Eshu's blues: we are the people with boxes on our heads
by BAR columnist michael
hureaux
"The current political discourse of black folks is driven
by an ice cold commodity fetish."
It was just a matter of time. We all saw last spring how the Clinton machine was positively
itching to shout the "n" word down in the Carolinas before Miss Ann and Ol'
Colonel Clinton got served their walking papers by large black sections of the
voting public. So it just stood to reason
that the McCain machine, unable to shake off the tendency of Johnnie to remind
people of a dried-up artichoke would try to figure out a cagey way to play the
old skin game. The prime obstacle to the "nigger, nigger" play is the political savvy of Senator
Obama, Senator Biden's "clean and articulate" running mate, who has distanced
himself from we more Wrighteous black folks with our tiresome Jeremiads, and
thereby lightened the burdens of sweaty white progressives who've long been
looking for a black leadership that tows the party line without question.
Still, Senator Johnnie Mac had to give the old school a
crack. And so it was that some of his
nuttier white supporters got so worked up they were chanting "Kill him!"
whenever Obama's name was mentioned the other day at a rally where
Governor Palin was speaking. Senator
McCain, to his credit, noticed that the atmosphere at some of his rallies was
beginning to resemble a Klan rally, which isn't good form in the U.S.A., where
the racism of the moment prefers metaphoric if still sophomoric tone.
Today, we are informed by John McCain, Senator Obama is a
"good and decent family man." According
to the mainstream press, this upset many of Senator McCain's followers, who
actually booed him as he continued to suggest that William Ayers is only one of
Senator Obama's supporters, and that his acquaintance with Ayers doesn't make
Barrack Obama a terrorist.
The idea that Senator Obama might be a "good and decent
family man" is a difficult notion for those factions of the "republican" party
who dig "national hate week" to swallow.
But let us judge not that we be not judged. There are certainly both those supporters and opponents of
Senator Obama who fail to understand that the Golden Child is keeping company
and lending support to patriotic war criminals whose crimes make all the
transgressions of Ayers and his Weatherman sect colleagues rosy by
comparison. But that's another story,
one that the passion of the political season has successfully pre-empted.
"Some of McCain's nuttier
white supporters got so worked up they were chanting "Kill him!" whenever
Obama's name was mentioned."
Until that reality penetrates the layers of true believer
nonsense generated by our quadrennial circus this year, the politics of Black
America are going to see a serious fleecing.
So hungry are we as a people for any validation of a "famous first" that
we are willing to embrace the same savage spectacle that has driven white
America out of its mind for centuries.
I hate to say this about us, but it's true. Like many white residents of the United States, the current
political discourse of black folks is driven by an ice cold commodity fetish, a
mass absurdity addressed most eloquently by a sketch I saw performed in front
of television cameras outside the "democratic" convention by the Church of the
Sub-Genius twenty years ago.
The guerilla street theater performed by the Sub-Genius
featured a bunch of people walking around outside the convention hall with
cardboard boxes on their heads. When
asked just what it was they were trying to say, they answered, "We are the
people with boxes on our heads." And
that is the politics of black America right now.
With the ascension of the black machine politics of would-be
President Barack Obama, we have achieved in our public polity a narcissism and
cultiness as craven and manipulative as anything that ever came out of the
mouth of a white politician. But one way or another, the items inside the
carton atop our heads are going to keep creeping out. This being an election year, no one is really going to hold our
so-called leadership accountable for the intentional and slow destruction of
the public sector in our "democracy," or the Black Hole of debt the financial
elite have acquired for us, or the atrocities overseas which they so glibly
claim demonstrate that we actually are a "shining city on the hill." But
somewhere, underneath all the glitz, we all know that there actually is an
alarm bell sounding. And like the man
said, send not to know for whom it tolls, baby.
michael hureaux is a writer, musician and teacher who lives in southwest
Seattle, Washington. He is a longtime
contributor to small and alternative presses around the country and performs
his work frequently. Email to: [email protected]
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