You know who you are. Don’t you?
Sure you do.
You’re one of those people who, back in November 2008, voted for a candidate for President for no other reason than he is black.
Yes, you did.
You know this to be true. In your heart, you know it.
And yet, here we are, four years later, and to what profit or advantage has your prejudiced deed benefited you?
Oh, wait. My bad. You probably didn’t realize that makes you a racist now, did you?
Silly me. What was I thinking?
You’re pretty upset with me right now for outing you, aren’t you? No? Okay. Well, perhaps ‘defiant’ or ‘defensive’ is a more accurate description of what you’re feeling as you read this.
Let me guess. Your retort to my accusation is that ubiquitous and hollow meme that “blacks can’t be racist because they don’t have the power”, right?
That’s what you’re going to lob back at me, isn’t it?
Well, with sincerest apologies to Tina Turner, my question to you is, what does power have to do with it?
Oh, and, by the way, what the heck does that even mean anyway: “blacks don’t have the power”? What power do you need to exact a bigoted attitude toward someone? Just like any other sin, all that is needed is the will to do so. You and I both know that being racist (or not) has nothing to do with power or means or opportunity. Absolutely nothing. Desire is all that is required. Period.
You see, the truth is you were suckered. You were played. You were Pinocchio to Obama’s Gepetto, as he manipulated your heart-strings with every turn of that trusted teleprompter of his, all while simultaneously employing his “black Baptist preacher” voice in an effort to get an emotional rise out of his audience wherever he went (because he knows that’s pretty much all it takes.) To that end, you snapped up front-row tickets to that over-hyped “Hope & Change” road show, staged by the Democrat Party (to which 95 percent of black voters remain loyal), and what do you have to show for it but worthless ticket stubs; vain excuses for why Obama now needs another four years to finish what he himself promised he would do in his first term if elected?
Yes, Obama said that. The following quote are his very own words:
“Look, I’m at the start of my administration. One nice thing about the situation I find myself in is that I will be held accountable. You know, I’ve got four years,” Obama told NBC’s The Today Show’s Matt Lauer on February 1, 2009. “A year from now I think people are going to see that we’re starting to make some progress,” said Obama. ”But there’s still going to be some pain out there. If I don’t have this done in three years, then there’s going to be a one-term proposition.”
“I will be held accountable.”
Oh, really? To whom, I wonder. How can anyone think the President will be held accountable to any extent when, for the most part, accountability was never a part of the rationale of those who voted him into office to begin with?
As strange as it may seem, racism is a lot like falling in love, which, when you really think about it, is what explains the intense emotional crush Obama supporters had for him in 2008 and, to a large extent, still do today.
You see, love that is based primarily on feelings and emotion will oftentimes blind you to the truth about a person.
And in 2008 voters, particularly blacks, fell in love with Barack Obama without knowing anything about him. Nothing! In fact, they were so racially invested in the man that not only did they not know him for who he really was, they didn’t care to know him, nor do they now, apparently. The only thing that mattered was that Obama was “black like me”, which translated meant that he could inherently relate to me and my needs, struggles and challenges (as if that’s why Presidents are elected to office in the first place.)
If this is your mindset, then, you need to realize that you are simply putty in Barack Obama’s hands; a wobbly square of Jello® with no solid footing. You are not at all unlike the woman in this now famous or, should I say, infamous, YouTube® video, Peggy Joseph, who quickly, though unwittingly, I’m sure, became the poster child for the entitlement mindset that Obama himself helped to develop among his most loyal demographic – black voters.
With the real unemployment rate hovering closer to 14 percent (as opposed to the “official” 8.2 percent “jobless rate” being reported by the Department of Labor), the unemployment rate for blacks at near 20 percent, a 100 percent increase in food stamp spending and a likewise 100 percent increase in the average prices of a gallon of gas since Obama took office, I can’t help but wonder if Ms. Joseph’s ebullience hasn’t abated just a wee bit.
But, enough about minions. Let’s get back to you.
I would venture to say that the only difference between you and Peggy-Jo is that your exuberance at Obama being elected President wasn’t captured on video for all the world to scrutinize as to the level of your IQ.
Sorry, but I have yet to discover a clause or amendment in the Constitution stating it is the responsibility of the President or the United States Government to ensure that all my needs (and even my wants) are taken care of. And yet, that’s exactly what many people have come to believe; that the primary job of the President is not to govern, but to grant – entitlements, that is.
It’s how we end up with the Peggy Josephs of the world to begin with.
By simply applying the right voice inflection at the right time, Barack Obama convinced this woman, and millions of people like her, perhaps you included, into buying into the misguided notion, as Joseph herself said, that “If I take care of Obama, he’ll take care of me.”
But, you see, America was never meant to be this way.
Theologian and poet William Ellery Channing understood this when he said,
“The Office of Government is not to confer happiness, but to give men opportunity to work out happiness for themselves.”
The problem with repeating the “Yes We Can!” mantra is that no one bothered to ask, “Can what?”
Trust me. If you are better off now than you were four years ago, which is always the pertinent question during presidential election cycles, it’s not because of Barack Obama, but in spite of him. I would say that even Obama weren’t President. My personal success is not and has never been predicated upon who occupies the White House, but on the Lord God Himself, who watches over my every step in life.
As the Bible tells us in Joshua 1:8:
“This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it; for then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.”
As we move closer to the presidential election in November, ask yourself this question: “Who’s really pulling my strings?“
Your answer can be only one of two choices: G-O-D or G-O-V.
Think about it.
DBH
