops in Iraq indefinitely, 
retain the services of many of the 140,000 private mercenaries 
(contractors) currently in the country, and add 92,000 additional 
soldiers and Marines to overall U.S. force structures - the same 
number the Bush regime requested from Congress. Far from being a 
peace candidate, Obama favors a huge increase in U.S. war-making 
capacity, in order to fight yet a third war while still mired in Iraq 
and Afghanistan.

Washington will have no problem finding locations for its new war(s).

Outside of the Middle East, the fault lines run through Africa and 
Latin America. George Bush has already begun the occupation of the 
Horn of African under the ruse of "anti-terror," with Ethiopia's 
brutal dictatorship acting as U.S. surrogate. Backed by every 
military resource of the United States, including the huge American 
base in Djibouti, the might of U.S. Indian Ocean naval and air power, 
and with U.S. Special Operations "advisors" deployed down to the 
company level, Ethiopia in late 2006 crushed the only stable 
government Somalia has had since 1994. The 
<http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=449&Itemid=1>U.S.-Ethiopian 
aggression created what United Nations officials describe as the 
"worst humanitarian situation in Africa" - worse than Darfur.

Barack Obama has had nothing to say about Somalia except to express 
outrage at his opponents posting pictures of himself dressed up in 
the garb of 
a<http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2008/02/26/1203788284463.html> 
Somali 
elder<http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2008/02/26/1203788284463.html>, 
during a visit to neighboring Kenya (Obama's father's homeland) 
several years ago. Suppression of Somali resistance to occupation 
threatens to destabilize Kenya, with its large Somali population, and 
Ethiopia, itself, where ethnic Somalis and others are in rebellion 
against the dictatorship.

It is fair to say that Somalia is the first African war to be tackled 
by the new American military command,<http://www.africom.mil/> 
Africom<http://www.africom.mil/>. So widespread is public opposition 
on the continent, fearing an attempt to re-colonize the region, no 
country has agreed to host the Africom. But 
Barack<http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?Itemid=37&id=434&option=com_content&task=view>Obama 
fully supports the robust U.S. military presence. "There will be 
situations that require the United States to work with its partners 
in Africa to fight terrorism with lethal force," said Obama. "Having 
a unified command operating in Africa will facilitate this action."
Obama's enthusiasm for swamping Africa in an ever-expanding "war on 
terror," is obvious.

On the western shores of the continent, Obama was rumored in early 
May to have proposed a 
<http://www.boston.com/news/world/africa/articles/2008/05/04/nigeria_oil_rebels_say_mulling_obama_truce_appeal/>cease 
fire in the guerilla war over oil resources in Nigeria's Niger River 
delta. The insurgents, who claim the central government excludes 
delta residents from the benefits of oil production, have also asked 
former President Jimmy Carter to 
<http://www.upi.com/International_Security/Energy/Analysis/2008/05/08/analysis_nigeria_rebels_eyes_us_race/4602/>mediate 
the dispute. Whether anything comes of either request, it is certain 
that Nigeria, Africa's number one oil producer, will always be a 
leading candidate for Africom intervention. The presence of guerillas 
in the delta is all the Americans - including, based on his own 
words, Obama - will need to invoke the terror threat.

"Far from being a peace candidate, Obama favors a huge increase in 
U.S. war-making capacity."

Venezuela claims that recent explorations confirm that the South 
American nation has surpassed Saudi Arabia in oil reserves. Barack 
Obama is nearly as bellicose as John McCain when it comes to 
Venezuela's  "rogue" leader, President Hugo Chavez - 
a<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Ch%C3%A1vez> hugely 
popular<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Ch%C3%A1vez> politician who 
was fairly elected three times under the watchful eyes of 
international observers. But democratic credentials don't matter to 
American politicians anxious to prove they can warmonger with the 
meanest blowhards in the pack. His predictable yet perilous mix of 
anti-American rhetoric, authoritarian government, and checkbook 
diplomacy offers the same false promise as the tried and failed 
ideologies of the past.

Obama growls about bringing sanctions against Venezuela for allegedly 
undermining its neighbor, Columbia, Washington's narco-death 
squad-client-state. With the U.S. guzzling down 60 percent of 
Venezuela's oil exports, and plenty of other customers willing to 
take America's place, the sanctions threat is just plain silly. But 
Obama's hostility to Chavez (who does not return the insult, even 
when Obama derides Chavez's "predictable yet perilous mix of 
anti-American rhetoric, authoritarian government, and checkbook 
diplomacy") is a bad omen for peace in the region.

The U.S. supports secessionist efforts by the moneyed classes in 
Venezuela and its two closest allies, Ecuador and Bolivia. Not 
coincidentally, all three plots are centered in the countries' main 
oil or gas-producing regions. Another coincidence: after 60 years 
deactivation, the U.S. Navy this month revived 
its<http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gTydi81nrsoFzDYW6KqZpbMgaj7A> 
Fourth 
Fleet<http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gTydi81nrsoFzDYW6KqZpbMgaj7A>, 
with responsibility for South and Central America. Evo Morales, 
President of Bolivia, called it "the Fourth Fleet of intervention."

The spark can come any time the Americans decide to set off a 
regional conflict. Barack Obama, the phony peace candidate, is 
already providing warlike rhetoric, vowing to support Colombia if it 
repeats incursions into neighboring  Ecuador or Venezuela in search 
of FARC "terrorists."

"We will support Colombia's right to strike terrorists who seek 
safe-haven across its borders," Obama promised Cuban exiles and their 
progeny in Miami.  "And we will shine a light on any support for the 
FARC that comes from neighboring governments. This behavior must be 
exposed to international condemnation, regional isolation and - if 
need be - strong sanctions. It must not stand."

The Southern Color Line

The renewed American threats to Latin American sovereignty occur when 
Black, brown and indigenous (Indian) populations throughout the 
region are in the midst of a political awakening, a deep social 
transformation in which Venezuela's Chavez, Bolivia's President Evo 
Morales and Ecuador's President Rafael Correa are major players. The 
non-whites of Latin America are asserting their rights to 
self-determination - that is, their rights as Indians, or as persons 
of African descent, regardless of majority or minority status in 
society. Where they are majorities, non-whites are seizing political power.

Long retarded by the fiction that Latin America has no racial 
problem, people of color are finally confronting the racial 
dimensions of Latin American poverty (disproportionately non-white) 
and oligarchy (always white).
As usual, the U.S. is on the white oligarchy's side. So is Barack 
Obama, whose support for the oligarchic, super-corrupt Colombian 
regime amounts to backing a barbaric, color-coded caste system. One 
need not be fluent in Spanish to understand the meaning of political 
cartoons in the newspapers of the rich that portray Hugo Chavez as a monkey.

African Americans and Solidarity

Wider war is coming to South American and Africa, an inevitability 
given the Democrats' failure to choose a real alternative to the 
Republicans. There is absolutely no indication that Barack Obama (or 
his fading political twin, Hillary) will disassemble the U.S. foreign 
policy elements that were put in place specifically as trip wires for 
and facilitators of wars. Quite the opposite. Obama will maintain 
over one hundred thousand military and civilian personnel in Iraq, 
with others "over the horizon"; step up the militarization of Africa 
through Africom, continue backing the Ethiopian occupation of 
Somalia, and possibly draw neighboring Eritrea into a larger 
conflict; attempt to destabilize Hugo Chavez and other progressive 
leaders of mostly non-white constituencies in Latin America, with the 
aim of seizing control of fossil fuel resources.

"We have still not forgotten our self-determination right to declare 
solidarity as Black people with whomever we choose."

African Americans, despite their relative quiescence compared to the 
roiling Sixties, will respond to these aggressions through solidarity 
with Washington's victims on both continents. After 40-plus years, we 
have still not forgotten our self-determination right to declare 
solidarity as Black people with whomever we choose. We can 
confidently predict that President Obama will overreact to dissent, 
especially to significant Black protest. He already revealed his 
character and core worldview in the confrontation with Rev. Jeremiah 
Wright. Let us revisit the incident:

Barack Obama's denunciation of Rev. Wright's narrative on American 
society's genesis in genocide and slavery - a narrative with which 
the vast majority of Blacks are in general agreement - was in fact a 
demand that Blacks cease telling their own story, in deference to 
white opinion and the foreign policy interests of the United States.

In framing Rev. Wright's critique of the United States as "not only 
wrong but divisive," Obama came perilously close to charging the 
minister and those who think like him with something resembling 
"un-American" activities. Wright's worldview, said Obama, is 
"divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time 
when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems - 
two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health 
care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that 
are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems 
that confront us all."

In short, Blacks of Wright's political persuasion are culpable for 
more crimes against the planet than Hitler's propagandists blamed on 
the Jews. If any of this were even half-true, most people would agree 
that all those who sympathize with Rev. Wright should be silenced and 
imprisoned, for the sake of humanity!

Barack Obama is not yet president, or even the Democratic nominee, 
but he has already made it clear that he believes African Americans 
are obligated to uphold the honor and reputation of the United States 
under any and all circumstances, refrain from actions or statements 
that might create "division," and avoid agitation for either their 
own rights to self-determination or anybody else's.

I think I smell a thug.

---------

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted 
at<mailto:Glen.Ford at BlackAgendaReport.com> Glen.Ford at BlackAgendaReport.com
<mailto:Glen.Ford at BlackAgendaReport.com>This e-mail address is being 
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