Is Obama Safe?

I happened to stop by and see my folks this weekend as is usually my custom and it is amazing how the conversation has changed in the last month. Originally we discussed the remote possibility of Senator Obama getting elected, then whether his agenda included black issues and would whites vote for him, and now as he is continuing to win a much more ominous question is being discussed. I wish I could say these conversations were only limited to my parents, but unfortunately they aren’t. The question and concern starting to arise among many blacks in America and maybe worldwide is the safety of Barack Obama.

The questions started arising during a visit to Dallas when it was reported the security detail assigned to the Senator were stopped from using metal detectors and searching bags and purses at a rally held by the Senator in which about 17,000 people attended. According to published reports the order came from the Secret Service and was considered by many of the Dallas Police as a security breach. Of course the rally went off without any violence, but it still highlights a growing fear among blacks, especially older blacks concerning the safety of Senator Obama as he gets closer to possibly becoming President of the United States.

But concern about Obama's safety transcends racial lines. He has white supporters who see him as an inspiring, youthful advocate of change in the mold of Robert F. Kennedy, and they are mindful of Kennedy's assassination just two months after King's.

Obama received Secret Service protection last May - the earliest ever for any presidential candidate. At the time, federal officials said they were not aware of any direct threats to Obama, but Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin - who was among those recommending the Secret Service deployment - acknowledged receiving information, some with racial overtones, that made him concerned for Obama's safety.

Yvonne Scruggs-Leftwich, a former executive director of the Black Leadership Forum, noted that political leaders of any race face risks in a society where mass shootings and other violence by aggrieved or deranged assailants is all too common.[1]

It never fails whenever I go to the barbershop or a restaurant in my neighborhood the talk is about the possibility of harm coming to the Senator. Many times it is carried out in hushed tones as if the actual speaking of it out loud will in some eerie way cause it to happen, as if the forces that would choose to harm the Senator needed to hear the suggestion. It’s strange how the majority of concern is coming from older blacks and I wonder if that is because they have historical recollection of other former leaders being gunned down during a more restive period of our history. They have first hand knowledge of how the dreams and hopes of a people can be snuffed out in the blink of an eye.

Is Obama more at risk today than say political and social leaders of the past? Are the security forces better able and more willing to protect him? The truth of the matter is no one knows the minds and hearts of men. I do know that yes children there are things that go bump in the night, there are evil forces that lurk in this world. For us to deny them and hide under the bed may have worked as a child, but as the many shootings taking place in our society daily can attest we live in a very violent place. Are there people who are intimidated by the very real possibility of the first “real” black President? Of course there are. Would they be willing to prevent this through some act of violence? I think history has shown that this is a fact. I am glad to say though that I believe these people are in the minority. The reality though is simply this if anyone is willing to die in the process there is no one safe in this world that lives in the public eye.

The reason I don’t fear this scenario is not because I am naïve, on the contrary I am very aware of the evil that lies in men’s hearts, but I believe that if we allow our fears to prevent us from accomplishing our goals then we will never accomplish anything. I am a firm believer in fate and if it is meant for someone to die then nothing can prevent it. One thing is sure and that is no one leaves this world alive. Malcom X once said, “That if a man has not found anything he was willing to die for, then he wasn’t worth living.” Now is the time for this particular chapter to be played out in America and no one knows how it will end, but it must be played none the less.

I think Senator Obama has thought about and discussed these risks with his wife and family and come to the conclusion to trust fate and his belief in God. If God is who I believe Him to be, then whom shall I fear? There are those who have even suggested the insane notion of not voting for Obama to protect him from assassination. I believe this to be foolish and plays into the hands of those who would try to prevent his election. The men who rode around in hoods didn’t have to lynch and kill all the black men just enough to put fear in the others. The way we combat those forces of darkness is precisely by standing up and not cowering in fear. Is Obama safe? He is as safe as any one of us can be, his life is in the hands of God just like the rest of us.

[1] http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/O/OBAMA_SAFETY_FEARS?SITE=TXSAE&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2008-02-22-17-19-03

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Why Do We Fear Hope?

In this country many of us equate strength with the lack of emotion. The strong one is the one who can endure life without feeling. The weak one is the one who shows their emotions and thus are banished to a life of disappointment and tragedy. With the introduction of the political narrative of Barack Obama there has been a lot of talk about the word hope. I don’t ever recall this word being dissected to the degree that it has been during his unlikely run towards the White House. One would believe that no other politician has ever invoked the word in an election before. So what makes it so different today than say in 1992, when a young upstart politician challenged the status quo?

For his part, Bill Clinton organized his campaign around another of the oldest and most powerful themes in electoral politics: change. As a youth, Clinton had once met President John F. Kennedy, and in his own campaign 30 years later, much of his rhetoric challenging Americans to accept change consciously echoed that of Kennedy in his 1960 campaign.[1]

Or what about in 1960, when another youthful hope monger spoke so eloquently of hope for a new world while accepting the oath of office for President of the United States:

Now the trumpet summons us again -- not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need -- not as a call to battle, though embattled we are -- but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, "rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation,"² a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself.[2]

So if it isn’t that the concept of hope is something new to elections, what can it be? I remember being a child and towards the end of November I would be filled with hope of the coming season. I wish I could say it was because I looked forward to exercising the true “spirit of the season” and all the good will towards my fellow man stuff, but that wasn’t what filled me with joy. I would begin to have hopes of the new toys that I looked forward to receiving for Christmas. I would watch in excitement at all the commercials of the coming new and latest toys and I would mentally create these lists of must have gadgets that I was sure to see under the tree on Christmas morning.

There was just one small problem, my father was a selfish man who found it difficult to spoil his children. So for many years there was the promise and hope for all of these things only to be followed on Christmas morning by the stark reality that was less than I had hoped for. You see as a child I could not understand or accept that my father was the man that he was, you see I wanted him to be like me or who I thought I was. The truth was that he could only be the man he was, not who I so desperately wanted and maybe needed him to be. I would awaken on Christmas morning to small tokens and I would end up crying later. After a while, my hopes began to lessen year by year until they were replaced with the gradual numbing of reality. The reality that no matter how much I hoped there was always going to be disappointment. In the end, I just stopped hoping and came to accept the cruelty of life.

As my life continued, I came to the conclusion that my problem in the first place was that I had dared to hope, that I had dared to believe in anything other than myself. I decided that from that point on that emotions were my problem, I would no longer allow anyone the ability to control my emotions. In fact I would bury them, my hero became Spock from Star Trek because he had no emotions. For many years I lived as emotionless as I could. But after two broken marriages, addiction, and suicidal moments I realized the that the strength I thought I had found in having no emotions was actually my downfall and my weakness. What I learned was that true strength and power does not belong to the cynic or the emotionless, but to those who are willing to express their emotions and become vulnerable to disappointment and hurt. True courage is not to never be afraid, but to be afraid and go on anyway.

Barack Obama is not God or a second coming of Jesus and his supporters do not believe this despite the cult analogies. He is simply a man who dares us to believe beyond ourselves. He is not promising to solve all of our problems or that the Government can. What he is offering us is a chance to put behind us many of the things that currently divide us and to focus on the many more things that unite us. After all what really can one man, even the President of the United States do? Over the last few decades we have seen what the politics of division and win at all costs has wrought, a country so divided we are on the verge of breaking. There are many who say that the answer is to continue as we have, that the only way to succeed is to beat the other side to a pulp. Today we are refighting the Civil War only class has replaced slavery. Will it take a bloody conflict to resolve our differences? I don’t know. There are many who are placing their hopes and aspirations on him and those people will be disappointed, because he can do nothing against those forces without our help and our actions.

What I do know is this, if we are able to appeal to the common good in all of us shouldn’t we to avoid that bloody conflict? Make no mistake about it if we do not enlist their help to change this country are we prepared to fight to take it? If Barack Obama’s hope fails it won’t be because he failed, it will be because we failed. If it is to succeed it will require many of us to overcome our cynicism and partisanship to come together for the greater good. The reason he does so well among the young is because they are not as jaded as their older counterparts, they still believe in change. The question now becomes can we transfer that hope into action or will we sit and wait for the disappointment so we can say, “See, I told you so”. It is no longer enough to vote, the last midterm election should have shown us that. We must follow up those votes with action. Just as with any seismic change in America, it must be bottom up, not top down. Our biggest fear is not that we are doomed, our biggest fear is that our hero will be bested; that the things we cherish love, hope, justice, and kindness to our fellowman will not win in the end.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._presidential_election,_1992
[2] http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/jfkinaugural.htm

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