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Fulfilling the Dream: From MLK to Obama

January 19, 2009

Guest: Phyllis Randall, Chair of Political Action for the NAACP Northern Virginia

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  • Jeff January 20, 2009 5:07 am

    Just remember: MLK’s dream was not to have an amazingly innocuous and homogenized black man elected. I think that MLK’s dream was what he said. Obama’s election is amazing, but it’s Amazing along the lines of the first black Miss America or Miss USA or Oscar winner. It’s more momentous, but that’s about how HALF of America is voted in ONE BIRACIAL MAN while the other half was terrified of him and thought that because he was black, he was a Muslim and his wife was mean.
    MLK’s dream were about how America treats “ALL God’s children.” MLK placed the emphasis on all.
    Every time we reach a milestone like this, I hear proclaiming the dream fulfilled. I heard it in 1980 with Vanessa Williams winning Miss America, and when Denzel Washington and Halle Berry won Oscars.
    During Obama’s tenure, more cops will kill black men unprovoked, and will proclaim that they were afraid of us and will be acquitted. More black men will be profiled and I will be stopped by the cops for no reason another dozen times or so. Actually, the last time I was stopped, it was because I had backed into my dumpster and cracked my tail light cover. A cop stopped me because I was supposed to have red tape over the crack. I guess valid.
    Black actresses will still be ignored on TV and black actors will mainly be that lonely black guy who has no visible family. On mainstream TV, blacks will only hook up with whites, even when black females are allowed to grace TV. Same race lovers are usually bad ex-lover. Meanwhile stand up comedians joke that black men really want white women even after more than two ENTIRE BLACK TOWNS have been completely destroyed in America because white men used to believe this. Emmit Till was killed because he was supposed to have whistled at a white woman and not TV continually creates this image that black people, who REALLY DO pair off mainly with each other like any other race, reject each other.
    I can’t tell you how much that offends me from Hancock to Smallville to Buffy to Angel to Supernatural to Battlestar Galactica. I’m not against interracial dating. I think it’s genetically healthier. But the way we are portrayed on TV is just wrong. After a while in an episodic show, doesn’t it become odd that EVERY black person is in an Interraticl relationship? That there are no black families? No black couples? And that all the black people escape to their white friends? When their old black friends show up, it’s with race baggage and anger.
    Sure there are exceptions. I’m talking about the rule.
    I will continue in the next eight years of Obama’s fulfilled administration to see more movies like Independence Day and Hancock: an average of less than one black woman in all the world. Actually, I can’t remember any black women in Hancock. I counted two black strippers in Independence day.
    I’m going way back for this gem here: Child’s Play a movie that takes place in Chicago, where there are zero black people, even on the L train.
    Am I nitpicking? One important thing here. The absence of black extras and supporting actors in MOST movies (forget the obvious exceptions like black made movies) is a HUGE manifestation of employment discrimination.
    In Shreveport TV, a black man was beaten up for wearing an Obama T-shirt. http://www.ksla.com/Global/story.asp?S=9479629 Read the comments on this TV station’s blog and tell me if the dream is fulfilled. Note that while police say that three men beat him up. only one was arrested. The police say no further arrests will be made, and are completely tight lipped about the case since 12-11-08
    In new york white men beat a black teen. Note the date 11-06.
    http://gothamist.com/2008/11/06/after_obama_win_black_muslim_teache.php
    And just go back and think of all the racial fear and hatred aimed at Obama by the second largest political party in America, the Republican party, and by Rush Limbaugh and his ilk. The dream is definitely NOT fulfilled.
    On a side note, I think that the fact that Obama’s genes are half white, but he’s spoken of as being ONLY black is an insult to his mother’s genes and her side of the family.
    While Obama has indeed chosen to call himself black, he is as much white as he is black.
    It might seem weird to some that I view Obama not as simply black. from my perspective it is amazingly racist to see him as simply black. it hearkens back to the one drop of black blood polluting the gene pool law. Until recently in Louisiana if you could find ANY black blood in your heritage, no matter how far back you go, you are simply black. I think it’s just as racist to set that bar back one generation.
    I personally have a dream while I’m still halfway young: More black T&A on TV. I’ll settle for proportional T&A. I’m just saying…

  • Johnny Democracy January 20, 2009 2:40 am

    Memorabilia
    As I contemplate Americana’s fate,
    perhaps I am a cynic
    not to buy a commemorative plate
    of this historic date,
    I can only grieve
    the mistakes of the past
    that have cast such a weirdly full-circle reality
    into the moment,
    group karma of cathartic drama
    looms too heavy for me to party
    away my sanity into the night,
    when the mighty chore remains,
    to bring political darkness
    into the light
    of a new national consciousness.