September 4, 2008 - Issue 289
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Barack Obama: Playing the "Race Card"
While Politically Castrating the Race & the Nation
Keeping it Real
By Larry Pinkney
B
lackCommentator.com Editorial Board

The problem for political conjurers and tricksters is that sooner or later their trickery will engulf them. They are of course aware of this and spare no hypocrisy in making every effort to expeditiously obtain political power for the historical moment, always at the ultimate expense of the masses of everyday common folk.

Due to the horrible record of racial injustices in the United States of America, the so-called race card has been utilized by persons of virtually all political persuasions, and more often than not serves to make null and void the senses of sincere people who might otherwise be logical and clear-thinking. Barack Obama and his corporate political machine have exercised enormous skill in manipulating and mesmerizing not only Black Americans but the American people as a whole into a frenzied and dangerous stupor of myth, illusion, and denial. For a certainty, racial and other injustices and disparities must be forthrightly addressed and eradicated - not opportunistically manipulated as a tool for gaining political power.

It is an unmitigated fact the US remains in the 21st Century very much a nation of huge racial and gender disparities and injustices. Nonetheless, racism and sexism in America did not simply come about by osmosis. They were and are meticulously and deliberately developed, maintained, and utilized by the power elite of this nation, from its very founding. However, in this regard Barack Obama has chosen to castigate not only Black American males but the White working class whom he apparently, in reality, views as stupid, backwards, and most of all expendable - while simultaneously and adroitly playing upon what a prolific Black blogger referred to, as the reaction of “millions of whites bend[ing] over backwards in an attempt to demonstrate their colorblindness and to prove their ‘goodness of heart.’” None of this has been missed by the quintessential 21st Century cynical opportunist, Barack Obama, or his very active Democratic Party political machine.

It was no coincidence or accident that US Presidential candidate Barack Obama chose as his running mate the stridently pro-corporate, pro-Zionist, and pro-military US Senator, Joe Biden. Once again, notwithstanding his gift-of-gab, doublespeak rhetoric, Barack Obama is telling the American people and the discerning world who his actual allies are and where his real priorities really lay.

There are those who are already asking: Is Barack Obama, actually Barry Soetoro, Barack Dunham, Barry Obama, or Barry Dunham? This writer suggests that what is far, far more important than whatever legal name/s Barack Obama utilized or uses is politically - precisely who and what is Barack Obama - this man seeking the trust and faith of the “American” people and desirous of being the US President and military Commander and Chief?! Will the real Barack Obama please stand up now, right now!

Notwithstanding the cynical racism, opportunism, and gender prejudice of both the Democratic and Republican Parties [i.e. the Republicrats], there is an experienced, time tested and well seasoned Black woman US Presidential candidate out there who is not a Republicrat and who is about building a for-real people’s movement. Her name is Cynthia McKinney, Green Party official nominee, along with her running mate Rosa Clemente. These two women, along with grassroots people and Reconstruction Party activists, are about the business of systemic change, not repackaged and stifling Republicrat regurgitation. The corporate news media has and will continue to ignore and / or castigate them because they represent the real possibility of something outside of the Republicrats [i.e. the politically bankrupt Democratic and Republican Parties]. Grassroots everyday people, on the other hand, grow ever more aware of the very real possibilities that Cynthia McKinney and the “Power To The People” Campaign represent for systemic / real change.

Indeed it is time for change. It’s time to unleash ourselves from Republicrat subterfuge and being their pimped and controlled lap dogs and mesmerized puppets on a string, to being the masters and mistresses of our own destinies outside of and apart from the Democratic and Republican [Republicrat] Parties. Time for intensified struggle. Time for laying the foundation and building a genuine people’s movement.

Onward brothers and sisters…Onward!

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board Member, Larry Pinkney, is a veteran of the Black Panther Party, the former Minister of Interior of the Republic of New Africa, a former political prisoner and the only American to have successfully self-authored his civil/political rights case to the United Nations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In connection with his political organizing activities in opposition to voter suppression, etc., Pinkney was interviewed in 1988 on the nationally televised PBS NewsHour, formerly known as The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour. For more about Larry Pinkney see the book, Saying No to Power: Autobiography of a 20th Century Activist and Thinker , by William Mandel [Introduction by Howard Zinn]. (Click here to read excerpts from the book). Click here to contact Mr. Pinkney.

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