WE WRAP UP our week of the African American Perspective at UMX feature with depth and soul and power and I thank Alexis for capping things off so. I want to thank all the writers who were generous enough to help me make this feature work and share their thoughts, feelings and experience with the UMX audience. I have found all the various viewpoints extremely helpful even in arranging my own thoughts. I also owe big thanks to Sylvia, my admin. asst. at XOLAGRAFIK for coordinating much of the effort. Tomorrow we return to your normal Nezrantium terrarium. Hasta entonces!

—Nezua

Alexis Pauline Gumbs is the founder of BrokenBeautiful Press. She is also a PhD candidate in English, Africana Studies and Women’s Studies at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.

A Great Rejoicing Across the Land.

The night before election day this November, Durham’s Youth Noise Network (YNN) presented a poetic audio presentation of June Jordan’s insightful and prophetic essay “On the Night of November 3rd 1992.” Jordan wrote that piece about end of the Bush era, about an exuberant election party celebrating the victory of a candidate who had campaigned on hope and change, about the giddy belief that a diverse groups of people we able to have for a moment in the United States of America. Jordan was writing at the end of the first Bush era, celebrating the election of Bill Clinton, and Jordan’s belief was never in Bill Clinton himself, but in the potential power of a majority that voiced it’s rejection of the status quo and it’s belief in change that day.

The night before election day this November, Durham’s Youth Noise Network, most of whom were born around 1992, most of whom cannot vote, read that essay like it was scripture or news, and said we do not trust or expect politicians to create the world we want and need. We do not believe that one person will make a world worthy for us to live in. We know that we are the people, nonvoters though we may be. And we know that it takes all the people doing more than voting to create a change worth living for.

And at home, having just left YNN I had a semblance of the moment I saw so many have the next night when the election results were announced. The night before, I stood up screaming, I clapped, I danced around the room, I was near tears. I said YES! over and over again. I was hearing a change I could believe in. The youth in my city were claiming their futures and our world. I am tearing up again even as I write this. I live in a city (and if you ask you will find that each of us do) where the young people know what power is and what it isn’t. And they know that you don’t trust a politician, you can only trust your own movement. I stood on a chair and sent frantic celebratory text messages. A great rejoicing.

The month before November (aka October) I was on the Grassroots Media Justice Tour
sponsored by Left Turn Magazine, Free Speech Radio News, Make/Shift Magazine, Spread Magazine and Bitch Magazine that went across the SouthEast in a beautifully bootleg and breakneck manner. Once we were even in the same city (Asheville) as the president-elect on the same day. (And astonishingly people still came to our workshops.) In most of the cities I led a workshop called “Pressed for Knowledge” in which a group of stranger came together to create radical publications in 2 hours. Watching groups in different southern cities agree and disagree on matters of messaging, content, audiences and division of labor, watching people create community by creating art stregnthened my deep belief in direct democratic practice.

And every night as I facilitated a poetic exercise called “Dig” which asked everyone to fill in the blank “If you dig here you will find __________.” I found myself making church in my own mouth, filling myself with mmhmms, and yeses at the startling depth of every statement, at each communities newly articulated recognition of it’s roots and cracks, at the hope in the faces of the people in the next cities as they listened to our growing sound collage. I found myself believing in places, Valdosta, Georgia…Pensacola, Florida that I had never considered important parts of my world. A great rejoicing. Across the land.

So, after a very important month, and a very important night there came that other moment, that I had not been waiting my whole life. Call me impatient. Say I jumped the gun, but like most of the people I know, love and respect, I have not been content to wait my whole life to find traces of home, identification and affirmation in the place that I live. I have been digging for those things all along, in the days spent writing, reading and listening with young people, and elders, in the hundreds of poetic exercises I’ve imposed on unexpecting and brilliant audiences, by putting my hands in the dirt of our community garden, by searching the archives for hidden histories that affirm a radical existence here in this place.

The election of a particular American President cannot, must not be the determining factor of my joy, or of my ability to be inspired in this place that I live.

In her essay, “On the Night of November 3rd 1992,” June Jordan says that upon the of Bill Clinton, at her election party, full of a multicultural group of friends and loved ones, she felt more at home than she had ever felt. And I understand why so many people, especially black people, keep saying that they feel proud of their country for the first time in lifetimes, and why we identify with the ascent of this particular family. I get it. My dad is a well-spoken charismatic light skinned guy who is very convincing when he speaks (even and especially in front of white people), my sister and I used to wear our hair like those beautiful little girls. I understand why looking at that family on stage, and imagining them in the white house makes some of us imagine that we might finally be at home.

But I have to resist that feeling. This is not the Cosby show. I cannot imagine that I am home when my chosen family is still under attack from the INS, when the president-elect can come out of his mouth and support an apartheid Israeli state, when all of the Republican AND Democratic candidates in my state ran on anti-immigrant platforms.

If I accept this election as the foundation of my home, I am sacrificing the home I actually want, the home I am collecting and saving out of the faces of every poetic collaborator, every workshop participant, every morning, afternoon and evening with the youth visionaries of Durham. If I pretend that home is something that the state can give me in the form of a good-looking “first family”, without stopping any of its economic, invasive, nativist violence, then I deny us all the home in the making that I believe in today and every day. And the day before and the month before, and always as long as you live here with me.

love,
alexis

*note: the title comes from June Jordan’s “On the Night of November 3rd 1992″ in her collection of essays Affirmative Acts.

FOR TU SABADO, in the African American Perspective at UMX feature we have a post by a blogmigo known as The Thin Black Duke, or more commonly “Kevin.” Today’s fine sampling includes a musical touch and doesn’t shy away from history either. Very tasty, so dig in without hesitation.

(For those just tuning in, this special feature at UMX runs through to Sunday the 16th of November—mañana.)

Kevin is a former graduate student in English literature and language and an Americanist specializing in poetry and poetics. He also spends a lot of time studying trickster narratives, linguistics, and rhetoric. Kevin is a life-long, hardcore music devotee and a tech hobiest as well. If you can imagine a dude sitting around reading Hart Crane or Emily Dickinson while listening to My Bloody Valentine or A Tribe Called Quest and compiling a Linux program from the source code on his home built-computer all at once, you’ve got him figured out.

The Cross Road.

Blues singer and guitarist Robert Johnson famously sang of “The Cross Road Blues” a song which is often interpreted as being his telling of meeting the Devil and selling his soul in order to play the blues as well as he did. A less known interpretation of the song, however, is that of Johnson singing about the dangers of being Black in the Deep South.

Historian Leon Litwack has suggested that the song refers to the common fear felt by blacks who were discovered out alone after dark. As late as 1930s in parts of the South, the well-known expression, “Nigger, don’t let the sun go down on you here,” was, according to Litwack, “understood and vigorously enforced.” In an era when lynchings were still common, Johnson was likely singing about the desperation of finding his way home from an unfamiliar place as quickly as possible because, as the song says, “the sun goin’ down, boy/ dark gon’ catch me here.” This interpretation also makes sense of the closing line “You can run/ tell my friend poor Willie Brown/ that I’m standing at the crossroads” as Johnson’s appeal for help from a real-life fellow musician.”[2]. Furthermore, it is said that Johnson requested that Willie Brown be informed in the event of his death.

The Cross Road has been on my mind lately.

Not because I feel that our President-Elect, Barack Obama, is at the cross road in the sense of selling his soul to become President, or that he is “out alone after dark” in his new role as leader of the United States. Both possibilities are there, to be sure, but that is not what concerns me now.

I am, however, thinking of Robert Johnson, Papa Legba, and Eshu Elegua, and the Yoruban and other myths that spurned these figures that linger at The Cross Road, figures of transformation and freedom, and why they might be necessary for understanding where we are right now in our national consciousness.

We are, my friends, at The Cross Road.

It is, perhaps, not Barack Obama that signifies Papa Legba or Elegua. Perhaps it is us. We are the ones that are opening the doors to our future. We are the elocution, the voices that shall ring loudly and proudly as we determine what the future will be. As the song goes, it is “we” that shall one day overcome.

I know, you’ve heard it before: “we are the change…blah, blah, blah…” It’s almost corny and played-out to say it anymore. Truth be told, I could never hear the word “change” again and be quite happy with that. But there’s something in the air, nonetheless. There’s something about seeing Obama “brush his shoulder” off and laughing at the folks that think Jay-Z is the originator of that gesture. For me, the gesture is not relevant because a pop culture icon appropriated it in a song. It is relevant because it points back to our stories, our songs, our ancestors. Like any good transformational figure, Obama is moving both forward and backwards at the same time; and like any good transformational figure, he is bringing us along for the ride, even if we don’t fully recognize it. Obama’s ascent makes perfect sense to me in the framework of black, African, folklore and the stories that have carried us this far along.

What struck me on election night the most happened as I was heading home from work. I heard noise. A lot of noise coming from the college nearby. At first, I couldn’t tell what people were yelling, but it quickly became apparent that the noise I heard was chants of “Obama! USA!” This was my first clue that Obama did, in fact, have it in the bag. You see, this isn’t New York City, or Chicago, where it was expected that people would take to the streets and celebrate (or riot). This is small town, private college, upstate New York. To hear these young voices, the voices of kids who, quite frankly, would be just fine regardless of who was elected President or what happens to the economy, so exuberantly yelling Obama’s name in the streets…well, it was jarring. I didn’t know what to make of it at first. These were the same kids that often display their privilege and entitlement to me daily at my work. These were the same kids that see nothing wrong with throwing a “pimps and hoes” party and inviting me, and then wondering why I’m offended. And then it hit me.

Yes, we are at The Cross Road, and The Cross Road can be a dangerous and scary place. There are things that must be accounted for, but we don’t have to be afraid to be “out after dark” anymore.

Being at The Cross Road isn’t about heroes or heroines, instead, it is about us. Papa Legba is a symbol showing us our potential–allowing or denying us the right to move to a higher level as we see fit. So it is with the first Black President of the United States. I don’t write this to try and diminish the amazing accomplishment that Barack Obama has achieved. Nor do I wish to suggest that Barack Obama is nothing more than “a symbol.” I, like most of you, am proud and excited beyond belief at Obama’s victory. That the most predominant figures of Black people in the United States are intelligent, responsible, good people rather than some wannabe gangsta with weak rhyme skills is something I’ve longed to see for some time now. President-Elect Obama, however, is simply showing us a new path. It is us that must walk it.

ALSO TODAY in the African American Perspective at UMX feature we have a post on African Americans and Latinos by a blogmiga whom I know personally. She’s one dynamo you want on your side, full of fire and joy and positivity. (And dig her pretty blog, wow! Who designed that thing? ::wink wink::) So gracias, Carmen! [PS, As Carmen did not send me a bio, I have patched together one from some words on her own blog's About page.]

(For those just tuning in, this special feature at UMX runs through to Sunday the 16th of November with at least one new post every day.)

Carmen D. is an Independent with moderate political views, a social liberal with strong opinions and is always open to a good argument. She has lived in projects and affluent neighborhoods, experienced poverty and abundance, had life changing experiences traveling all around the USA as a producer for ABC News, and throughout all of it her foundation has been the world view and intellectual curiousity her mother and grandmother provided while she was growing up.

Is Barack Obama the needed bridge between blacks and Latinos?

Is Barack Obama the needed bridge between blacks and Latinos? Maybe.

One of the most “YES!” inducing moments of last Tuesday’s election dissection, was learning that my Latino hermanas y hermanos had come out in a large majority (2 to 1) to support Barack Obama. In 2004, President George Bush garnered 44% of the Latino vote and pundits everywhere declared that “Hispanics” were conservative, and might provide a growing base of support for the Republican party going forward. It was a reasonable hypothesis, I guess. But what no one saw coming in 2004 is how sharply a first effort at immigration reform would be excoriated and then vetoed by both members of the Republican party and the right wing electorate. The call to stop all efforts toward immigration reform “until we secured our borders” left a foul taste in the gut of many who were surprised at how quickly John McCain dropped his rather mavericky effort and lurched as close to the Minutemen, without walking a shift on the border, as one could get.

There were a few expressions of bigotry coming from high profile Latinos, that seemed to be signaling a skepticism, even within the brown community, that Latinos in high numbers would support a black candidate. The encouraging observation, however, is that every time this fractured narrative was advanced during the primary and general election season, other members of the Latino community pushed back in a loud and forceful voice.

It was so good to see Antonio Villaraigosa, the mayor of Los Angeles, my home city, lined up behind Obama as a member of his super nova caliber economic team. Villaraigosa was a chair of Hillary Clinton’s campaign so I am glad to know that bygones are bygones. And I believe Obama is sending a signal to Latino people that his administration will recognize and honor their contribution to his victory.

To be honest, there is a detectable tension between blacks and Latinos here. It is pronounced in certain areas of the city where there is underemployment, high gang activity and a lack of job and educational opportunities. Not surprising, right? But my view of the tension is that it’s rooted in a sense of lack and an inability to see the power in working together across the color spectrum to push for expanded opportunities and fairness for everyone. I believe that if Barack Obama, while he works on fixing the economy and keeping us ‘safe’, is steadfast in pursuit of smart and humane immigration reform coupled with strategic, high level Latino appointments, his administration can proffer the profound sense of “hope” for little Latino girl and boys, their big brothers and sisters and their moms and dads that was instantly instilled in black children and their families on November 4th.

TODAY in the African American Perspective at UMX feature we are gifted with an essay by Elle, the Southern sistorian whose blogging is always personal, openhearted, and real. (For those just tuning in, this special feature at UMX runs through to Sunday the 16th of November with a new post every day.)

Elle is a historian whose work centers the lives and labors of black women. she’s a single mama, an erratic blogger, and an assistant professor.

Assessing the Secret of Joy

I’ve been thinking about this post all week and, as usual when I’m preoccupied about something, I called my mom. She listened to me go on and on for a while about all my fears and concerns, all the worrisome things I’ve heard and read. Finally, she broke in to say, “Don’t let people steal your joy!” And I realized, in the immediate aftermath of the election, that is what I did.

I expected to cry if Barack Obama won the election—everyone who knows me expected me to cry. I even had friends who called and said, “Are you crying yet?” Admittedly, I dashed away a few tears, but I didn’t really cry. The joy I felt was overshadowed by worry. Already, I was thinking about the Obama family out there on that huge stage. But I worried more about, “oh-my-god-if-he’s-not-immediately-the-bes-tpresident-EVAR-people-will-freak!”

The worries got to me. More importantly, people got to me. The Thursday after the election, I walked into one of the offices in my department in which two white women (one a student, one a staff person) were having a discussion. They stopped immediately. Aware of my discomfort (and my inability to leave because I had to search for something), the student began talking again. The topic was the election. I knew the student was from an ultra-conservative background, but tended to be center right herself.

But the other woman? Bitterness poured off her in waves. She launched, loudly, into a speech about how Obama was not a messiah and she was tired of people treating him like he was a god and how it’s been proven he’s been hypnotizing and brainwashing people. She’d picked her friend up from work on election day, she said, and asked if the friend had voted. The friend nodded, but said nothing else for a few minutes, then finally spoke up and said, “I voted for McCain.” “I did too,” she told the student, “And I asked her, why should we be ashamed, you know? Why should we be ashamed to vote for a war hero?”

There have been very few times in my (relatively new) professional life in which I’ve felt I was targeted because I was black. I have no doubt most of that speech occurred because my black self was in that room. That shook me so badly that I went to my co-worker’s office and virtually collapsed. Then, I cried.

And I cried more, after my 12:30 class, when one of my young, white male students approached me, excited, talking about Obama’s victory. “He actually had a majority!” He was so happy and before I could do more than smile, an older student chimed in, “He didn’t win by that much.”

I am frustrated by all these efforts to discount, to downplay the political adroitness of the man. All the rooted-in-reality people, on the left and right, who are cautioning us misled masses not to get our hopes up. Why?

And why am I letting it get to me? I am in a part of the country that didn’t rejoice, didn’t laugh, and dance, and cry in the streets. I am away from family with whom I could have laughed and danced and cried. I think that is part of the reason I reacted so strongly at work—I mean, come on, the women in my department with whom I socialize are a bunch of “latte sipping intellectuals” or whatever, who were firmly behind Obama.

But I had to turn off that besieged part of me to focus on the historicity of this election. Obama’s election does set precedent. Voters are sending an African-American man to the most coveted home in the political world, a house to which, just a century ago, inviting a black man violated American mores.

Yet, in many ways, his victory was not surprising in the aftermath of the primaries. When Americans felt that President Herbert Hoover no longer cared about them, that he was ill-equipped (and unconcerned) with dealing with the realities of an unparalleled economic catastrophe, they sent him and his party home. When conservative Americans felt that the world around them was imploding, raining jagged shards of feminism, civil rights agitation, worker militancy, and anti-war sentiment upon them, they elected Richard Nixon. When southerners felt their cherished Lost Cause had been forgotten and fundamentalists decided they missed the days when women knew their place, they rallied with others to elect Ronald Reagan. After eight years of a bleak, warmongering, fearful, economy-destroying presidency, that the Republicans got the boot is not ahistorical.

Still, that Obama surmounted the obstacle of the election caught me by surprise. I wanted him to win. I wanted him to change things. But I had not yet formulated what I wanted that change to be, what I wanted his presidency to be. I have big ideas-end this hellish war, revive our economy, start the turnaround for public schools, acknowledge and address the civil rights crises that are still ongoing, particularly for PoC, for immigrants and the LGBTQI community, do something about the prison-industrial complex, about poverty, about healthcare.

But I have more intimate ones too. I’ve written before about how the image of 84-year-old Milvertha Hendricks, a black survivor of Hurricane Katrina, wrapped in the American flag, was jarring to me. I have been made to feel like something “other” than American—for my color and my beliefs—for so long, that seeing black people huddled beneath the flag gives me pause. So that is one of my hopes, that his presidency will be a progressive, and people (not money or corporation) centered one, one with which I can identify. That it will be one that responds to people, and not an extension of the imperial presidency (or vice-presidency) that the Bush regime embodied. That would give me the kind of joy that can’t be stolen.

I’m at a point in my life, or in my son’s life, I suppose, where he has become the philosopher to whom I listen most. So as I thought about this post, I consulted him, too. I asked him what he thought the election of Barack Obama to the presidency meant.

He didn’t have anything particularly wise to say this time, on the surface at least. His response was, “He said it was about change, Mama.”

“But what kind?” I prodded.

He shrugged. “I hope a good kind.”

That might just be what I hope most.

TODAY in the African American Perspective at UMX feature we give you a strong piece by Matttbastard, who I thank for adding his voice to our mix. (For those just tuning in, this special feature at UMX runs through to Sunday the 16th of November with a new post every day.)

matttbastard is a (typically foul-mouthed and incivil) Canadian blogger, activist and political junkie.  He blogs at bastard.logic and Comments From Left Field, and has guest-posted at Shakesville and Muslimah Media Watch.

Barack Obama: [Re]defining Possibilities

Say it with me, brethren: Barack Obama ain’t Jesus (black or otherwise.)

He’s not RFK, nor MLK, nor FDR. He sure as hell isn’t on the vanguard of some post-racial generational shift, from Moses to Joshua; as Colin Powell recently put it, “no matter what happens in the case of [President-elect] Obama, there are still a lot of black kids who don’t see that dream there for them.” And, sorry, Oprah, but, with all due respect, Obama ain’t ‘The One’, either.

Chet Scoville hit it last week in a morning-after post:

Barack Obama was just the right person at the right time, which is something that can never be predicted [emph. mine]. And that means that even now, American politics can be unpredictable.

The unlikeliness of Obama’s ascendancy cannot be overstated. A skinny mixed race kid with a funny name, barely 2 years into his Senate career, who goes on to thump the Clinton machine, John “The Original Maverick” McCain, and conventional wisdom re: racial politics in America, barely breaking a sweat in the process?

Amazing.

But not fate, unless one defines ‘fate’ as the inevitable finally occurring.

So.

Strip this admittedly monumental (if unlikely, unpredictable and–paradoxically–inevitable) event of all mythic connotations, take it out of broader historical context.

What does the election of Barack Hussein Obama mean to me, a skinny mixed-race political junkie from Canada (whose name is only ‘funny’ in the sense that it doesn’t quite match his complexion)?”

Here’s the thing: despite recent image problems, we (as in ‘the world outside US borders’) actually do have a longstanding love affair with the idea, the great potential, of America. That America in practice rarely lives up to that potential has always been a given. We have no illusions regarding America’s exceptional benevolence, or lack thereof.

But there’s never been anyone in the Oval Office like George W. Bush, who has taken America’s moral capital and, over the course of a decade, put it into negative equity.

The Bush years have been, for lack of a better word, abusive. I feel abused — the whole world does (just ask the Islamic world, which, out of everyone, has borne the brunt of America’s bold, brazen turn to the dark side.) Now, finally, we’ve entered the post-Bush era. Bishop Desmond Tutu, writing in the Washington Post this past Sunday, said that “Barack Obama has turned America’s image on its head” and that Obama’s (monumental, unlikely, inevitable) victory “dramatizes the self-correcting mechanism that epitomizes American democracy.”

And that feels damn good.

Now, does it make me feel proud to see someone who reflects my biracial identity at the helm of the world’s most powerful nation? Sure–but what Barack Obama’s victory most represents to me, as a progressive social democrat from Canada who also happens to be a person of colour, is, as I wrote the other day, “an opportunity.” The margins of ‘possible’ and ‘impossible’ have been redefined.

Ain’t about the man–never was. This election was about us. We did this, we the people (yes, we–y’all seriously gotta get used to the rest of the world not despising you again.)

4 years from now, if we’re not disappointed by the first term of President Barack Hussein Obama, it means we haven’t set the bar high enough–not just for Obama, but for ourselves.

TODAY in the African American Perspective at UMX feature I present you with an amigo I often chill with in the Twitterverse, and who is a teacher and a blogger and well, here comes his bio so you can read for yourself. Jose asked me to alter the grafik I designed for this feature, which for his page serves as a good reminder to all that “Latino” and “African American” are not mutually exclusive categories! Gracias to Jose for adding to the mix.

Jose Vilson: Educator, blogger, writer, poet, NYCer, Black / Latino, political polemicist, and everything in between. Love me. hate me. Read me.

The Forever After

A week ago, I highlighted the many reasons I voted for Obama. In this prose, I struggled with the reasons why I would or wouldn’t vote. The mere fact that my vote came down to a simple and rather selfless act speaks to the power of Obama: his and our combined abilities to move away from egocentric ideology to a more progressive lean lead me to the voting booth. Even the comfort people have had discussing this latest election stands in stark contrast to the hush of politics over the last decade and change (as if our politics and religious / spiritual beliefs have little to do with our disposition). And in spite of my better judgement, racial politics has changed now. And for better.

This latest vote on behalf of President-Elect Barack Obama is as much a rejoinder and an affront to the current state of this country and an endowment for and endorsement of our future.

My biggest reason for voting came in the form of 30 or so students in a classroom in Washington Heights of New York City. All of them are considered English language learners, all of Latin@ descent, and all from immigrant populations. Their engagement in this political race has surprised and inspired me. Their worst and best ideas about politics comes to the fore, and while some of the ideas are certainly prejudice (“White people vote for McCain” won’t stand the test of time), I also see a great opportunity to help develop better-informed citizens and participants in a still-exclusive fraternity.

While not every Latin@ and Black youth that fits the aforementioned demographic has the same exact view about politics, these were some of the political thoughts and trends I noticed in my classroom before Election Day:

1. Fear of a Black president … getting shot, a fear we’ve had for quite a while now.

2. Anger towards John McCain and …

3. Their hypothesis that JohnMcCain wanted Barack Obama killed

4. Absence of conversation about George W. Bush, amazing since they spent all of last year hating him

5. Actually liking the Democratic candidate rather than just disliking the Republican candidate (::ahem2004ahem::)

In the larger scheme of things, while these views are rather skewed, they give those of us with more knowledge an avenue to bridge the gap between generations, where so often, we found ourselves perplexed by the younger generation’s choices of music, fashion, and heroes. They’re partaking in the conversation more than ever, and in many ways have fallen in line with what our generations believe as well. Nickelodeon, one of the most popular stations for young kids and teens alike, recently held “Nick Picks the President,” an online poll to determine who their audience would choose for President. Barack wins. That coupled with a recent graphic showing what would happen if the 18-29 year old demographic were the only ones voting,we see a new wave of a liberal agenda come to the fore after the last 8 treacherous years of bad policy for the next few decades at least.

And while Barack spoke to the elder generations through the regular rally-fundraiser-policy speeches method, the groundswell really came from his use of social media, a space the kids in my classroom are all too fond of.

Barack Obama isn’t just a man in isolation or the man who’ll lead this country for the next four – eight years, but also a mass movement for that future, a bright one. Any little boy or girl doesn’t have to fear whether he can’t make it to the White House because he might get shot down, whether their vote will count, whether there are people actually looking out for them and their interests. Barack’s overtly galvanized the country in his favor, but has built a formidable youth movement that should keep this generation’s voice heard, but its soul intact.

Yet, Barack Obama encourages us to self-empowerment and building our own communities, for he really is only one man. He was neither born in a manger nor born on Krypton. Maybe.

Now, the only question is: what’s your role in this movement? The kids have responded. Your move.

jose, who stands in solidarity with all his people …

SECOND UP in the African American Perspectives at UMX feature is a young amiga with a powerful soul and the words to prove it. She’s known around the blogarrio as Blackamazon, and sometimes we call her BA. Here is your daily dose of corazón and remember to drop by every day until Sunday for a fresh post in the series.

Blackamazon writes regularly (or wishes she could) at Having Read The Fine Print. Twenty something she keeps trying to find a way to make her big mouth and her propensity for troublemaking pay her student loans.

Can’t think after yet

I am mad you said it.

Girl sweet jesus girl.

I am crying because

For the first time I believe I can live.

I cried because you said it, I cried because I live it.

I am crying because I feel it.

I cry because people have been telling me I was gonna die for this mouth since I was seven years old.

Because that’s what you told mouthy lil black girls and boys, for so long.

Because every hero I ever had that looked like me, that didn’t perform,or shoot hoops, or deal in some commerce of the body

At the very least Took a beating , that was just part of the game.

And if you were a black man,

a Malcolm

A Medgar

A Martin

that if you got real good at it, if you truly became one who put your love of god,you love of your people, your love OF THIS COUNTRY THIS FUCKED UP IN SO MANY WAYS, that wrote you into the constitution as 3/5 of a man even as you BUILT THIS ON YOUR BACK BEFORE HALF OF THEM FOLKS WERE EVEN ON THIS SIDE OF THE EARTH?!?!?!?

THIS COUNTRY

that if you loved it enough to hold it truly accountable , to believe it could truly live up to the promise, if you said that out loud if you said it in any way that was eloquent and intelligent, that was heartfelt that moved people ESPECIALLY BLACK PEOPLE

You were t shirt fodder, for paintings in the living room, but for a life

Not for you.

When this started, even in the primaries, part of the hurt, that infuriated me so wasn’t just my fury at the general dumb that is white folk talking bout race, and proper order of firsts

But the fact that everyone WAS COMFORTABLE that he was threatened with death

EVERY DAY

Because in THIS COUNTRY that’s what we do to black men

We’re not mean to them

We don’t just stack the deck against them

WE TRY TO KILL THEM

They just gotta deal with it.

That while this important “first” was being dealt with on one side as what was owed

People was praying he didn’t win cause

They couldn’t take it.

THEY BELIEVED IN HIM, THEY BELIEVED HE WAS BEST

and they KNEW

they KNEW in their hearts the country they live in the only country they EVER LIVED IN would

KILL HIM

forget not letting him win

forget being cruel to him

KILL HIM

but we go on. Because that’s all we know to do.

I have only been in this country for ONE GENERATION

and I KNOW.

We learned it in our bones.

Imagine those for CENTURIES AND CENTURIES

and oh god oh god

to listen to talk to be apart to criticize to disagree to love to hate

and to know that everyone almost everyone who did any of those things

STILL end it in their hearts with A PRAYER

because we KNEW

and still AS A PEOPLE

eternal canaries in a coal mine.

Only by faith

every victory making it harder to fight this dream

every good campaign decision breaking your heart

Dear God

Bless him Jehovah

Allah

Mother Earth

Yahweh

OBEAH

ANCESTORS ALL

please don’t grant us another picture.

Please not another Myrlie

Not another Coretta

not another going back till that ship on that sea woman rocking now fatherless children

Not another beautiful “strong black woman” punished by loneliness for loving a man trying to be good. Not another group of brothers in tears kicking themselves because they FELL FOR IT THIS TIME AGAIN. That they believed that this time work would pay off

We prayed for it, chanted lit candles

and it seems like it snuck up on us.

No one envisioned an obama presidency, not the way we talked about gore or clinton

not that way

because hey 2000, 2004

and then last night

sweet jesus

oh ancestors

you mean I get to look at little black boys and say

You don’t have to be SOMEBODY

an abstract idea

because NOBODY

actually got to live to see it

Baby you can be PRESIDENT

I get to tell lil black girls some one will call you the love of their life for being you and being smart

to be VIOLENT at the mere thought of people even pretending they knew enough struggle to be “post racial”

to read this condescending over familiar cooption

and KNOW THATS WHAT THIS NEEDED

to not even to understand why you so mad.

and then realize you ain’t mad

You so scared

That this this moment you NEVER BELIEVED that you never thought could happen that the man on the scooter in the oxygen mask

this moment even if you don’t agree politically

even if you expect to be let down

that when you come from people that EVERYDAMN Thing you did was by faith alone

and that WAS ALL YOU COULD ASK FOR

and now

now faith made this

to realize how small this pain has made your dreams. That at the dawn

at this moment

you don’t even know how to ask for anything else

But please

Please sweet jesus

please

please who ever is listening

right now

don’t take it away.

LAST WEEK I spoke of featuring some writing by friends in the Afrosphere. This feature [The African American Perspective at UMX, or "AAP"] will run all week, and into the weekend. Mil gracias to all who contributed, and of course (as always) to my amazingly generous and talented amiga and assistant with all things XOLAGRAFIK, M, for organizing this. Stay tuned every day for a fresh post in the series.

Moya Bailey is a fourth year Fellow in Women’s Studies at Emory University. Her research is focused on health care disparities in marginalized groups. She received her undergraduate degree from Spelman College where she majored in Women’s Studies with a concentration in Health. While at Spelman she was a resident assistant and was active in many campus organizations including AUC Peace, Sisterfire, Afrekete, and served as President of the Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance (FMLA) during the Nelly Protest. Her organizational and planning activities with the FMLA and the SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Rights Conference led her to a life of activism centered on health issues and social constructs affecting women of color. Bailey also serves on the national board of the Davis- Putter Scholarship Fund, which provides scholarships for activist students.

After the Morning After, After the Night Before…

I don’t feel victorious. I don’t feel like we won. I do think that these sentiments are particularly interesting after the early press spin that asked whether Barack was black enough and black people were ambivalent about the answer. Now he’s one of us, our hero, our modern day Martin and Malcolm (please people let’s really think about what these men did and who they were i.e. not politicians).

A friend’s brother said that he’s seen more racism on the internet in the last few days than in his whole millennial life, which is interesting in the wake of claims that Obama’s win symbolizes a new epoch in racial relations in this country. What I see is power and hegemony at work. The election of a brown face that keeps the capitalist machine going, (not an uncle tom Nader; they all placate those corporations) albeit it a gentler, greener machine (we’ve been promised) that still does the work of US imperialism.

I wonder how our Indigenous brothers and sisters feel? Is it enthusiasm for the fact that a person of color has reached the white house or is it sadness that a person of color is at the helm of an empire that wrought such pain and destruction among their peoples?

I say person of color deliberately to note that Obama’s African American-ness exist in another space than that of other African American’s who have sought the nation’s highest office (Chisolm, Jackson, McKinney, etc.). He is not marked with the north/south black/white paradigmatic binary we use to understand race in this country. He is not colored by the hallmarks of African American elite society like belonging to a Divine Nine fraternity or growing up in Jack & Jill. His Hawaiian, Midwest upbringing make him an exception to dominate codes of blackness which initially made black people suspicious and ultimately put whites at ease.

It was easier for me when the face of U.S. imperialism didn’t look like mine. Will this stem the radical left’s radicalness? Will we become complacent because Obama is the new president of the fundamentally illegal, stolen, and pilfered United States? I am worried because as bougie black folk celebrate and rejoice, there are still black people hurting. The “tragedy” in Jennifer Hudson’s family captures national attention, even presidential (now) condolences, but how often is that story true for countless other black families living in this country and how often is that story
told as one of tragedy rather than a rationalization of stereotypes long held about the black urban poor? Structural racism depends on the exceptions (Obama, Oprah, etc.) to hide the rule that is inequity.

Am I cynical for feeling ambivalent in this moment? I dare not share these thoughts with too many because the retribution is swift. There is no room for quirky black girls casting aspersions at this watershed moment in black history. But I must insist on raising my dis-ease in this moment, my fear for what this may seemingly absolve in the minds of many. And also what might it incite? “Disempowered racist white people can only actually harm people much less powerful than the president elect.”

So I pledge to stay vigilant, critical and skeptical. I pledge also to be active, visible, and hopeful for the world I wish to see. It will take more than one man’s rise to power to undo centuries old structural oppressions built along the axes of race, gender, sexuality, ability and age. The struggle continues.

Author’s Note: Thanks to Summer M., Alexis P., and Ashon C. for helping me think on this and providing pieces of this analysis.