To believe Obama is concerned or should be more concerned than Bush was about Blacks who are poor and unemployed is to be in the same boat as those who believed that when Bush was in office Whites had a better chance for help than they do now.
There are two flaws in this thinking: one, that a member of a particular race is necessarily responsible for acting to benefit his or her race; and two, that elected officials in a greed-based system actually care about those who voted for them.
There are a lot of people upset that a Black president stayed quiet during the “legal lynching” of Troy Davis. I believe capital punishment is brutally wrong, but if you thought there was a good chance Obama would stop it because he is Black, then you’re setting yourself up for disappointment.
If Obama, or anyone else for that matter, were moved to the point of action in trying to stop the execution of Troy Davis, it would come from the heart, not the skin. Same is true for helping the poor and unemployed — it comes from the heart. Of all the modern-day presidents, Jimmy Carter may have been the one most compelled to stop the execution of Troy Davis.
Besides, Obama and his clan were too busy planning the execution of another U.S. citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki. If killing al-Awlaki is justified because he is an “enemy of the U.S.,” then why hasn’t the U.S. killed Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, with a drone missile strike? Assange is much more of a security threat than al-Awlaki was. Could it have anything to do with Assange’s skin color and where he resides?
Attacking a Middle East country with a drone strike and killing a person of color, as well as any other people of color standing nearby, is highly conceivable and how they believe the “war” should look.
But attacking England or Sweden with a drone to take out Assange and other Whites near him, that’s so not how they want the “war” to look to us. It would be like attacking ourselves.
How could what is right somehow, unbelievably, reside in all the White countries (NATO), even those on other side of the globe? Canada, U.S., England, Australia…you even have New Zealand troops in NATO. In the “war on terror,” how can right and wrong follow color lines?
Frank Erickson lives in
Minneapolis.
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