Barack Obama sets "goals" to take America back

Dear friends,

Can we take back America? Maybe, the real question is: Was America ever ours? After all, when has this country belonged to the majority of the people who live here? Did someone mention the bigtime campaign contributors like the banking, insurance, and real estate industries? Of course not.

Still, the Howard Dean-esque message at last week's Democratic National Convention of "taking this country back" reverberated throughout the stadium for all of the evening, leading up to Mr. Obama's speech. Unfortunately, in my opinion, the only thoughtful words said were actually sung by the great Stevie Wonder who called upon all of us to love each other and all of humanity, doing so in unity. Absolutely no one else who stood at the podium that night expressed such sentiments. Instead, it was a show of us against them - that is, no love or unity...

The first "Black" president? Well, he certainly has been choosey about when he is a Black man. Let us not forget that Mr. Obama made sure that his "white" mother and grandparents stayed splashed across the huge outside screens all night. Additionally, while he admitted having only met his father once, Barack Obama drew absolutely no connection between himself and his relatives in Kenya. Yet, the parade of generals and admirals which featured both men and women who were African American and European American was quite impressive, especially since there may very well be an even larger number of such folks at the Republican National Convention. Perhaps, we can count on it. Eh?

To be sure, the mass communications media has gone wild with Mr. Obama's "historic speech". Additionally, there have been voluminous amounts of columns by journalists and other such pundits, regarding Mr. Obama's having "finally told us" specifically about what his goals are. Unfortuunately, Mr. Obama has told us absolutely nothing about the intellectual grounds upon which he understands and defines our societal problems, much less how he would actually accomplish "goals" to solve them.

For example, his solution for Education is to have "world class" schools and hold teachers "accountable". Okay. How does that differ from George Bush's rap? In fact, how does that position differ from the stance taken by almost all other career politicians in this country? The words are the same, so what is so "fresh" about Obama's spiel? Moreover, how does that describe the goals for an educational process for which he will work to create cooperative, thoughtful, competent, and independent citizens? Moreover, as Confucius taught us, "Teaching is the half of learning".

In other words, by teaching others, we find how inadequate our own knowledge and skills are, regarding any particular topic. Additionally, the most significant job of any teacher is to get your charges to follow your ideals. After all, you normally only have these students for a year or less. Therefore, the subject matter is irrelevant, because some students will want to learn certain things, while others will not. Consequently, at least to me, as a lifelong teacher, what is most important is: One's charges learn to appreciate ideals like hard work, courage, thoughtfulness, consideration, kindness, and patience, and so forth, that they witness in their teacher(s).

Of course, this can only happen in a "safe" environment. By safe, I do not mean that a school needs more metal detectors or police. What I am referring to is that the learning environment, classroom or otherwise, be a place where kids can "take chances" with their minds and bodies, without being scolded, punished, or ridiculed by the teacher(s) or ridiculed and bullied by fellow classmates. Only then will a student feel "safe" to take a risk expressing an unfamiliar idea or activity.

Also, students must be encouraged. I always love to share a quote by one of my brothers, Eshu, himself a lifelong educator, who insists, " The range of a student's ability is seldom as wide as the range of encouragement that he or she recieves". Focusing on testing and grading schedules does not develop anything other than an automaton. If anything, the main purpose of tests and grades is to sort out and classify students for their later roles in the workforce. My own experience is: I do not allow my students to fail; therefore, they always get A-pluses. Besides, there is no way to measure a teacher's success, eespecially since the ideals that he or she has shared, as were mentioned above, may not even show up until many years later, in any given student's life. Can you think of doing something based upon what you had learned from a teacher years earlier, although, perhaps, you did not do well "grade-wise" in the aforementioned teacher's class?

In any case, Mr. Obama never made it clear about what he intends to do about the Health Care Industry? What about the Military/Industrial Complex? What about the Crime Industry that is maintained by those whose best interests are served by continued criminal behavior in our society. A good example lies with the fact that, all across the country, in many municipalities, district attorneys are allowed to use confiscated drug money, for instance, for future hires, raising wages in their offices, and improved pensions for the same workers just mentioned. It is not, therefore, in the best interests of prosecutors and their agents to be too “tough on crime”. As a matter of fact, it makes more sense for such people (DAs, and so forth) to actually regulate crime. And, of course, I have not mentioned private, for-profit companies, that now run jails and prisons across America.

Alao, what is all of this hogwash that guys like Bill Cosby and Mr. Obama spout about "fathers" taking more responsibility? Maybe they (fathers) would, if they had an understanding of and plan for what it is to be a good father. That is, many men, of all ages, need to understand, appreciate, and cherish it (i.e., responsibility) as a quality of character, as opposed to it being trivialized, as it currently is, by associating it with concepts of conformity like honor and duty? Bill Cosby, "America's father", has not been the greatest parent when he is off of the television screen, after all, in my opinion.

Nevertheless, speaking of Mr. Obama's ambition to stop our dependence upon "foreign oil", what will Mr. Obama do about giant oil corporations like Exxon/Mobil who buy oil in the millions of gallons from OPEC, then store their product in tanks for later sale to other nations, for larger profits. Will Obama stop that practice?

And what about women getting "equal pay for equal work", as Mr. Obama put it? Most men do not even have that kind of pay equity! Worse yet, what sexism really does most is: It does not allow a woman to seek to be fully human. As a result, from an early age, far too many females are taught to be manipulative and deceitful, so they cry for special favors from men. That explains Hillary Clinton, a grown woman, crying for votes, earlier this year. It also shows why so few women have much self-esteem. We must destroy sexism! Yet, neither Hillary Clinton nor Sarah Palin are willing to stand up to the sexist marauders - American males, particularly those in the US Congress and the presidency. In fact, and unfortunately, the US is one of the only advanced nations in the whole world that refuses to sign on to the International E.R.A. Treaty. As well, E.R.A. was unable to be ratified in all fifty states of our country, two decades ago.

So what really are Mr. Obama's goals? That is, Americans are so used to listening to pols calling their ambitions - "goals" - that they do not even know the difference between the two, any more than the latter. Yet, we must distinguish goals from ambitions. For example, a quarter of a century ago, while studying at Temple University, I developed an intellectual model that I call the "Urban Fire Department Paradigm", in order to help people distinguish goals from ambitions. It goes like this: A person is named as the new chief of a fire department. A reporter asks, “Chief, what are your new goals for the fire department?” The chief confidently responds, “I’m going to have a truck at every fire in city limits, before the fire becomes dangerous.” But that is not a goal. Rather, it is an ambition. Consequently, an answer by the chief that would represent a goal would be, “I’m going to have a truck at every fire in city limits, in twenty minutes”. In other words, the chief does not know how bad the fire will get or how quickly it will spread; yet, he or she is determined that there will be a truck full of fire-eaters there fairly soon.
We must build genuine communities - African Americans, European Americans, Latinos and Latinas, Asian Americans, and Early American Natives. That is our "responsibility"! All of us! If we do that (build our communiies up), invariably, though time, we will then begin to choose competent federal representatives who will truly fight on our behalf, as we did when we supported Ron Dellums of California, but, obviously, on a much larger scale. That way, the useless sycophants of big business, euphemistically-called politicians, who have been squandering our tax dollars for generations will, one day, become a thing of the past.

No. I'd not expect any genuine change to come out of Mr. Obama's administration. Things may even get worse, in some ways. However, I still insist that we must vigorously support his candidacy/ourselves, as it reminds me of the eight African American women who helped O.J. Simpson beat his murder case. Deliberately, O.J. has never done anything for African Americans. He still doesn't! Instead, he is the same idiot and despicable, low-life coward who murdered the mother of his children. Those women knew that. That is not why they helped him though. Rather, they were doing it for themselves/us as members of a cultural group that has continued to move forward, in spite of a means-spirited denial of our humanity by so many of our fellow citizens, for centuries.

And so, this can be a start, in other words, for building strong African American and other non-European American communities across our nation, because no longer can the excuse be made: "White" folks are keeping us down. After all, now many citizens who embrace the phony claim of being "white" in order to be part of an artificail "majority" group, are now willing to support someone who does not have the outward appearance to be considered a part of their group. Or, so it seems. As Malcolm taught us, "Time will tell". Right? Peace.

G. Djata Bumpus