Open Letter to Barack

Barack,

I said the other day in class that race is no longer a primary factor in the average Americans' behavior- that similarities in values and actions were. My argument was that most white people only care that you act just like them, more than the color or your skin.

Man, was I wrong.

I've been watching the news this week- how could I not? And I have seen how folks are making Rev. Wright's words somehow about you...and about your love for this country, therefore your ability to lead it. And I have, to be much more stringent than your wonderful wife, rarely been less impressed with America than I am at this moment.

First, you did not ever endeavor to make race a part of your presidential race- you were loved and revered as the "transcendent candidate." But of course, certain people (I-can't-believe-we-ever-called-you-Black-Clintons) want to make it THE issue. And now you have to address not only your beliefs, but once again, like we do every day in classrooms, boardrooms and bars, represent for the entire race. And the question white folks finally want answered, once and for all, is this: "How can you be president, when you (and you people) hate America?"

That's the fear- the Fear of a Black (Barack) Planet. What the hell will happen to white people if they participate in electing someone who has centuries and continent's worth of reasons to hate the European, Christian, capitalist and colonialist values of a nation that has done very little to include you as a free citizen? I mean, the man is the nexus of what rage towards white Americans should be- he's half black, African at that- half white, the product of a single poor white woman, who by all accounts seemed to be a feminist, and was definitely and activist (and a n---- lover, but we won't speak ill about the dead); he was born in Hawaii, a colonised nation made into a state, and educated globally, witnessing firsthand the impacts of a so-called "superpower" on Third World countries. If white people were in his shoes, they'd hate them too...so how is he so hopeful? How can he be so...nice?

Enter Rev. Wright. Finally, something that proves that Barack is just like the others- he, too, hates white people. he, too, hates America! Because if he can listen to a pastor who can develop sermons that have snippets of sentences, that in a soundbite can appear hate-filled and vitriolic (no matter that they may be completely without context or analysis- the words were said!), then Barack has to believe everything the man says. He's no better than his wife; who just got around to being proud of America (and we know she's an emasculating he-woman, with her pearls and support and intelligence); he's no better than those hip-hop rappers who want to take our country over and transform them into drugged out ghettoes, with our daughters as their lily-white prizes; they're the reason we clutch our purses and scurry towards the exurbs after 6 p.m.

The message is clear- by attending the church of Rev. Wright, he proves it once and for all- Barack Obama doesn't care about white people.

***

I am often fed up by the media, and what it does, and how it does it. Bottom-feeding sensationalists pummeling each other for rhetorical booms that scare the public into purchasing their sponsors' solutions. The media is not a righteous beacon of truth- it is, anymore, obvious muckraking. And the most disappointing thing is to watch Americans eat up the rhetoric like a baby gumming applesauce; to see critical analysis and intelligent dialogue go out the window, replaced by panic and hysteria; to see them tear down what they have built up like a Tower of Babel that got too high and too scary.

Barack Obama now has to explain to white people, in a way that doesn't scare them, how the experience of being black is different, and valid. He has to do it in a way that convinces him that we won't riot and kill them; that we do love America; and that, if elected, he can control us crazy Negroes at home. Cuz if he can't control an old pastor from saying crazy shizznit and attacking the values that white folks hold dear, how's he gonna keep the rest of us cousins from acting a plumb fool and turning the White House black?

*End angry political rant*