blackascoal
The Force is With Me
"African Americans are the only constituency that has presented no demands to the two corporate candidates."
The current election cycle is, indeed, one for the history books. For the first time since the rebellions of the Sixties, we hardly hear the call for a Marshall-type plan to rebuild the cities - once the near-unanimous, unifying demand of virtually the entire spectrum of Black "leadership." Not that the demand has been made moot or passé by great achievements in rendering urban America more habitable to Blacks or more recent influxes of browns. The opposite is true: urban centers have become far more hostile environments to the non-affluent of all ethnicities. The historic Black demand for massive urban transformation, for a grand makeover of the cities that would redress the huge wrongs inflicted on the yearning Black masses who were methodically excluded from the great suburban post-World War Two national project, has been answered - by our enemies, with a second Black exclusion in the form of gentrification.
In place of a massive public sector-led Marshall Plan to rehabilitate the cities for the benefit of the largely African American populations that inherited them by default through government-subsidized white flight, public policy now facilitates the Corporate Plan for the cities: Black removal.
If any handwriting-on-the-wall were needed to graphically illustrate the grand corporate scheme for the cities, it is written on the walls of the 70,000-plus unrehabilitated, empty homes of the scattered, mostly Black and poor classes of metropolitan New Orleans; in the rubble of countless demolished public housing projects across the nation, not one of which has ever been replaced unit-for-unit; and in the millions of affordable private dwellings that have been supplanted by habitats for well-to-do urban newcomers - a small fraction of whom are Black or brown.
"Urban centers have become far more hostile environments to the non-affluent of all ethnicities."
It is true that elements of the Black misleadership class have often conspired with "developers" (actually, "destroyers") to displace many of their own constituents. Yet even these cynical players pay lip service to the general Black demand for a Marshall-type plan that would transform the cities for the benefit of existing populations. Along with the age-old demand for elemental justice from the state, a comprehensive plan to bring working class jobs, affordable housing, quality education and civilized amenities to the central cities remains the most broad-based and deeply centered aspiration of the modern Black Political Consensus. For decades, it was the demand that must be heard.
Until now. With the ascension of Barack Obama, all Black agitation has been subordinated to his election, leaving African Americans as the only constituency that has presented no demands to the two corporate candidates. Black misleadership simply accepts what Obama feels comfortable in offering. His Denver acceptance speech shows Obama is prepared to give Blacks precisely what they have asked for: nothing.
-- more at link
http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=761&Itemid=1
Obama assumes there will be overwhelming black support for him in record numbers .. but there shouldn't be.
I predict that he will lose, but not because of race.
The current election cycle is, indeed, one for the history books. For the first time since the rebellions of the Sixties, we hardly hear the call for a Marshall-type plan to rebuild the cities - once the near-unanimous, unifying demand of virtually the entire spectrum of Black "leadership." Not that the demand has been made moot or passé by great achievements in rendering urban America more habitable to Blacks or more recent influxes of browns. The opposite is true: urban centers have become far more hostile environments to the non-affluent of all ethnicities. The historic Black demand for massive urban transformation, for a grand makeover of the cities that would redress the huge wrongs inflicted on the yearning Black masses who were methodically excluded from the great suburban post-World War Two national project, has been answered - by our enemies, with a second Black exclusion in the form of gentrification.
In place of a massive public sector-led Marshall Plan to rehabilitate the cities for the benefit of the largely African American populations that inherited them by default through government-subsidized white flight, public policy now facilitates the Corporate Plan for the cities: Black removal.
If any handwriting-on-the-wall were needed to graphically illustrate the grand corporate scheme for the cities, it is written on the walls of the 70,000-plus unrehabilitated, empty homes of the scattered, mostly Black and poor classes of metropolitan New Orleans; in the rubble of countless demolished public housing projects across the nation, not one of which has ever been replaced unit-for-unit; and in the millions of affordable private dwellings that have been supplanted by habitats for well-to-do urban newcomers - a small fraction of whom are Black or brown.
"Urban centers have become far more hostile environments to the non-affluent of all ethnicities."
It is true that elements of the Black misleadership class have often conspired with "developers" (actually, "destroyers") to displace many of their own constituents. Yet even these cynical players pay lip service to the general Black demand for a Marshall-type plan that would transform the cities for the benefit of existing populations. Along with the age-old demand for elemental justice from the state, a comprehensive plan to bring working class jobs, affordable housing, quality education and civilized amenities to the central cities remains the most broad-based and deeply centered aspiration of the modern Black Political Consensus. For decades, it was the demand that must be heard.
Until now. With the ascension of Barack Obama, all Black agitation has been subordinated to his election, leaving African Americans as the only constituency that has presented no demands to the two corporate candidates. Black misleadership simply accepts what Obama feels comfortable in offering. His Denver acceptance speech shows Obama is prepared to give Blacks precisely what they have asked for: nothing.
-- more at link
http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=761&Itemid=1
Obama assumes there will be overwhelming black support for him in record numbers .. but there shouldn't be.
I predict that he will lose, but not because of race.
