THE OBAMA CHALLENGE TO AMERICA

Senator Obama has challenged us to face our collective history, to look it in the eye, to step up to the plate, to change our collective thinking about to race relations. As it turns out to hardly anyone’s surprise, whites do not want to be made uncomfortable. They prefer to focus on Reverend Wright sound bites to systematically deflect away from the real issues—even of this political campaign. The good Senator, who represents the Land of Lincoln, has confronted an issue (race) as implacable as the one Lincoln faced, slavery, except the current issue is white privileges, camouflaged by whites concealed in a cocoon of willful ignorance. Willful ignorance is the refusal to face the truth, a lie and the desire to not know, pretty much like the child’s willful ignorance about his or her dead father’s horrendous transgressions.
White privilege is all about things kept quiet, subsumed under merit and the claim of having achieved everything in one’s possession through hard work, merit, and “nobody gave me anything I earned everything I have” fairy tale fiction. When in fact white privilege is about 350 years of entitlements, (GI Bill or Rights, FHA financing of homes Post WWII, resulting in the widest expansion of white middle class privileges, while blacks were systematically denied these entitlements) about affirmative action of admission to West Point, Annapolis and the Air Force Academies (free elite education, followed by white privilege of rank in the military), discriminatory admission to the elite universities (Harvard, Columbia, Brown, and the Seven Sisters Colleges, etc.—one such elite College was attended by Hillary Rodman Clinton!) where kids of graduates were and are given affirmative action admission, and about systematic discrimination in lending practices--just to mention a few examples.
Buried underneath the “let’s all come together,” Kumbayah, Senator Obama told whites what they did not want to hear: that they have been the beneficiaries of government generated wealth—FHA, VA loans, etc., that enabled them to gain wealth when blacks were denied these same government benefits. He told white America that much of the bitterness among blacks stems from the fact that they are mired in a historical time zone, racially speaking, due to the harsh treatment they had to live with during the entire 350 years of American history, except the last 40 years. But he also told black Americans that many, if not most, of whites feel insecure about bussing for integration purposes, affirmative action and other government programs that whites feel benefit blacks at whites’ expense.
Going even further, Obama discussed the “two-sided” issue of race, using both his minister’s words and his own white grandmother as personal examples. Many whites resented hearing about Obama’s grandmother’s racial views. This is not a surprise: Whites want blacks to think that the problem of racism is “that other white person’s problem.” If racism is only "that other white person’s problem," then why are blacks in the position that they are?

Looking at things from this white perspective, there can be only one of three explanations:


(1) Blacks are stupid;
(2) Blacks are lazy; and,/or
(3) Blacks are stupid and lazy!

Isn’t it nice that this white thinking has three equally appealing “justifications” for the pathology of black Americans? This is not to say black Americans are blameless in this American saga. They complain about discrimination far too much while studiously making excuses and ignoring the constructive roll that self-discipline would have in helping them extricate themselves from the pathology of violence, self-denigration, and dependency on the government.

Presently, white privileges, not blatant racism, is the challenge to America. Senator Obama put his foot on it, albeit very, very lightly, when mentioning how whites have been benefitted by affirmative action and government hand-outs.


© 2008 by Lenton Aikins
All Rights Reserved.
Reproduction is permitted provided credit is given.

Lenton Aikins, Ph.D., J.D.
Dr. Aikins has traveled widely, lived abroad in Europe and Latin America, recently spending three years in Costa Rica as Director of a Spanish Language school. He holds a Ph. D. in Political Science from University of Southern California, a Juris Doctor in Law from Western State University, College of Law. He is the author of many articles and of While African Americans Slept: Leadership by Parasites, now available at: http://lentonaikins.com, and available in all bookstores July 1, 2008.