We Wear The Same Glasses
Apart from the racism that this sentiment represents, the truly astounding aspect of this announcement is the blatant stupidity and naivete. It’s all but saying that policies coming out of the White House are horribly wrong and ineffective, especially to the Black community. Hello! Rational people have been saying that for years and only now it’s become obvious?
Barack Obama is the standard bearer for a number of constituencies which pushed him into the world’s highest office. By liberals of course who were keen to demonstrate their willingness to embrace a non white candidate. By youth because he was someone closer to their age than option B at the time. By Latinos and other minorities because he represented a possible movement towards their sensibilities. But especially by Blacks since he was one of their own and finally, some measures would be taken to address their issues of inequity in society.
It would be useful to look at history and note that some of the biggest human tragedies happened because of misplaced idealism granted to a member of that particular society. By some counts the death of between 45 and 75 million Chinese by starvation during the Great Leap forward was orchestrated by…a Chinese, Mao Tse Tung, surely one of the biggest mass murderers in the history of man. We’re not sure if those who died were pulling for the homey in Peking. Josef Stalin didn’t care too much about the native blood since he was responsible for about 23,000,000 people’s death through starvation. Kim Il Sung and his son Kim Jong Il haven’t exactly treated their own countrymen particularly well either, apparently disposing of over 2 million of them over their terms in office. During the terror reign of Idi Amin in Uganda, apart from being one of the 300,000 or so killed while he ran that country, you’d have a good chance of being eaten as well.
We could go on to list statesmen such as Saddam Hussein, Charles Taylor, Pol Pot and Ho Chi Min. The point is, having a common racial heritage in all of these cases didn’t prevent people from being victimized in their own countries. People who think that just because they happen to share a trait with someone in charge puts them on the insider’s list for favours are…well, they’re just dumb. Would anyone ascribe any more trust to someone who was left handed just because they also happened to be a lefty? Or redheaded? Or bald?
On the religious front, I’m sure lots of people happily absorbed all the earnest pleadings of James Bakker and Jimmy Swaggert before it was discovered that in fact they were the wolves among the lambs. We know that Bernie Madoff was considered a mensch in the Jewish community until somebody asked for a cheque.
The kind of identity politics being played out today ironically reduces the chances of anything being done which can benefit the most people. Somebody will always feel aggrieved and the irrationality of their tribalism prevents the ability for society to move forward in a cohesive way. It makes no sense to support someone who is unsupportable. The bottom line is, if he’s a goof to you, he’s a goof to all.