AMIRI BARAKA "Forward is Where We Have to Go"
What the young people with the signs in St. Petersburg said to Barack Obama—"You're undermining the (Black) Revolution"—is merely one more example of how confused and misdirected too many who style themselves "revolutionary" have become. For one thing, it is certain that these folk do not even understand what revolution is. I would guess they are more of the tiny throng captivated by anarchism and infantile leftism who think revolution means standing on the sidelines hurling insults at the people who they think are their enemies.
If you want to stand around with signs of some significant show of political clarity, they should at least be aimed at the crypto fascist John McCain. To not even be able to identify who the main enemy is at any given stage of struggle is patently non-revolutionary. To think that Obama is the principle target of our struggle is, at best, infantile and anarchist. At worst, it could be pro-McCain.
If we go back to basics, revolution is the seizure of power. The aim of revolutionaries, at most stages of struggle, is the seizure of power. To picket Obama is to move to seize power for McCain.
What is also not understood is the tortuous path of revolutionary struggle. Obama, along with quite a few other "post '60s" developments is still the product and direct result of the turbulent Civil Rights and Black Liberation movements of the '60s. Without Dr. King, Montgomery, Malcolm X, Robert Williams, Rosa Parks, CORE, the Freedom Riders, the Black Panthers, SNCC and CAP there could be no Barack Obama. Without those bloody struggles against black national oppression, racism, discrimination and segregation, there could be no Obama candidacy, or certainly not of this magnitude.
Jesse Jackson's two runs for president were admirable, and yes, they were part of the sledgehammer of black politics from the 50's through the 80's. And just as that force created the visible use of Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice as negro "buttons" within the rightwing establishment of US bourgeois politics, none of that was possible without the black movement itself, as contradictory as that might seem. The internationally perceived racial conflict in the United States was the most glaring contradiction to US claims to being the almighty white angel of world politics.
The colored secretaries of state provided some of the cool out necessary not only to sublimate that image but to foist on this world of colored people a confusing tactic, so that when either secretary of state hopped out of a plane somewhere in this mostly colored world, friends and righteous enemies would be startled by who was carrying the message.
So now that it's come all the way to the "top" of US government, there is a need for another, Yeh! black, face to cool out the ugliness the last twenty some years have mashed upon the world. We might not agree with the intention of this playacting, but at the same time we must recognize the forces that make it necessary. Recognize those forces, because we are a large part of them. And with that recognition must come the understanding of what the next step in this protracted struggle to ultimately eliminate imperialism and monopoly capitalism is: which are the base of continuing national oppression, racism, gender oppression, and anti-democratic hegemony anywhere in the world.
The very negative side of the "post-racist" line that Obama runs is that the die is cast for nitwits to say that racism is done and gone and that if you still in the ghetto or still don't have a job, it's on you. Obama's best intention is that there is the making of a post racist coalition that can provide the muscle for his campaign and victory in the election. But reality—the cops, the jails, the unemployment figures—puts all that down every day.
Still, it is a very pimpable figment. A New York Times recent cover story—"Is Obama the End of Black Politics?"—is a stinking example of its pimpablity. One obvious answer to that is "Only if Obama is the End of White Politics." One could hope that an Obama victory would signal an incremental leap in the direction of more democratic allowances for highly skilled operatives within the system, which is what Obama certainly is. But "post-racist"? Gimme me a break.
Black politics will only disappear when the black majority disappears, and even the wish fulfillment of New York Times "liberals" can never achieve this, nor the creepy self hatred of those incognegroes the Times wants to anoint as "post-black." Still the question of Obama's candidacy is a quite different consideration. As I have said in print and in the flesh at many forums, the foundation of Obama's successful candidacy is his 90 percent support from the Afro-American people, a fact that I'm sure he understands. Obama also understands that it is the rest of the American people he must reach out to, no matter how his attempts to do this are questioned, even by black people. After all, 90 percent of 12 percent is not enough to win the presidency.
The so called militants, black and white, simply fail to understand that the logic and strength of Obama's candidacy is the 21st century manifestation of the Civil Rights and Black Liberation Movements. Jesse Jackson's two impressive candidacies were also part of that movement. Not to accept both these phenomena as positive aspects and results of our collective struggle is to lack "true self consciousness."
The real question now is what the next step should be, what the key link in that chain of progressive struggle is that if grasped will hoist the whole of us incrementally to the next level of unity and struggle? We cannot go backward or even contemplate it. A revolutionary must first find out what it is the people want, what they need. Unfortunately, for some, the definition of revolution is to construct some elitist cultural nationalist, religious or infantile leftist position, the "further out" the better, so they may claim, since few others will get down with that, that they must be the most revolutionary of all. Too often this is just a means of hiding out from the real work of educating and organizing and settling for being the hippest chump in the closet.
What we must be aiming for at the present level of US politics is a people's or popular democracy, rather than the dictatorship of wealth that exists today. That struggle must include replacing the monopoly capitalist-imperialist domination of US politics at every level with a united front, which should be led by the working class in alliance with farmers, the progressive petty bourgeoisie, oppressed nationalities and progressive national bourgeoisie: in other words, the loose Obama coalition, as it exists now.
For the Afro-American people a national united front, democratic assembly, would be a huge step in the right direction, as what was attempted by the Convention Movement of the 19th century, the National Negro Congress in the 1940's and the Gary Convention in 1972. It is this kind of organized force that would be powerful enough to maintain the correct orientation of any national coalition of multinational forces to win this election and help steer the ship of state.
The fiercest opponents to such a victorious coalition are the racist right and the juvenile delinquent left some of whom are quite rightist and even some quite racist; e.g., how can Nader put Obama down for "sounding white"? What does "white" sound like, after all? And how come Nader don't sound like that?
Ultimately this political period will be characterized by what kind of political force blacks and progressive Americans can put together to secure Obama's election and push him ever to the Left. Hubert Harrison, the black socialist, wrote in the New York Call in 1911: "politically, the Negro is the touchstone of the modern democratic idea. The presence of the Negro puts our democracy to the proof and reveals the falsity of it…True democracy and equality implies a revolution …startling even to think of." So the question of "Black Politics" must be inextricably bound to progressive politics in this country and just as we fought as black people and with progressive allies of many nationalities even to vote, or for that matter, to drink out of public drinking fountains or ride anywhere in a bus, so it is this same "Black Politics" that will help us tackle our current national problems. Black politics in its most progressive meaning is the struggle for a people's democracy here in the United States. This is what the Obama campaign asserts boldly. We must see that it continues to do so right into the Oval Office and beyond.
Amiri Baraka is an internationally acclaimed poet, playwright, political activist, and the former Poet Laureate of New Jersey. He is the author of over 40 books of essays, poems, drama, and music history and criticism, including Blues People: Negro Music in White America, (1963), The Dutchman (1964), Black Magic, poems(1969), and Somebody Blew Up America (2001).