.BEFORE AND AFTER THE ELECTIONS:
HONORING OUR HISTORY IN STRUGGLE
Los Angeles Sentinel, 11-01-12, p.A-6
he current presidential campaign and
election have become a crucial battleground and critical time of testing for us as a
people. It is not that this election will mark
an end of history, if President Obama loses,
or be a life-altering experience if he wins. In
any event, there will still be pressing problems of oppression, evil and injustice in the
world, and thus, the urgent and ongoing
need to resist, resolve and end them, and to
build and sustain a movement for the radical
reordering of U.S. society, its priorities and
practices, and the exceptionalist, selfdeceptive and destructive way it conceives
and conducts itself at home and in the world.
Therefore, in assessing the actual
things at stake in this election and the critical role we must play in it, we must do several things. First, we must recognize that
elections have never been and will never be
a cure-all, panacea or path to paradise. They
are always, including this one, a means to
some larger end. The strength of any election is the effective participation of the people, its calling into action an aware, organized and engaged people in pursuit of power over their destiny and daily lives and in
conscious and active concern for the quality
and direction of their lives, the promise of
their future, and the well-being of the world.
Here, it is clear that full Black participation
is not only key to the outcome of this election and to keeping vital gains we’ve made
during the Obama Administration and in
other areas and eras of struggle, but also in
regaining our historical initiative and expansive self-conception as a people.
Second, then, to understand the issues
involved in a useful way, we must, at one
point, separate the meaning of this election,
from the special meaning President Obama
has for the overwhelming majority of us. In
this heightened sense of meaning, he has
become, not simply a President or worldrenown politician, but rather the symbol and
substance of an awesome achievement that
engenders in many a respect bordering on
reverence, usually reserved for the divine
and that makes our people forget they, themselves, made the miracle they credit him
alone with achieving. Thus, he is, in many
quarters, given an unwise and self-defeating
immunity from criticism, questioning and
accountability.
Such an unreflective posture deprives
him of the necessary and useful support and
push towards the progressive, which he has,
himself, conceded he needs and invited. Also, it relieves us of the ancient African ethical responsibility “to bear witness to truth
and set the scales of justice in their proper
place, especially among those who have no
voice.” And it sets the stage for immobilizing disappointment in loss or failure of the
elected persons to act and achieve in ways
we had hoped or expected. But rightfully
read and engaged, elections are not the beginning or end of our struggle, but one particular and important field in our whole historical struggle for good in the world. Thus,
we must know and honor the whole of our
history and act accordingly.
The election, then, is not simply about
Obama, but about us, about what we stand
for and oppose, about our shared vision and
aspirations for our people, society and the
world. Also, it’s about which candidate, in
an imperfect world, comes closest to this,
even with serious expected and unexpected
flaws and failures to perform. And we know
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