Autosuggestion
The self-defeating rhetoric of electing the first black president
March 5th, 2008
By Anthony Kiekow
Illustration by Ben Alpert
“No black man will ever be president.”
This phrase has been uttered countless times by blacks, but with Senator Barack Obama on the cusp of the Democratic presidential nomination, one would think that such rhetoric would dissipate. Unfortunately, though, it has only increased.
Why are we so set on the notion that a black man will never call 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue home? Was Tupac Shakur right in the song where he professed it to be a white-man’s world? Or was he right when in that very same song he stated that rather than them knocking us off, it was us knocking us off?
I have struggled with these questions for sometime now, without making any progress in answering them until a chance encounter I recently had during a lunch break from work.
As I sat in the lobby of my workplace reading a book written by Sen. Obama, I was approached by an elderly white man.
As he neared, I glanced his way and noticed that he was staring at my book. My immediate assumption was that he did not approve of my selected reading material.
As my thoughts raced to figure out exactly what he was thinking, he sat down right next to me and in what sounded like a condescending tone asked, “Do you support him?”
I thought to myself how rude it was of him to ask me that. Who I supported was my own business and I was not going to justify my positions to some strange, old white-man, who probably hated black people. Although my desire to see Sen. Obama become president was great, I just looked at him and said nothing.
After an awkward pause the man said, “He’s the best man for the job!”
No black man had ever been president before and, according to the majority of black people I had discussed the issue with, no black man was ever going to be.
With this, I felt a sense of relief, but a sense of shame soon followed. Why did I hesitate to profess my allegiance? Was I one of those blacks who was knocking us off? Did I truly believe that it was a white-man’s world? As the man began praising Sen. Obama, the answer to these questions became apparent.
The years of oppression blacks went through and the inferiority complex that followed had reared its ugly head in the form of my hesitation. It did not matter that this particular white man was not a racist, or that I rarely - if ever - have felt inferior in the presence of anyone.
All that mattered was that no black man had ever been president before and, according to the majority of black people I had discussed the issue with, no black man was ever going to be.
After having this ideology pounded into my head by blacks, I was deathly afraid of having it affirmed by a white man. So, in an attempt to hold on to a remnant of my belief, I remained silent.
However, silent support (which I believe is a prime motivator of many blacks who discount the possibility of having a black president) is exactly what will keep it from happening.
No matter which candidate you or I support we have an obligation to make it known.
To borrow from the immortal words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.:
We must let it ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. We must let it ring from the mighty mountains of New York. We must let it ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania. We must let it ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado. We must let it ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.
But not only that: We must let it ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia. We must let it ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee. We must let it ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.
From every mountainside, we must let it ring.
