Kwame Speaks: What Is Better Than Voting?

The otherwise unruly and disruptive expressions of Africana culture on the streets of Washington, DC, and other urban areas Tuesday were largely ignored and sometimes appreciated by law enforcement. This Africana response came in the midst of this country electing its first president of African descent. It was a celebration that had nothing to do with the politics of Barack Obama. It had everything to do with the idea that for centuries, black people in this country have been oppressed, victimized, and marginalized. The celebrations were linked to its symbolic end in the minds of some of those who crowded the streets. In the President-Elect’s father’s native of Kenya, African people rejoiced to see what they hoped to be a cultural coup d’etat in America. The (real) scholar community as well as what Michael Gomez and others term, “the least of these”, have no reservations about the potential of a Barack Obama presidency. Beyond the symbolic imagery (whether or not that is plausible will not be discussed here), these two groups have acknowledged that the propensity for a Barack Obama presidency in and of itself to change the structural inequality of the United States of America is very low. It is the black bourgeoisie in this country who have in their view, seen their prospects at inclusion rise in direct proportion to Barack Obama’s ascendancy. They were the ones who aggressively campaigned door-to-door, “got on the bus”, and organized many of the Obama ’08 functions. It is because they like the abolitionists, the Civil Rights movement workers, and other similar movements America had a direct stake in an Obama presidency. It was a reinstitution of a class-based, meritocractic-myth driven political posture, whereby they would be entitled to internships, jobs, and high government positions. However, there is a way that they can be included and not at the expense of the aforementioned “least of these”, who in fact were the soldiers that lined up at the polls at 5:30 in the morning. These were the people that were actually prepared to advocate for us all, had this election been stolen!
The way we go about change is through our collective power. African-Americans in this country have never utilized their collective power to effect meaningful change within this racial capitalist system. The aforementioned class fragmentation, coupled with what Joy Leary has termed post traumatic slave disorder, are two of many reasons we can attribute this to. However, there is not a better time for Africans in this country to create a lobby that speak specifically to the multitude of agenda items facing Africans, and only Africans. Yes, there is such a thing as “black issues”. For us to harness this power, it would take the same enthusiasm that we saw Tuesday night, when Africana was immersed throughout America’s streets. The next Africana response must be one grounded it our communal aspiration towards first reclaiming our humanity, then our lives, livelihood, and future. We have to be able to generate a forum and political foundation from which leaders like Barack Obama and the government at large must be responsible to us. The creation of this type of forum is the only way in which we will implement the change we need. As most people have been saying, and Obama himself would agree, the change we can believe in starts with us. We cannot rest now, Obama won, but African people in this country must make history again. Our duty as laid out by the ancestors was not to vote and quit, but to vote, learn, fight, and build our community ourselves. The Howard University student body has heard the voice of the ancestors. Maa Kherw. Today marks the beginning of the work of creating this forum for President-Elect Barack Obama, to pressure his administration to speak to our issues as African people.