The More Things Change...

Joe Madison reminds us:

In America, our cultural conditioning infers to us that all things Black in nature are inferior, and things White in nature are superior and based on our conditioning African-Americans are undervalued, underestimated or marginalized.

We here in America practice this by choice and as of the past 40 or so years have not objected to this type of treatment based on our desire to bee seen and accepted as equals in society.

A lot of us have been misinformed, undereducated and are willing to turn a blind eye to the misfortune of this situation because perceived value has more meaning than actual value, thus forcing us to consider the aesthetic before fulfillment.

My wife were fortunate enough to attend the election nigh event and we were right there at ground zero when the election was called, when people celebrated and when he spoke. I only reveled in that moment because reality didn't have to hit me to know that the President-Elect has done nothing yet. We did.

Even those who voted for the other folk on the ballot participated, and according to this morning's numbers, five million more or so voted Obama than McCain. That means that there is damn near a 50-50 divide on ideology and philosophy. It also means that huge blocs of each electorate voted based on race. That's a conversation we seem to never have.

The marginalization of the President-Elect started the moment he threw his hat into the fray. From being a graduate of Columbia and Harvard Law, to becoming president of the Harvard Law Review to choosing to be a community organizer, to his first GOTV campaign on the south side of Chicago that helped put William Jefferson Clinton in office (which I was a part of, right out of the Army), to him teaching constitutional law for 12 years to him being a state senator and his rise to the US senate and his management and execution of the most successful, engaging and effective campaign in history as well as being a husband and father.

All the way down to his personal beliefs and his faith...

Even where he was born was marginalized, undervalued and underestimated to the point where his skin color didn't take a back seat, it rode shotgun with every other form of doubt, ism and negative opinion there could possibly be because some folks cannot wrap their heads around the fact that this man could be leader of the free white world.

And what type of global influence is that?

White privilege taking a backseat to the son of a Kenyan man and a White woman from middle America. I guess the Dunham family jacked out of that matrix from day one.

And you wondered why Jesse and Roland cried?

They lived something a lot of you haven't. That's where the call of change came from. Some of you will never know about what really happened yesterday. Some of you will never understand why there is no celebration in my house as well.

An old professor in undergrad used to always say: "Do the work, the answers will come."