The Call (continued)
In the U.S. he has attacked black fathers for failure to provide for African children while overlooking the horrors and deprivations imposed on African families, including fathers. Obama ignores the chronic unemployment, the CIA-imposed crack cocaine drug economy within our communities, the criminalization and imprisonment of young African men and the pre-determined justifiable killing of growing numbers of African people at the hands of the police.
Obama has also apologized for colonialism and neo-colonialism in Africa by characterizing our poverty there as due to corruption and lack of transparency on the part of African leaders. Obama overlooks the fact that the current leaders in Africa were either put there or allowed there by imperialism, including U.S. imperialism that has never hesitated to murder and/or overthrow African leaders that attempted to provide honest, transparent leadership and government for our people.
Obama has refused to criticize the U.S. for its participation in the murder of Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba in 1961 that allowed for U.S. hireling Joseph Mobutu to bleed the people of the Democratic Republic of Congo dry in the interests of Mobutu and U.S. imperialism. He has overlooked the fact that the U.S. government played the primary role in the 1966 overthrow of Ghana President Kwame Nkrumah whose life work contradicted U.S. interests by attempting to destroy the colonial borders separating Africans from each other and from our resources.
Throughout the world people are struggling to overturn their oppressive relationship to the U.S. These are struggles that have been ongoing for some time now and were highlighted in the past by the glorious struggles of the Vietnamese and Cuban peoples. Today these struggles are evident in the resistance to U.S. occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan and the challenge to U.S. hegemony by growing numbers of peoples and countries in the Middle East and Persian Gulf.
In South America the growing resentment of the people to U.S. domination and expropriation of their wealth can be found in the policies and popularity of Hugo Chavez, president of Venezuela along with the governments and people of Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Nicaragua and others.
Historically African people in the U.S. have stood with the oppressed peoples of the world in their struggles against imperialism. Historically the colonized African population of the U.S. has provided objective solidarity with the world’s oppressed by constantly confronting imperialism in our own interests within the U.S.
However, the election of Obama as president has undermined our solidarity with the oppressed peoples of the world as well as our own efforts for liberation. Among those of us who are least politically astute Obama’s election represents the pinnacle of achievement and an illusion of black power while others who know better celebrate his election as the advent of opportunity for the African middle class.
Many Africans are defensive of Obama because even without proper reporting by the ruling class media it is evident that there is great hatred of Obama by a significant sector of the white population, many of whom have taken to openly displaying weapons at community events promoting his agenda. Even simple attempts by Obama to play presidential by broadcasting to school children has run into a barrage of resistance by white groups and school officials around the U.S. And, if there ever was an organic disposition for presidential assassination in the U.S., Barack Hussein Obama is its target.
However, the hatred of Obama is transference of the white racial hatred of African people that is experienced daily in life by Africans in the U.S. and the world. It is a racial hatred that is part and parcel of the ideological fabric of the U.S. and the imperialist world, a hatred that is encouraged by Obama’s pandering to white anti-African sentiments and his denial of the existence of continuing white racial animosity toward African people.
The election of Obama and the blank check of approval given him by almost all African leadership in the U.S. has paralyzed the African liberation movement and the struggle for black self-determination. By giving blind support for Obama the African liberation movement has acceded leadership to the imperialist Democratic Party and left the African masses defenseless in the face of the growing racial animosity being demonstrated daily by many whites in a country with a proven track record for mass and official violence against our people.
In the meantime, many people around the world are confused by Obama’s election or intimidated by the unconditional support he has acquired from African people. Even within the U.S. there are those who initiated mass mobilizations against the war policies of past U.S. president George W. Bush but are reluctant to do so against the Obama regime for fear of alienating African people.
This is why we must act. We must act in our own interests and self-defense. We must act because of our responsibility to our people and to the peoples of the world that are being brutalized and destroyed by the policies of the U.S. government, the most vicious imperialist government in the world.