The Washington Informer: Opinions/Editorials

   After more than 400 years in this wilderness (for Black folks) called America, we have arrived at a most unusual juncture.
   During our sojourn here, we have produced, in our midst, heroes and sheroes, from David Walker and Denmark Vesey, to Nat Turner and Frederick Douglass, to Harriet Tubman and Henry Highland Garnet, to W.E.B. DuBois and Marcus Garvey, to Paul Robeson and Mary McLeod Bethune, to Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.
   Despite their broad variety of missions, this Pantheon’s occupants have one thing in common: they all had to struggle against the society’s prevailing leadership in order to advocate advances for America’s – “...least of these, my people” – Black descendants of slaves.
   Even Frederick Douglass, who eventually assumed a high position in the U.S. government, was best known for his steadfastness against unjust, anti-Black government policies – like slavery – for most of his life.
   Even Rep. Adam Clayton Powell, who rose to be the chair of the powerful House Education and Labor Committee in the 1960s, spent most of his career fighting against the segregationists in the government in which he served – indeed, in his own Democratic Party.
   All the time, of course, we had geniuses like George Washington Carver, Daniel Hale Williams, Charles Drew and Ralph Bunche making important contributions to the onward march of civilization in general, despite race prejudice which hindered them at practically every step of their way.
   We have made so much progress that, today, there is hardly any field of endeavor that does not have African Americans among its top-tier achievers. Despite the continued prevalence of White supremacist thinking, the American “meritocracy” has produced Black success stories in the most unlikely places. The governor of Massachusetts, Deval Patrick, is a Black man who grew up in Chicago’s South Side slums and now the elected leader of a state with a Black population of less than 10 percent.
   The ultimate proof of the meritocracy came in this year’s Super Bowl, when the race-haters could not choose which team to hate, because both teams – the Indianapolis Colts and the Chicago Bears – had Black coaches in Tony Dungy and Lovie Smith. In college and professional football, the meritocracy has also opened the door for Black quarterbacks – long a “no-no,” because Blacks were not supposed to be “smart enough” to either play the position. Or coach, for that matter.
   In addition to Gov. Patrick, the meritocracy put Illinois Sen. Barack Obama on the national stage two years ago. Now, Obama has a good chance to become president of the United States. That really is progress, but at what cost?
   There are similarities in the educational backgrounds of Obama and Paul Robeson, the athlete, actor, singer and lawyer who couldn’t practice law because of racism. Mr. Robeson was our 20th century Renaissance man. He was a peace activist. He was a protestor. Obama, on the other hand, has absolutely rewritten the racial script in America.
   Although there are a few braying donkeys in our midst who have said that because Obama’s father is from Africa, and his mother is a White American, and he grew up in an exotic multicultural world – a White household in Hawaii and in the Pacific Islands – he is not “Black enough.”
   Two points: how “Black” was President Franklin Roosevelt? Because of him alone, Black people stopped being members of the Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln, and became Democrats, joining the party of the Southern segregationists. How “Black” did President Roosevelt have to be to accomplish that?
   How “Black” was President John F. Kennedy? In the 1960s, you could hardly find a Black home that did not have pictures of Presidents Lincoln and Kennedy and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on their walls. Was President Kennedy “Black enough” for us?
   Point two: As long as Obama is a viable potential presidential candidate – even if he does not win the Democratic nomination this time around – there will not be another “Black” candidate seeking the presidency.
   If Obama is not elected in 2008 and a Democrat wins, eight years from now (presuming the Democratic incumbent seeks re-election in 2012) when the 2016 presidential race rolls around, the senator will still be in his late 50s, way young enough to run again for president, and, by then, with 14 years of experience in the U.S. Senate.
   Things have changed a lot for Blacks in this country. We have come to the place, that for the first time – not counting Secretaries of State Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice who clearly represent “them” and not “us” – Our Hero is not someone in the mold of Dr. King or Malcolm X, exciting us the way the Rev. Jesse Jackson did when he first taught us the chant “I Am Somebody” or inspiring us like Min. Louis Farrakhan when he called Black men en massé to the Million Man March where they stood up and responded, acknowledging our responsibilities.
   Imagine Paul Robeson and Ralph Bunche in the same, brilliant Black body, rallying our people to once again remake this country to be more just to its own citizens, and a good neighbor among the community of nations.
   Robeson-Obama: the struggle continues.
   We dare to struggle. Of course, eventually, we will win.

Askia Muhammad is editor of National Scene News Bureau, which provides editorial, audio and photographic content for broadcast and print clients, including The Final Call, National Public Radio, Soundprint, WPFW-FM and the Informer. His e-mail address is askia99@verizon.net