Where the hell were these blackademics before 2008?

[Playinghardball]

hey damn sure didn’t help the black farmers get their money, they damn sure didn’t get black people health insurance, and they damn sure didn’t help our black gay brothers and sisters from getting kicked out of the military.

So where the hell were they?

I’ll tell you where they were, they were at each other’s schools sitting on some fucking panel theorizing about how to end racism or make it better for African Americans.

But do you know where President Obama was?

He was out in the streets registering people to vote, he was condemning an unjust war before it became fashionable to do so.

We got pictures of Barack Obama fresh out of college walking in poor black neighborhoods registering people to vote.

We got pictures of a young Barack Obama helping black folk.

We got pictures of a young Barack Obama sitting in a village in Kenya breaking bread with his grandmother.

And these same motherfuckers want to question his blackness

****


Barack Obama in Chicago, 1995


Illinois State Senator Barack Obama at a community meeting in his district with his state representative (second from right) House Majority Leader Barbara Flynn Currie


Barack Obama in his first year at Harvard Law School after working at Developing Communities Project as a community organizer from 1985 – 1988 where he set up a tenants rights organization, job training program, and college preparatory program. He enrolled at Harvard Law School in the fall of 1988 so as to better help his community


This photo released by Obama for America shows Barack Obama teaching at the University of Chicago Law School. After Harvard Law School, Obama returned to Chicago, joined a small civil rights firm, ran a voter registration drive, and lectured on constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School


Barack Obama with his grandmother Sarah Hussein Obama in her home in the village of Nyagoma-Kogelo, western Kenya, 1987


Barack Obama at an antiwar rally in Chicago in September 2002

Found on the Obama Diary

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

1. Which 'blackademics' are we slamming here?

We didn't all read or watch whatever set you off, so it might be helpful to have a bit of context.

[Luminous Animal]

9. I'd like to know the answer to that, too.

[El Shaman]

10. 1.

Dinich D Souza
2.Judge Louie Gomad
3. Dr. Ben Carson
4. AA guy with the big Afro ( having a pearyatias moment here- too many to recall!
5. Don't forget the donald
6. Or the Neuter .
Bye

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

12. Hmm, based on that list

I'd have to say the 'academic' part is sarcastic, then. Just having a degree or three doesn't make you an academic. I'm up to 6 these days, and I'm not an academic.

[Liberal_Stalwart71]

2. ...and he married a gorgeous, brilliant dark-skinned black woman to boot.

[JJChambers]

3. Barack is awesome!

One K, One R

[madokie]

4. I like my President,

thank you

[JaydenD]

5. GASP. I sometimes forget how utterly handsome that man is.

[mfcorey1]

7. Amen to all of that!

[conservaphobe]

8. And now many of them are bitter President Obama had what it took to achieve what they never will. nt

[caraher]

11. Everyone has a role to play

Since you don't name names I don't know who you are calling out, but I think ending racism needs many people to apply their own unique talents in many different ways. Obama found his, but I think it's just as important that academics find theirs...

So there's another guy on the team who is my weight. We were the same weight. He was a senior, talented fellow, majoring in economics, in fact he became a Rhodes scholar during the year. And we had a nice good workout, we're coming out, and he said "How's it going? Neil, how's it going?". I'm a freshman. "How's it going?". I said "Oh all my problem sets are kicking my butt, I barely have time to go to the bathroom", and he said "Oh what was it you were majoring in again?". I said "Physics" and he said "Well, and you want to do what with that?", and I said "I want to get a Ph.D. in astrophysics". And you know what he said to me? By the way, what was he going to do with his Rhodes fellowship at Oxford? He was going to explore the role of enterprise zones in inner city neighborhoods to empower those who were economically disenfranchised.

Okay. He's black, by the way. So, he turns to me and said "Astrophysics?". Then he says the following: "The black community cannot afford the luxury of someone with your intellect to spend it on that subject". And I was devastated by that comment. Devastated. Now he wasn't just anybody saying it, this is somebody who was walking the walk, and talking the talk. And so, I had no way out of that. He dug a hole, and put me in the hole. And I had no shovel and no ladder, no way to- there was in a hole, trying to think my way out of it. And I knew my interest in the universe was real because I felt it in my heart, I felt it coursing through my veins, but my responsibility as an educated member of society was eating away at that ambition.

In the absence of another way to think about the problem, I just kept at it, but with this albatross around my neck, this, this guilt that maybe I wasn't doing all I could to help others.

Years later, he was asked to appear on TV for his astrophysics expertise. When he saw his own interview, he was struck by the thought that this was the first time he'd seen an African American interviewed as an expert on a topic not related to race:

Neil: Thank you! I said to myself, "I just have to be visible, or others like me, in that situation". That would have a greater force on society than anything else I could imagine. Anything else. And so, to this day, I'm getting email from white people saying they wish they were as smart as I was. That was an unthinkable thing thirty years ago. It just would not have ever happened. White people wishing they were smart like black people. And so, um, so, so, then said to myself, "It's not that the black community can't afford to have me do astrophysics, it can't afford for me to NOT do astrophysics", and at that point, I find myself standing outside the hole. I'd climbed out, just the act of observing that interview. And since then, there have been other interviews with uh, intellectuals of minority groups that have nothing to do with their being a minority. But I think that might have been the first ever. And I'll tell you why I think it was the first, not that I've seen every single broadcast up until that minute of every channel, but it was another five years before I saw it happen again. That's why I think it was- then you're looking, it's like you buy a new car and everybody somehow has your car that you're driving, how did that happen? Well you're now looking for it. So I was looking for it, and it went another five years.

Again, I don't know who you're calling out, but there's not just one right way to do things, and just because someone is an academic doesn't mean they had the right combination of talent, opportunity and motivation to do the kinds of things Barack Obama has done.