For the record

Now here's the thing...

I still don't trust Barack Obama--or any politician--and I don't trust the hype behind Obama. And it's kind of scary to me (just a little) to witness how deeply people are rallying behind him. Cuz at the end of the day...American politics is based on lies and deception and bullying and exploitation and I think if you get caught up in it to the level that Obama has, something isn't quite right with ya. But that's just me. I've just decided that I will vote for him to experiment and see if there's anything at all to this process...I'm also voting for him because he's a Black person running on the Democratic ticket (yea, I am, and I would've voted for Hillary because she is a woman there I said it), and regardless of what I feel about the core of American politics...regardless of the fact that I intuitively don't trust him and am sure there's some BS wrapped up in his campaign...and regardless of me feeling like there are/will be people with more power than him pulling his strings when he gets to office...

...it will still feel like a momentous day to me if a Black man wins the presidency of the U.S. Even though I have trained myself to clearly see the "invisible," underlying politics of such an occasion (for example, the light skin/male privilege at work in Obama's campaign, because if a much darker skinned Black woman with nappy hair and better qualifications with Obama ran for the presidency, I don't think she would be as supported by as many people...and Obama's constant bowing down to the modern White supremacist idea of "racelessness," or "color-blindess," a farse in a society that is still very race-based to the detriment of people of color...if Obama were to speak the truth he would NOT be supported)...but even knowing all of this...some hopeful, proud, wistful part of me would STILL be aglow if he won. I would still clap inwardly and feel a little victorious, and a part of me would still say "Take THAT John McCain! And Hillary!"

Maybe it's the part of me that wishes this society really WAS color-blind, that we really did operate like a beloved community. Maybe it's the small part of me that retreats and withers away when I see, hear, feel examples of racism at work, when I am reminded--through gentrification and "revitalization" of old ghettoes so new ones can be created, through all the little Jenas in the U.S., through the prison industrial complex, through the manmade disaster in New Orleans, through schools that purposefully mis-educate--that racism is alive and well, and even more deadly in its present form because we are supposed to pretend like we don't see it when it does its damage.

(I am reminded, again, of Audre Lorde, who in 1981 said, and maybe I even quoted her before:

"Mainstream communication does not want [you] responding to racism. It wants racism to be accepted as an immutable given in the fabric of your existence, like eveningtime or the common cold.")

Maybe it's the part of me that desperately thirsts for what Obama represents, his larger than life projection, his standing in as the archetypical hero in the myth of America moreso than Obama the man, moreso than than America the real-life country founded in blood and ran for profit and greed.

Maybe it's the part of me that can't live while racism does, the part of my spirit that kind of rots away when I examine the very real ways that European colonization, exploitation of indigenous peoples, and enslavement of Africans continues to affect the psyches of all people concerned. Slaves and slave masters. Colonized and colonizers.

And though I feel almost certain that time will ultimately unravel all the threads that have come together to create this fantasy savior of our own projection, that part of me is asking...what have I got to lose by voting for him in the meantime? Nothing, as far as I can discern. It's either him, or Hillary, or John. And if I'm gonna have someone psychologically lull me to sleep, I'd rather him be Black. So sue me.

It's kind of like agreeing to get into a bad relationship where all the lines the girl/guy uses are too good to be true, where all the promises are so fantastical that you feel like you're dreaming...at the end of the day you knowwww what's up, and you know the relationship won't bring you your most profound and most real joy...but you liiiike the feeling of being on your fake dreamy cloud, much more than the feeling of your present reality, so you choose the fakeness, even though you're sure sooner or later, things will fall apart and your guy/girl will be exposed, and your relationship will be exposed.

But you do it anyway because you don't know better, you've never had better, and you're not quite sure you can attain better.