People of Faith CT

The attacks on Obama are deep rooted in white thinking
By Cornell Lewis
October 15, 2008

I was working in the early morning and heard a lot of chatter about Barack Obama and John McCain. Both men are running for the office of President of the United States. Obama as a Democrat, McCain as a Republican. The battle for the presidential office has taken a negative twist in the last weeks before November 4, and Election Day. The war hero McCain is focusing on Obama as a person consorting with terrorists, using cocaine as a young person (McCain infers Obama maybe sold the drug at one time), and could be a closet Muslim. It is interesting how Obama’s one time association- years ago- with a person is being dragged up now.

The gathering around the workplace coffee machine was filled with people of color and a few brave white folks debating McCain’s over the edge politics. Then I learned how McCain is using his Vice Presidential running mate Sarah (air head) Palin to lead the attack on Obama. Wait, folks this gets better as McCain uses Town Hall forums to rile up whites to use racist encoded language. To be honest, McCain did not say outright for whites at these meetings to promote racism, he did lay ground work and provide forums for such people to speak. People were standing up at these McCain led discussions and uttering all kinds of racist swill; no one bothered to stop the attacks on Obama.

I wonder why people of color are sooooo mortified over whites trashing Obama with racist verbiage and metaphors. After all, Obama represents something sinister (at least in a white psychosis) for white America; images of the BAD NEGRO.

For over 400 years people of African descent have labored as slaves, then as free persons in America. During a long sojourn in the so called “cradle of Democracy” black people have endured much. In particular the men of this African Diaspora were singled out for brutal treatment; lynching, castration and beatings. White fear of a Bad Negro rising up to lead the masses of slaves was- and still is- a major concern. Obama represents the New Bad Negro. He is equipped with intellectual powers and speaking abilities far above McCain. In the past whites feared the muscular black able to lead his people. Well, Obama is leading not only blacks but white folk in an uprising against conventional thinking about race, politics or how America is run. This kind of thinking is against the collective white grain in terms of thinking. Ergo, Obama is a threat. Now McCain does the predictable thing by playing the race card. Yet, mentally dead Negroes are in SHOCK over the war hero McCain’s tactics.

Whenever the power of white people is truly threatened in America or worldwide a collective groan is issued from a racist visceral region. The liberal gloves come off and Mr. Charlie or Captain Boss comes forth to point fingers. There is an old Pepsi Cola commercial showing people in a certain body. When the people zip down the front of their body, a new image is revealed. For years McCain masquearded as a certain type of person (maverick, reformer, war hero) now after Obama gets close to the White House, a new image-the correct one- of a racist is seen. Why are black people standing with mouths agape?

This is America. A land where fear of a black planet is deep in the psychosis of whites.
This is America. Where attempts to stop the rise of a Bad Negro reaches frenzied heights.
This is America. Where white people fear blacks in power will become the monsters they were for over 400 years. We know the treatment of blacks reflect a barbarity in America, it might happen to whites—or so they believe.