Defend Obama against racist attacks

A movement of the oppressed Black masses has propelled Sen. Barack Obama forward, with white workers and youth also clamoring over the possibility of having him as president.

This has of course revealed the rabid racism inherent in the U.S., which is, after all, a society built from the genocide of Indigenous people, the enslavement of African people, theft of Puerto Rico, Hawaii, more than half of Mexico and other lands.

The racist attacks against Obama keep coming, from the Democrats, the Republicans, and, of course, the ultra-right.

Early on Geraldine Ferraro suggested that Obama has only gotten so far because of his race. Tell that to the nearly one million Black women and men locked up in prisons, or the millions that live below poverty in substandard housing, where their children attend substandard schools in neighborhoods occupied by police. Tell that to the family of Sean Bell or to Hurricane Katrina survivors.

Recently, former 2008 Republican candidate Mike Huckabee, speaking at National Rifle Association convention, joked after a loud bang: “That was Barack Obama, he just tripped off a chair. ... Somebody aimed a gun at him and he dove for the floor.” Such a threat is no joke.

There have been the attacks on Reverand Wright, which were, as Wright correctly put it, attacks against the self-determination of Black people, Black liberation theology and Wright’s righteous and on time views regarding racism and U.S. imperialism.

John Hagee is a certified racist, sexist, homophobic preacher and McCain supporter, but rarely has been dredged up by the capitalist media. This is Hagee on Hurricane Katrina: “I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God and they were recipients of the judgment of God for that.” (mediamatters.org) And, on women: “Do you know the difference between a woman with PMS and a snarling Doberman pinscher? The answer is lipstick. Do you know the difference between a terrorist and a woman with PMS? You can negotiate with a terrorist.” (worldnetdaily.com, May 9)

Where is the furor?

Obama is still an imperialist politician, that won’t change. However, bourgeois elections are still as Engels described them to be in The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State: “a gauge of the maturity of the working class” that “cannot and never will be anything more in the present-day state.” Engels was speaking specifically of universal suffrage, which was a gain won through struggles of oppressed people, and which should be everyone’s right. However, bourgeois politics can’t be counted on to produce profound, revolutionary change from one system to another. That can only come through struggle.

Yet—even taking into account the effectiveness of capitalist media—how bourgeois politicians present themselves and their programs, and the attention paid to the elections by workers and the oppressed, can illustrate the prospects of struggle and the level of socialization of workers and the oppressed. What these elections show is a certain level of socialization of white workers. Despite the racist attacks and the general criminalization of Black youth in the media and by the state, that a Black man has been thrust to the forefront of the political arena and may be president speaks to the willingness of white workers to see beyond the social backsliding that is occurring across the country.

The attacks will increase, especially as the national election draws nearer, and they should be fought at every turn. It is not about Obama’s program, which is an imperialist program indeed; but even revolutionaries should see that there is a movement of oppressed people behind the Obama campaign and defend the right of Black people to have a Black president.