Balack Obama

Well the last three months has been an absolute whirlwind of marinated media and cheesy sixties slogans, tasteless politics and graceful politics, oh the American Presidential elections. We saw history unravel in front of our eyes as the son of a Kenyan defeated his republican counterpart, a six hundred year old senator and was elected to the highest office in the most powerful country in the free world. The event instantly brought change to a stale nation and simultaneously changed the way the world viewed them as they made a statement with a true sign of the people’s will. But why do I care, I mean I am but a WHITE Canadian male right? What could possibly drive someone like me to care about this Barack hoopla other than the obvious foreign policy reasons? Because he’s black that’s why. And not only is he black, but he can organize the most unprecedented campaign in modern history and cross you over and drain a jump shot while you whence on the gym floor in pain and then , that‘s why.
So I was rummaging around in my dads basement closet where the real gems are hidden looking for his old Black Panthers leather vest and the weirdest thing happened, I couldn’t find it. Turns out, in the times of the Jack Kennedy’s and the El-Hajj Malik El-Shabbaz’s, the feeling of unified elevation was hardly a reality. We had our first Irish President and his little brother, and they had their fiery intellectual leaders and everything was ‘revolutionary’ and meaningful on two fronts. Sure there were the few who had like minds and wanted the exact same things, and I don’t want to generalize but, they wanted us to treat them like humans and we wanted Vietnam to stop… very simply put. Looking back some forty years later the two issues can sometimes merge into one collective description of the ‘revolutionary sixties’ and maybe for the better, but today’s ‘revolution’ is much different. On November Fourth 2008, America (53% of them, not so many as you might think, huh) came together as one to cast a ballot for change and proved the power still lays in the hands of the people. Although Blacks, Asians, Latinos and Whites unified and consciously made a statement by voting the most eligible candidate to office, is this one celebration we could never possibly understand? It’s hard to believe my cracker friends but yes, we will never truly understand how good this one actually feels.
It’s so cliché, ‘the first black president’ and that IS amazing but what does that mean to you and I? Well if I am white, it means I truly believe this is a great thing to see and I am proud of my neighbours to the south by not only electing the first black president, but electing the most eligible candidate this time, awesome. But if you are black, this is truly the most inspirational thing to ever happen while you walk this earth and that’s the truth. You may say, “you are being so narrow-minded, this is all of our triumph! You racist!”, first of all if you are not an American citizen, you didn’t do shit so shut up. You merely watched on CNN and hoped like the rest of us that Barack would get elected, and that’s it. Now, if you are a white American citizen you also did shit so you should also shut up, and I‘ll explain. For four hundred years excluding the last thirty years or so, you have had every single advantage possible over minorities and especially African-Americans, and even now you hold ninety-five percent of all advantages in the ‘Land of Opportunity‘. On my omnipotent television I see white people everywhere rejoicing in their self appointed greatness, yelling “We are amazing, we changed the world, YES WE CAN! U.S.A! U.S.A!” and it really grinds my gears. Sure Blacks only make up thirteen percent of the American population and obviously white people voted for him as well but shit! You (white Americans) merely threw a hungry, deserving dog his bone, and it only happened because the last eight years they had the most incompetent douche bag in Presidential history running the show. I am not just talking about American Presidential system history, I’m talking about all Presidential system history. Presidents of country clubs, of PTA’s, of auto companies, fucking everything. Oh yeah, and he was white.
Yes this is a huge triumph, yes Barack is a worthy candidate but slow down white America and let them have their moment , this is just one thing we cant fully have or understand. This is the Black revolution and they earned it. No more Bruce Springsteen endorsements now it’s Beyonce endorsements, times are a changing, and just in time for Black History month. So when I tell my kids about it and say I remember it, I was ‘there’ for it, I could never truly be where they were cause it meant so much more to them.