The Black Commentator - March 15, 2007

As I listened carefully to two recent campaign speeches by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in Selma, Alabama, I experienced a profoundly nauseating feeling that caused me to regress psychologically to an affair several years ago, sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus. In this context, former President Bill Clinton was described by one Caucus participant as “the first Black President” in America. Indeed, upon hearing this laudatory description of Bill Clinton, I almost “threw up,” literally, perhaps somewhat similar to an even more nauseating event that I observed, about a decade earlier, as the Urban League of Washington, D.C. bestowed an honor upon a notorious racist, the late U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina. Incredible! Absolutely Incredible. And these situations also that remind me of a troubling statement by an outstanding Black psychologist, Dr. Na’im Akbar, in Chains and Images of Psychological Slavery, (1984), that some Blacks (or “Kneegores”) need major surgery on their brains. All of these events or political “happenings” also remind me of a serious joke - perhaps a contradiction in terms - that I heard many years ago; that is, a politician was making a major speech on a Native American or “Indian” reservation and each time he would make a strong point, his Indian audience would yell, “Bozaunga Bozaunga” in what the politician felt was an approving response to his serious message. After his speech, the Tribal Chief, out of simple courtesy, took him on a tour of the reservation. However, as the two of them began to cross a field where many cattle were grazing, the Chief said to the politician, please be careful or you will step on some of the “Bozaunga” in this field. Of course, the politician was shocked after discerning the meaning of this word in relation to his recent speech.

Clearly and with only a scintilla of reservations, I believe that many, if not most, speeches by politicians can be described with the same label or appellation — “Bozaunga.” Of course, we also have heard lots of recent rhetoric about Obama possibly becoming “the first Black president of America” — yet another phrase which is tangentially meaningless in the context of the despicable Black group condition in America; that is, where we Blacks, as a group, have been marginalized or “sedimentized” on the bottom or dung heap of American society, psycho-spiritually a population without a country—revealed, once again, most conspicuously in the Katrina disaster in New Orleans.

Accordingly, some of us are not overly impressed with superficial political speeches or rhetoric that, “reduced to their lowest common denominator", are best described as “Bozaunga". More specifically, in the case of the Obama and Clinton speeches, I heard virtually nothing from either candidate in proposing an agenda or programs to address crisis conditions in urban Black communities — disproportionate poverty, abysmal gaps in Black-White wealth, gross mis-education in Euro-centric public schools and multiple problems related thereto, e.g., despicable genocide or so-called “Black-on-Black crime", including escalating homicides, seriously imbalanced Black prison populations, the health-care gap, etc. ad nauseam.

Equally germane and even more tragic, neither candidate, even if they were so inclined politically, would dare offer a more relevant agenda for Black liberation, including critically needed reparations, and still win the presidency. Moreover, the present popularity of Obama among Whites would disappear instantly if he would either propose or embrace an agenda or programs that would change, significantly, the socioeconomic status quo in America, i.e., the “business-as-usual” of White supremacy-racism. And this ugly reality simply affirms the basic premise in my latest book, The Scoundrel Syndrome (2004), where racist attitudes of a plurality of Americans politically mandate that they choose “leaders” or “scoundrels” who do not disturb the status quo in America.

Finally, let us be reminded that the time has come — indeed, it is FAR past due — for Black Americans to become more sophisticated and spiritually committed in making both political and economic choices in this nation. We must more effectively organize our communities, transcending our present “chaotic cliques” or small ineffective organizations that produce mostly chaos. Simultaneously, we must adopt a much stronger, proactive group agenda, as we challenge ourselves to engage in more self-help programs, including the pooling of our limited financial resources in a Black Development Fund, while making demands on the larger society, inviting them “to put up or shut up” on issues of “liberty and justice for all". Again, the time has come, NOW, to expose and to challenge our adversaries, both without and within our communities, who offer us little or nothing but more “Bozaunga.” Hotep (Peace)!

Gyasi A. Foluke, MA, DD, a non-traditional Minister, is an author-lecturer-consultant, retired Air Force officer, non-profit CEO, Adjunct Professor in Black Studies and part-time CEO of The Kushite Institute for Wholistic Development. His books include: