Clareified

Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered forty years ago today. Another black man felled by gun violence. When I was in high school I used to imagine what Dr. King would be like if he had lived to see America in the 90s. Would he have retreated into private life? Remained an activist? Become a politician? And pessimistic teenager that I was, I always ended up deciding that no matter what, King would have ended up shot to death. I knew it, he knew it, the writers of Heroes knew it. Which of course brings me to Barack Obama. What? That was a perfectly natural progression.
The truth is Barack isn’t quite the black man that King was when he was killed. Barack doesn’t push the social justice agenda or challenge America’s comfort zones the way King was doing when he died. Barack’s more of the ‘I have a dream’ King with all his audacious hope. Plus, right now he’s mostly preaching to the choir. Will Barack be safe when he’s running in the general and presumably weaving his way pass the Mason Dixon line? Or after his disasterous first two years in office when the bloom is off the rose and he discovers the limitations of hope? I don’t think so. I mean, I’m sure the Secret Servicemen will do their best, but whether we talk about it or not, there’s a huge target on Obama’s head. In no way, do I mean to suggest he shouldn’t get the nomination or the presidency because of murderous whackjobs (there are other reasons he shouldn’t get the nomination.) but with all the talk of this being a post racial America, I think we’re kidding ourselves if we don’t see that Obama’s race makes him a more likely target for a brutal death.

This entry was posted by Dawn Summers on Friday, April 4th, 2008 at 1:40 pm and is filed under Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.