Prometheus 6

After reading around the reactions to Sen. Obama's caucus win, I feel the need to point out my problem with Sen. Obama, rhetoric. He makes folks feel like we're further down the road than we are.

This may be necessary...knowing I will most likely be a wage slave unto death, I still never think of myself as being at risk until I get all philosophical. Still, I really understand my position and I'd just fell a lot better if everyone really understood theirs.

For instance: there are the same many racists in your life now as the day before the caucus. And if Sen. Obama makes it to the White House, the same number will be around the day after his inauguration. There'll still be war and a bunch of other ills that are not the topic at the moment as well. Electing Sen. Obama will not be the end of it. You could have asked Larry Doby what it was like. But this pig can show you (via Glen Greenwald, whose answer I like).

I really have reservations about his health insurance plan. I note that, in practical terms, "our common needs" tends to mean "white mainstream needs and desires."  But his candidacy forced a discussion of race that's going to be more honest than you can imagine right now.

I think it is safe to say that America is going through the most profound demographic transformation in its long history. If current trends continue, America will be majority minority in my lifetime or soon thereafter. In a single lifetime we will have gone from a country made up largely of white Europeans to one that looks much more like the rest of the world.

If Senator Obama becomes the Democratic nominee this profound change will become something we all begin to discuss openly. Today the nation is having a big conversation about this change - whether it understands it or not - through our ongoing debate over immigration. While this debate has seen some of the most awful racist rhetoric and imagery since the days of Willie Horton, what should leave us all optimistic is that only 15 percent of the country is truly alarmed about the new wave of immigrants arriving in America. Consistently about 60 percent of the country says we need to leave all the undocumenteds here, indicating a pragmatic acceptance of the changes happening around our people and their families. Once again the uncommon wisdom of the common people appears to be prevailing here, and it is my hope, perhaps my prayer, that if Obama is the nominee American can begin to have a healthy and constructive discussion of our new population rather than what we have seen to date.

Progressive white folks and Black folks in general have to be ready for this. And we have to be ready because, in my opinion, we're going to go through another economic transformation on the scale of The New Deal...and I don't want to see Black folks left out again.