Surviving Capitalism (Not) : 80% Black Detroit Under Attack: Mr. Obama, Whose Side Are You On?

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Sunday, July 21, 2013

80% Black Detroit Under Attack: Mr. Obama, Whose Side Are You On?

Click here to access article by John Spritzler from NewDemocracyWorld.

The conflict over what will be the future of the mostly black, and almost entirely working class, people who live in Detroit is not hard to understand. It is a conflict between the few haves versus the many have-nots.

The author follows this statement with an accurate description of who the haves and have-nots are.

However, I must quibble with part of the headline: "Mr. Obama, Whose Side Are You On?" Why point to an individual when one makes a class analysis? Obviously he is alluding to an ironic racial issue with someone whose racial identity as seen by the public, and apparently by this author, as African-American. But this identification is quite literally skin deep. Such an allusion is, of course, another manifestation of racism. This explains why Obama only appears to be disingenuous when speaking out about Trayvon Martin in another essay by this author.

Obama was mostly raised by white upper-middle class people, primarily by his grandmother who was a (white) banker in Hawaii. He was educated in an elite private schools in Hawaii (Punahou School) and then on to Harvard and Columbia universities. He understandably identifies with the white power structure because he has been socialized entirely in white mainstream values. It is doubtful that he experienced much racism in Hawaii (and definitely not in his early years in Indonesia) given that it is such a multi-racial state, far more so than any other state in the union. I know that from my own experience living there for five years during which time Obama was in high school.