In 2008, I was amazed that a Chicagoan was running for President of the United States. I am a Chicagoan and I would figure to catch wind of something that big. But, as quick as the temperature can go from 80 degrees to 10 below, a new fellow had arrive, Barack Obama. He was a politician, and lest not forget, a Black fellow. His target was the presidency. Before I go on; I have never supported politics local or national. I have no faith in the system; it is par to my feelings on religion, and educational equity for African-Americans children. I grew up as a teenager under the nation’s most corrupt political system possibly in history: Mayor Richard J. Daly’s ‘Democratic Machine’. Chicago is synonymous with corruption unlike any other major city, well maybe Philly. Subsequently, I was shocked that a politician from the Windy City had a squeaky-clean background to run for the top office.
Barack Obama’s background was lean at best on social political issues facing African-American Chicagoan. Gang violence? Never heard from him? Massive unemployment? Never heard from him. Mass Incarceration? Invisible. In fact, I can truly say, the now President Barack Obama lived clandestinely in Chicago. But, as the circus began to swell around his run in 2008, African-Americans raced to back him. However, before that time research possibly would show nearly 85% were not familiar with him. On the contrary, I did not attribute his skin color to vote for him or not vote. But, a city bloated with decades of racial inequities and violence Obama remained above the fray, he was a stranger. In the city of ‘Big Shoulders’ he remained in the children’s section in helping the neediest, disenfranchised, and unemployed. More importantly, he was silence on the violence that choked the life out of countless African-American and Latino children. I cannot recall one speech on the topic, in print or on local airwaves, not one. Consequently, his announcement puzzled me, but led me to a prophetical assumption quickly. “Barack was all show and no grit”. This was no Martin Luther King, in fact, far from it.
President Obama refusal to address social ills provides evidence to my 2008 proclamation. His presidency maintains its silence on these issues. Yet, beloved by many African-Americans as a person of ______________? I lacked a word for the previous sentence. I assume, which is always dangerous, African-Americans and the President only share skin color as a commonality. Which leaves me wondering, what do they see in him as a President or as a man of color? Many brothers and sisters intoxicated with the fascination of skin pigmentation cast their vote around racial pride. Finally, the tags of lazy, shiftless, and unintelligent rinsed from our spirit, we could be a mighty people again. We were hoodwinked with hallucinations and make-believe. Let us deal with reality, if this man was not Black, African-Americans would not have read the local papers. Obama was a complete mystery before his skin color galvanized Black folks, star-glazed whites, and Latinos to join his political movement for ‘Change’. I ask myself, now as I did then, why are African-Americans voting for an empty suit?
Barack Obama is the first African-American President with no ties to the Black community. I conclude that his skin color and marketing 
campaign was the two biggest values to his election. The man from nowhere had nothing else, not a political record, a social movement agenda, nothing. Subsequently, he provided the uneducated masses sound bites, erroneous rhythm, and lest not forget, “Hope”. Yet, hope is not a process to end poverty, hope runs away from education inequalities, mass unemployment and incarceration, nor does it increase jobs for Black folks or Americans. Hope is a term you sell to religious zealots, dreamers, and lottery ticket buyers.
What is Obama? He is an aristocrat sitting atop a global hegemonic empire bent on world domination. He personally directs, alone with his cronies, an unfettered capitalist state devouring Americans and foreigners alike. His divine smile and trifling musical abilities charms the uneducated and socially disable. The racial circus that surround this President who holds foreigners in indefinite captivity in Guantanamo Bay is outrageous. What right does the United States have to hold prisoners without due process or their day in court? In the past, this sort of behavior was associated with Nazi Germany or Stalin’s assault on political foes. This treatment of the detainees at Gitmo is against the humanity of a civilized nation. From his drone attacks aboard that kills hundreds if not thousands, to the increases in domestic surveillance, he has run amok. I must say, he is very different from the 2nd Bush however…he’s worse.
I predicted years ago Obama was nothing but sound bites and wealth driven as all politicians must become. Sadly, African-Americans with its uncontrollable appetite for reality television and fantasy remain mesmerize with his spectacle. Absolutely nothing comes out of the White House toward African-Americans to improve their existence in America. Obama like most politicians set his sights on the financial gains that political service provides in our society. He fed out blank hope and stuffed his cronies with bloated defense contracts and bank bailouts. Obama is a corporate ventriloquist soothing us with a hope of a brighter future while maintaining the old social order. He is comfortable while our present state burns with dismal unemployment, intense gentrification in Chicago, and cancerous urban schools closings. Sadly, however, African-Americans cannot recognized they backed the wrong pony. Hey, but at least we could say Barack’s our cousin.
