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Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama, left, responds to a question while his Republican counterpart Sen. John McCain listens during their presidential debate at Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn., Oct. 7.
/ Reuters-Yonhap |
 By Ananda Selah Osel
In fact, a successful Obama run at the White House could not only change the way the majority of U.S. inhabitants have been conditioned to view (consciously or unconsciously) African-Americans but could also revolutionize the way black America sees itself.
This is expressly the case for young African-Americans who are still in their developmental stages. What's more, a flourishing Obama presidency would open wide the door for other Americans of color, creating a boon for historically underrepresented citizens and their descendants. This fact cannot be understated.
On the other provisional hand, a catastrophic Obama presidency, for whatever reason, could prove noxious, slamming the proverbial door in the faces of black Americans for decades because it would reinforce the misconceptions and historical conditioning that is so ubiquitous in the United States on a massive scale.
Any clear-thinking person knows that Barack Obama, because of his blackness, could never get away with even a fraction of the blunders George W. Bush has, let alone those that preceded him.
This is not to say that the entire fate of black America rests on the actions of Obama ― only that Obama's triumphs and failures will have a vast bearing on the lives of Americans of color. This may seem an unfair weight to place on the shoulders of a single redoubtable man, but sadly, it may be the case none-the-less.
Former Assistant Attorney General turned academic, Roger Wilkins, declares when comparing civil rights leaders of the past and Obama that, ``Nobody wants someone whose mind is stuck in and formed by events of four decades ago."
Consider though that anyone whose mind is not molded by events of recent history could be said to suffer from a serious detachment disorder.
Even as researchers suggest this type of conditioning of the mind unavoidable, we've grown inured to accepting this sort of sentiment, hearing it time and time again from academic leaders, elected representatives, friends and neighbors.
In truth, many agree with Wilkins, alleging that a person's race does not warrant consideration in matters of politics or anything else. However, this type of egalitarian attitude while progressive is a fallacy for many minorities.
The reality is, race only exists as a non-issue if you happen to be in the majority, in this case Caucasian. If you're black it seems to be awfully important.
The same can be said for an array of concerns: Gender doesn't matter ― unless you're not a man, then it does matter. Sexual orientation doesn't matter ― unless you're not heterosexual, then it matters quite a bit. Religious affiliation is not that important ― as long as you're not an Atheist, and so on and so forth.
Contending that race is a now a non-issue in the United States, or that it somehow should not be considered, is tantamount to ignoring the sea of evidence that African-Americans are awash in daily.
Common practices and patterns in real estate, media coverage, national and local elections, educational attainment, disaster relief, dropout rates, and the entire criminal justice system must all be disregarded to seriously avow that a person's race does not matter when the only discernable difference between minority Americans and Caucasians is skin color, ethnicity, and history.
In real life of course, Senator Obama is an African-American man that it running for the office of President, the highest office, where all those who have preceded him have been everything but diverse.
Anyone who does not recognize the importance of Obama's blackness must be ogling the prism of historical privilege, living in an imagined utopia, or not paying close enough attention to the world they're living in.
Because of the overriding saga of the United States, Obama's skin color could not be more central to the moral, emotional, and insensible development of this country. To deny these things is not only exceptionally unfair to the historically oppressed, it is a gross perversion of history and of that which is yet to be written.
Ananda Selah Osel is poet and polemicist currently perusing an advanced degree in psychoneuroimmunology. He's a contributor to The Humanist and the Washington Free Press among others. The writer lives in Seattle and can be reached at: aso-sel@hotmail.com
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