Selma, drool and the Stations of the Cross

By

Malik Sekou OSEI

William PLEASANT

Selma, Alabama-- March 7, 2015

I just sat through a sterile rousing speech. I guess my E-mails and text messages and phone calls that I received only illustrated that there is a large proportion of the African American population who can be entertained to death, as pragmatically keeping it “real.”

Here is a necessary reality check: 

President Obama had charming and warmhearted tidings in Selma, but his alleged people, the African American people, are among the most jailed and tortured people on the planet, under the Red, White and Blue of American democracy.

 As usual, I have heard folks rant and rave about the brilliant and inspirational oration given by President Barack Obama in Selma. That guy can sho flap his lips! Nonetheless, it is also imperative and central for Black people to look beyond words to see if those words are followed by certain and substantial action that has a real impact on their lives. Face it, Blacks continue to endure the kind of torture that has led observers to verify that America is arguably the most racist industrialized nation in the world.  It has been cited time and time again that when it comes to rates of economic inequality, educational inequality and inequality in the criminal justice system, whites live one reality and African Americans are living another.  In fact, I dare say that if white Americans were forced to endure the Black condition for just one month, they’d be marching in the streets and demanding that their leaders step down for blatant incompetence and severe social neglect.

The president spoke about the importance of protecting voting rights for African Americans, Drool. What good are voting rights when the ballot only offers candidate choices from only two parties, parties that are in word and deed perpetrators of Black suffering? At the same time, Democrats love to mesmerize Black people with the myth of political enfranchisement because, quite frankly, Black people uniformly vote to keep Democrats in office. This self-serving drool, and Obama served up a heaping helping in Alabama this weekend. 

But when it comes to dealing with issues that many Black people care about (devastating levels of Black unemployment, Black youth being murdered in the streets by law enforcement  and historically outrageous levels of  mass incarceration),  do you really think that a voting registration card could have saved the lives of  Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Sean Bell, Tamir Rice or the homeless young man in L.A. named Charlie "Africa" Robinet or Jessica Hernandez and others victims of the daily slaughter by police of people of color in America?

Will Obama, the theatrical re-incarnation and consummation of Martin Luther King, Jr. at the Edmund Pettus Bridge,  free a few thousand political prisoners who remain incarcerated due to the American “War On Drugs?” Will the drooling liberator of  2015 demand the release of scores of Black, Latino, Native and Asian people sent to dungeons in the last 40 years for their political resistance to white supremacy and capitalistic exploitation? Hell no! You can't get that from a drooler.

Does a procession and sermon sooth the daily suffering and 

address the political impotence of the poor?

Rather than applauding Obama's Roman Sophistry, Black people should appreciate that they have a number of objective social and political challenges that require the purgation of  sentimentality. Face it, despite all the humble prayers and wishes for salvation-through-Obama, Barack Obama, the negro now in charge, is not our friend. In fact, he is unapologetically hostile to the aspirations of Black people. Those aspirations are led by the demand for popular democracy and social equality, both anathemas to the people and system that Obama so passionately serves, though disguised in minstrel black face. Like the New Testament Stations of the Cross, Obama and his fellow Democratic Party parasites--Black and white--did no more than lead an ecclesiastical procession over the blood-soaked ground of the Black liberation movement in Selma, Alabama, stopping here and there to mumble pious platitudes and shed stage tears for the cameras. 

Now the 50th anniversary spectacle is over. Are you free?

History is on our side, but time is not…

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