THE CULTURAL DEMOGRAPHICS OF THE NATION ARE CHANGING. Black President, Hispanic Supreme Court Justices, Black Attorney Generals, and lest we forget, Kumar in the White House. This is throwing some people off-stride and just a bit out of their minds.
CLOSING OUT OUR WEEKEND OF TRIBUTE to Michael Jackson, here’s one of possibly the best songs about friendship, or love, or both—that exists. A lot of that is performance. It’s written for a rat, but what’s new? The footage is great, too. An old grainy version of MJ as a kid, feels like a painting in motion.
IF WE WANT TO UNITE, it cannot be by overlooking differences that stab at people and stick in their throats and veins and bellies. This unity must come about by connecting ourselves through struggle; by working together to fight the iniquities that pit most of us against each other, and all so that one or two types of persons can ascend, unfettered, to the top of the heap.
ALEXIS PAULINE GUMBS: I understand why looking at that family and imagining them in the White House makes us imagine we might finally be at home. But I have to resist that feeling. If I pretend that home is something that the state can give me in the form of a good-looking “first family” without stopping its economic, invasive, nativist violence, then I deny us all the home in the making that I believe in today and every day.
KEVIN: 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…
CARMEN D: 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…
ELLE, PHD: 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. And why am I letting it get to me?
MATTTBASTARD: 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 is “an opportunity.” The margins of ‘possible’ and ‘impossible’ have been redefined. This ain’t about the man—never was.
JOSE VILSON: Barack Obama isn’t just a man in isolation or the man who’ll lead this country for the next four to eight years, but also a mass movement for that future, a bright one. Barack has overtly galvanized the country in his favor and has built a formidable youth movement that should keep this generation’s voice heard, but its soul intact.
BLACKAMAZON: 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…
MOYA BAILEY: 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….
I AM VERY HAPPY that my children will grow up to see Barack Obama as our President. I do think certain lines of thinking, where people imagine the arc of justice completed now that a black man is our President, go too far and too soon. But I know that from this day forward, children in the USA will grow up with a different idea of African Americans and our country, both.
YOU ASK ME am I happy? Well as matter of fact, I can say that I’m ecstatic, ’cause we all just made a pact. We’ve agreed to get together, joined as children in Jah! When you’re moving in the positive, your destination is the brightest star…
IT’S BEEN A LONG, INTENSE ELECTION YEAR. And just as after the primaries ended, at this point I feel the need to center myself. To calm, to restore, to reorient and mostly to withdraw a bit from the online activity and conversation, at least for a brief moment. Enough to mark a pause or a divide.
CONGRATULATIONS TO BARACK OBAMA, the 44th president (-elect) of the United States of America. And to all who supported and worked for or contributed in some way toward this moment. It has been an overwhelming and amazing night. Here’s looking toward the future, and all it may contain.
House of Nezua
the XOLAGRAFIK theater!
