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OFF THE BLOCK: The First Black President
*Can we get something straight between us? And I don't mean that as a bit of clever repartee between a man and a woman. I mean I'm seeking to establish an understanding here. Can we please stop constantly breathing new life into the popular fiction that Bill Clinton was the first black president? And not for the obvious reason that he clearly ain't black. Please just stop it. It's not true. And it never was.
I can understand the sentiment behind the myth, given that Clinton could be so “down-home” with us and that he had an uncanny ability to get “churchy”
on cue and speak to us in the cadence of a Baptist preacher whenever he would talk about our predicament of suffering and abandonment in this country. Yes, many of us loved him because we believed that he could “feel our pain.”
But that doesn't make him black. Feeling our pain and having our pain are two entirely different things. Besides, one clear-eyed look at his record smashes the first black president legend to bits. That is, if by being the first black president he could have been expected to have had more than a passing interest in the most important issues of his times that were or would most adversely affect blacks here and abroad. Come on now: how long will we, the misinformed, led by the uncaring, continue to support and vote for the ungrateful? Is it because we have done so much, for so long, with so little, that we have become like the ugly girl at the party who falls in love with the first boy who asks her to dance? Every time history repeats itself the price goes up.
There's a fine line between courage and cowardice. Too bad it's not a fence. Bill Clinton shredded the social safety net with his signing of his welfare reform bill, officially titled the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation act of 1996.
This dubious welfare legislation affected many social service programs: Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), food stamps, school meals, summer meals, Medicaid, SSI, child care, etc. Some of the changes in these programs, such as in food stamps, which is 100% federally funded, have already been enacted. For other programs, such as AFDC, the federal government has changed its funding formula, eliminated the federal guarantee of benefits, and given the states greater discretion in how to shape their own welfare systems without ensuring an adequate uniform standard of help for poor households.
While you ponder the lasting implications of that move by Clinton, consider this, because it is even more important: In April, 1994, as Rwanda was engulfed by a maniacal, wanton genocide, the likes of which had not been seen in the 50 years since the heyday of Nazi Germany, U. S. intelligence reports obtained using the US Freedom of Information Act show the cabinet and almost certainly the president had been told of a planned "final solution to eliminate all Tutsis" before the slaughter reached its peak. Clinton did nothing. It took Hutu death squads three months from April 6 to murder an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus and at each stage accurate, detailed reports were reaching Washington's top policymakers. A trip to Africa is not the same as saving African lives.
The good news is that the myth that Clinton was the first black president does give the idea credence. It says that it is possible, and anything that we can conceive, we can certainly achieve when the time comes and we have the man for the job. The time has come and we have the man. Because we are actually, right now, in a position where today is the tomorrow that our ancestors prayed for yesterday.
Barack Obama is the man and the time has finally come where, as Dr. King prophesied that a black person could be exclusively judged by the content of his character and not by the color of his skin. Barack Obama can truly become our first black president. Obama is a literal Godsend who may have the best chance of all the presidential candidates with the wherewithal to begin to reverse the rot and decay of America's bedrock principles that have so affected our standing in the world community. With a personal background in both Christianity and Islam, Obama had a black African father and a white American mother. As a child he lived in Hawaii and Indonesia where he received his primary education, and as a young adult he received his secondary education in California, New York and Boston where he obtained his law degree,
Obama's background boasts an unprecedented pedigree new to American presidential aspirants and his personal genetic makeup and early schooling is the epitome of cultural diversity and globalism. Obama's potential as leader of the free world gives a whole new meaning to the term “The New World Order” given the changing circumstances in Asia, South America and Africa. Let us share his “audacity of hope” in believing that he can go all the way. His election as the first black president of the United States of America will validate the hopes and dreams of our ancestors while at the same time give our people, our country and even possibly the world the best chance to avert total planetary catastrophe that we have had since the presidential candidacy of Bobby Kennedy.
If I have done my job in laying out the case for exploding the myth that Bill Clinton was the first black president, and I have been equally successful in delineating the numerous and powerful reasons needed to support a Barack Obama presidential candidacy, given his culturally diversified background and sparkling academic resume, then I expect an Amen and let's go! I have often regretted my speech, but never my silence. Until now. The greatest threat to our future as black people in America is indifference! Neither you nor I can remain silent or indifferent anymore. For positive change that can move us in the right direction, the time is now and the man is Barack Obama.
We need a break with the past. We need a break with tradition and convention. For the last 20 years, our country has been led either by a Bush or a Clinton. Daddy Bush, Baby Bush, Bill Clinton (wearing shades and playing a saxophone on the Arsenio Hall show doesn't count), Hillary? Who can electrify the Hip Hop Generation? As an untapped resource, don't we need a bridge from the Civil Rights Generation to the Hip Hop Generation, at the very least? Why must the argument for new beginnings begin with the tired, outdated thinking of the past? Obama is trying to explain to the old soldiers of past political battles that it is time to retire the old thinking of solutions based solely on race and class. There is a new dynamic in the way that America's youth think, interact and communicate, and Obama is young enough to know this and understand it.
Nothing short of a sea change is required to get us over the philosophical divide between the Civil Rights Generation and the Hip Hop Generation among our people that is increasingly affecting an ever widening culture gap that directly affects our deeply entrenched generation gap.
Between the outdated thinking of the 20th century and the up to the minute realities of the 21st century, we are living in what is, in my opinion, the most crucial time in modern history. With our constitutionally protected right to vote, a right drenched in blood and won by people far braver than us, we finally have an opportunity in the next presidential election to completely transform our direction and policies that have created for us domestically and internationally what, for many, have been the very worst of times to the best of times, and I am not trying to evoke Charles Dickens.
Simply stated, these are the stakes.
We have got to get away from the Bush approach domestically (with its Katrina shortcomings and benign neglect of our Iraq war veterans) and his “Hammer Diplomacy” internationally. If all you have is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail. This is the antithesis of normal, productive international relations which would ideally rely upon negotiation and true constructive engagement, as opposed to aggressive, unilateral militarism.
Barack Obama is the man we need to rally around, support, and vote for, as we finally use our considerable and often misused franchise to elect him in the next Presidential Election in 2008, as truly the first black president of the United States of America.
Can I get an Amen?
A. Damian Bruce is a Philadelphia native. The Los Angeles based Writer/Publicist has written for the Capitol Spotlight newspaper, Upscale magazine, BRE magazine, and the Los Angeles Sentinel newspaper. He currently writes for Sister 2 Sister magazine, Black Diaspora magazine and now, the EURweb.
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