Barack Obama and Vicimology

Barack Obama is closer this morning to becoming the Democratic nominee for president. America is seriously considering electing an African American for President for the first time in our country’s history.

Nobody in my white family is rich or especially privileged. Nobody in my family has ever been elected to office or been in a powerful position. We are a successful family for the most part, but simple middle class folk. Our younger generation is mostly college graduates and everyone is employed and doing well, but we aren’t power brokers.

By contrast, Barack Obama graduated from Harvard Law and has become a Senator of the United States. Barack is Black. Clarence Thomas is a justice in the Supreme Court. Clarence is Black. Colin Powell was recently the Secretary of State and was a general. Condoleeza Rice followed as Secretary of State. Both Black. Oprah, Quincy Jones, Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods and the list of brilliant and successful Black people goes on and on.

My point is that a Black person truly has the same level of opportunity as a white person in America whether Barack wins the election or not. And he probably will, I hope he does. Where does that leave all the angry Black people who have been brainwashed into thinking they are disenfranchised? Do the scenes of cheering crowds at Obama rallies have no effect? Do they not see in him something of themselves and receive some vicarious tingle of acceptance that Obama’s candidacy represents? What of all the other prominent and popular Black people, do they not notice the difference between the lifestyle of victim and that of victor? Black victimology is a vestige of civil rights popular among people who never transitioned to the new reality in America that Barack represents.

Where are Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton now? Where are these leaders who have been around since the struggle for equal rights began? Why aren’t they hosting victory parties and telling everyone that it is now Ok to struggle for a living because with the old racist barriers lowered you can now win the struggle? Tell the people they aren’t victims any longer and they don’t have to live looking for a KKK member behind every bush. Why aren’t Jesse and Al and others now coming forward as the sage old men of "The Dream"? I think they should all take a victory lap or two, drape themselves in the American flag and give everyone a high five.

It seems to me that the distinction between living as a Black victim in America and living as a Black victor in America has never entered the consciousness of many of the surviving civil rights leaders. This is why the Reverend Wright has had to be cast aside by Barack. Barack could no longer pretend that he supported the idea that a Black man has to live in a state of victimhood because his life is an example that it’s simply no longer true. It certainly isn’t a message that the majority of Americans believe any longer and isn’t that proof enough that Black victimology is a vestige of an ugly chapter we’ve successfully rewritten. Fighting to establish long-denied rights consumed the leaders of the civil rights movement, it was their message, their calling. The fact that Blacks were victimized in those days as a matter of law and custom was undeniable. The problem today is that law and custom have changed and the surviving leaders have not made the transition to raising the aspirations of Black people based on hope and promise. It was true that the 60’s required Black people to embrace a certain anger about their circumstances in order to rise up and fight back. The need now is to rise up and pitch in, to apply their talents, to become educated, to achieve more, because as Barack is proving as so many others already have, the most significant barrier to their success –racism - has been successfully rendered powerless over them. But they must make the transition from victim to victor.

I wonder how the old guard’s rhetoric will change when Barack is elected. Yes, there will still be poor Blacks and there will be poor whites and poor Asians after Barack is elected. There will be poor people after he leaves office. But can anyone say that being poor is because of race if the playing field is leveled at the highest level in America? I say no. If personal effort to build up one’s talent can take even a Black man from an average family in America to the White House, then I say racism is a dead issue. I’m not saying that it doesn’t exist; I’m just saying that within the power structure of our democratic society, it has become impotent. If the majority of the people are willing to vote for a Black man because he is the best person to be President, then how can anyone say that racism still holds its power over America? I’d say that Martin Luther King is dancing in heaven joyfully and when Barack is elected, we should all dance down here too. I’d like to see the aged civil rights leaders on stage leading us all in the electric slide.

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