The Curse of the House Slave!

By Stanley Collymore

Barack Obama risibly welcomes freedom in Libya he says, but is untroubled about its absence in Georgia, USA where lynchings under the guise of the rule of law are still prevalent; little wonder then that on Libya where, for the first time ever in its history and since the criminal intervention of the US and NATO upon its sovereign integrity in 2011, have also become part of that country’s political landscape, Barack Obama is predictably silent.

So typical of those who run for office, make all sorts of lying promises that they have no intention of ever keeping, and on being elected then readily climb into bed with those whom they so pretentiously criticized on the campaign trail; and all this, as they knew all along and premeditatedly intended it to be, would be to the detriment of the vast majority of the electorate they so fraudulently pledge on everything that’s sacred to honourably serve.

With just the one notable exception in the personage of Abraham Lincoln who almost singlehandedly and in the face of implacable opposition and even hostility to what he did nevertheless freed the United States’ enslaved black population for which he paid the ultimate price one could ever sacrifice, namely the forfeiture of his life, for having done so, every preceding president to the sitting one of the United States of America: and they’ve all been lily-white, has expressly looked after the interests and concerns, even when doing so was obviously inimical to the wider interests of the United States itself, of his own Caucasian race above everything else; and there are innumerable examples in the history and legislation of the US to substantiate this assertion, ranging from those enactments in law that codified and consolidated the Jim Crow laws and the countless barbaric examples of their every day manifestations.

The authoritative ruling of the so-called United States Supreme Court dismally failing to recognize that the only characteristics that one can logically or truthfully ascribe to it that fall under the banner of supremacy in any consequential meaning of that word are its bigotry, self-interestedness, manifest corruption and doltish conduct, but which nevertheless felt itself vastly empowered to pompously declare that black people have no rights that white people should sensibly consider let alone respect; to the fiddling while Rome burnt of the drowning of New Orleans with the massive and unnecessary loss of life, predominantly black ones, from a deliberate mixture of inconsiderate and even racially-motivated inaction to the perilous plight of black people in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, when the then president George W. Bush, his vice president Dick Cheney and the entire administration of the United States of America in cahoots with comparable bigots in the Louisiana state legislature literally stood by, watched as their ostensibly fellow Americans, who just happened to be black, perished and did nothing urgently, positive or concrete to assist them.

I was on holiday in the Dominican Republic when Hurricane Katrina passed by, was very aware of the outstandingly practical and anticipatory measures that US-besieged and several decades old, sanctions-afflicted Cuba promptly and routinely employed to avert such an unparalleled disaster happening to its own population on this Caribbean island in marked contrast to the actions of its mighty and arrogant northern neighbour the United States, and the unanimous opinion of every tourist: European, Canadian or American at my hotel or those I spoke to during my stay on that island who watched on television as I did the utterly demoralizing scenes of indescribable horror, human anguish, the desperate struggle for life and the eventual, fatalistic but heroic surrender to a death that wasn’t inevitable in the vast majority of cases was that if these people were white and Caucasian something would have been done, even if it meant moving heaven and earth, and from the very outset of this tragedy to save them.

But they weren’t and therefore nothing was done and still isn’t to assist them in any significant way; as six years on not much has been embarked on let alone achieved in rebuilding either the shattered lives or the homes of those New Orleans folk forced to live in the precarious limbo of daily uncertainty, a Diaspora of black souls scattered to the shifting winds of chance; the intentionally forgotten people that have conveniently become nameless refugees within their own country, and with no one in real authority at either state or national level giving a damn about them.

But the wider world outside the perimeters of the United States passionately expected the change which it was faithfully promised when an authentic African-American: his birth father after all came from Africa, Kenya to be more precise, and his mother was born in the United States having, as sadly turned out to be the case, used his splendid oratory to intentionally deceive scores of millions of people not only at home but also around the world, successfully broke the exclusive Caucasian mould and became the first ever non-white President of the United States of America. But rather than use this bountiful source of goodwill to effect real and much needed change that he promised us we’ve instead been callously presented with more of what we had before, as a man who clearly sees himself to be more of an Irish-American, never mind his tenuous and even questionable links to Ireland. Where’s the DNA proof for example when even his white birth mother and her own mother who raised him after his mother’s death never made any references to their Irish ancestry, and one would normally assume that they would have done so if they knew of it or attributed any importance to it, and it was only the purported unearthing relatively recently by an obscure resident researcher in Eire seeking fame for his backwater and comparatively unknown even in that country itself locale that such alleged links came to light?

However for a man desperately clutching at straws, quite keen to psychologically and even physically eradicate his blackness and at the same time consciously reject in the most unprincipled fashion who he really is as Kafkaesque-like he goes out of his way to fawningly curry favour with the not insubstantial Irish voters in the United States is not only a shocking act but a pretty disreputable one as well. JFK was Irish American and was seen by some on the US right, mischievously in my view, as being partial to Blacks, a contributory factor many would have us believe to his being assassinated, but not even JFK’s most fervent critics would ever have convincingly accused him of identifying or deliberately going out on a limb for Blacks in the US as Barack Obama has unashamedly done the other way round.

This is not to infer on my part that a president should only look after people that look like himself or herself or who he or she can readily empathize with, since it is and will always remain so my sincere belief that an elected head of state is there to resolutely and at all times do what he or she knows deep within their own heart to be in the best interests of their respective country and not just its privileged and influential elite or those lobbying on their behalf. Using that as an indicator Barack Hussein Obama has failed quite miserably; and it’ll be very interesting indeed to see come the presidential elections of November 2012 if the Irish voters that he empathizes so much with, while simultaneously taking the black voters for granted, reciprocate that same impassioned love for him and return him to the White House for a second term in office, personally I doubt it very much; in the same way I know that all those on the right along with the superfluity of Zionists that Barack Obama has routinely sucked up during his time in office but who avidly abhor the idea as they see it of a black man, and I’m being very polite here but we all know the N-Word they so adore using in this specific context, in the White House, and none of whom voted for him in 2008 and won’t in 2012 either.

And if the incumbent US president is in any doubt at all about this, his full acceptance by the aforementioned as one of them by ditching his blackness, disparaging and even solidly turning his back on the religion of his paternal kith and kin, or even the extent to which his global standing has plummeted since those halcyon days when he was on the campaign trail, then facetiously I would suggest to him that if he’s so sure that the actions he has consciously taken to-date were the right and proper ones that minus his security detail and doing his utmost to ensure that the local inhabitants there haven’t the foggiest notion of who precisely he is, he takes up challenge to go incognito and alone to the Deep South of the USA; Rostock in Germany; St. Petersburg in Russia; Tel Aviv in Israel or parts of London’s East End in the UK, just to name a few of the locations where Blacks are not particularly welcomed as see what kind of welcoming response he would have there as a self-proclaimed Irish-American. The outcome isn’t even worth speculating about as the locals of these places won’t have any difficulty at all racially and furthermore antagonistically labelling the head of state of the world’s most powerful country exactly what he is but likes to delude himself he’s not.

Such is the nature of the man that regrettably to the vast majority of people worldwide as well as those at home in the United States, as every global opinion poll shows, now wish they’d never heard of him and passionately desire come November 2012 that he will be thrust once more into the obscurity he emerged from and evidently belongs to, and ought never to have been elevated from.

As my maternal grandmother, an exceptionally judicious lady, used to tell me when I was a kid growing up anyone can be educated and many are, but few of them have the capacity for commonsense. And there’s no doubt whatsoever in my mind that Barack Hussein Obama and his wife Michelle have unquestionably achieved much in the line of formal education but when it comes down to the nitty-gritty of commonsense, spirit and standing up for what is conscionably right, were I to be entrusted with the task of having to make an assessment of either their individual or collective performances it would certainly be a D grade in both instances. And their performance to date reminds me of the days when a dunce cone was placed on the head of the offending pupil and he or she was banished ignominiously to a far corner of the classroom and physically isolated from the rest of the class. The people of the United States can metaphorically do the same by making their incumbent head of state what he clearly deserves to be; a one-term president.

The alternative to Barack Obama on both sides of the political divide: Democrats as well as Republicans, since all presidential elections in the United States are essentially a two-horse race, to be quite candid isn’t much cop individually or collectively and it might well be a classic case of jumping out of the frying pan into the fire; in fact I’m dead sure of it! But given the choice on a personal level for argument’s sake of having to co-exist with someone who hates my guts and says so openly and another person that pretends they’re my friend when he or she is nothing of the kind and will swiftly desert me at the drop of a hat, or worst still plunge a knife into my back given half the chance I know which one I would opt for.

Barack Hussein Obama is no friend of black people in the United States or anywhere else on planet earth for that matter who he transparently doesn’t identify with, and his biological ancestry notwithstanding as an African American I’ve long stopped seeing him as an African American. American yes, but don’t insult either the intelligence or dignity of Africans per se by placing this man among their ranks. And while explicitly on this subject ask yourselves, and please do so honestly, what exactly during his term of office has Barack Obama ever done for black people anywhere?

This is somebody who like all those other numerous cowards and selfish Blacks with lighter skin tones that were so desperately keen to cross the colour line and pretend to the world as they ludicrously deluded themselves that they were white and impatiently did so without a moment’s hesitation or any concern for the gross insult they inflicted on their darker biological relatives and particularly their mums and dads, or any real concern for the twilight world they would be compelled to lastingly inhabit, petrified out of their skins to have children of their own whose genetic throwback might raise awkward questions about just who they were, or even the possibility of bumping into someone who genuinely knew their true circumstances. In 2011 the landscape has to a little degree changed somewhat but the debilitating phenomenon that the brilliant and iconic reggae singer Bob Marley highlighted all those years ago, that of black people freeing themselves from mental slavery, is still omnipresent and particularly so among those who like to classify themselves as educated and successful. Barack Obama is no different unfortunately, and it does say a lot about the character, or more significantly the lack of it, of a man that purportedly is head of state of the world’s greatest military power or empire, call it what you will, but who is so insecure within himself and is so desperate to be what he isn’t, a white man, as if that’s a worthwhile badge of honour in itself, that he can more easily identify with a nondescript, skint, Irish migrant to the United States and an alleged ancestor of his, than he ever could or would want to with genuine ancestors: his father and his father’s relatives who are all black.

A Republican administration succeeding that of Barack Obama’s won’t be a panacea for Blacks in the US that’s for sure, but that aside everyone with a functioning brain cell in his or her head knows exactly what their track record and modus operandi are, and I utterly detest everything about them and have done for most of my life; so I’m not beating any drum for them or rendering them support of any kind. In actual fact they may even be daft enough to recklessly plunge the world into a Third World War. That sounds quite frightening I know, but just as sugar cane farmers in the Caribbean set fire to their fields of sugar cane before harvesting starts in order to prepare the soil for fresh shoots to blossom more productively come the outset of the replanting cycle or conservationists impassively cull deer in Scotland or their counterparts do the same with wildlife elsewhere in the world perhaps we too need to look more thoroughly and unemotionally at the prospect of human culls, getting rid of our the riff-raff and those that are genuinely surplus to requirements, whether they’re rich or poor, and to do that effectively perhaps, and because of the surfeit of imbecilic morons you keep voting in as your elected representatives, global war as the indiscriminate leveller for hopefully a better and more equitable society in which everyone can play a positive role and feel that they’re actually doing so would be substantially better than what we have at the moment, which is a present linked to a future each jointly and separately beset with all manner of uncertainties that bedevil every facet of our daily lives with no discernible prospect, as things currently stand, of matters ever improving.

And it’s high time I think that Blacks and more especially American ones get off their sedentary and obese backsides, stop all their self-pitying, dysfunctional behaviour; the dislike, mistrust and even the systemic betrayal of each other that are so characteristic of a people that for far too long have allowed others to determine who and what they should be rather than proudly determining that for themselves. For it’s as right now as when it was first said, “If you don’t have respect for yourselves why on earth should anyone have respect for you?” And let’s face it, US Blacks per se are very deficient in self-respect, preferring it would seem and doing so exclusively in all walks of life to buy into the white man’s narrative of anything and everything, including matters that are of crucial and even critical importance to Blacks themselves rather than draw their own red lines on the page of history as whites have done, and on that basis create and solidify their own narrative that will shape their own destiny and determine who they really are.

Troy Davis is no longer with us but there are still many other Blacks in US jails and on death row, disproportionately so and invariably innocent; victims of a system that you as Blacks can fix if you put your minds to it and forget Barack Hussein Obama, even with the apostrophe missing in his African surname as he stupidly claimed while in Ireland. He has no glory for you to bask in, just ignominy; so let him go!

In conclusion may God take into his merciful care the soul of this innocent man, Troy Davis lynched in Georgia on Wednesday 21 September 2011. RIP!