The Banality of Colour Politics

There it is, the internal sniping. Not meant for your ears or mine or anyone's but to whom the remark was whispered. So inconveniently picked up, however, by a live microphone. How incautious can someone get? Someone, after all, accustomed to the limelight and the political arena, conscious of the sensitivity of too-candid remarks revealing what's really felt, as opposed to circumspect observations with a mere hint of censure.

Reverend Jesse Jackson strikes. Certainly his kindly regard for a brother whose substantial toehold on the potential to reach that elusive height that his own campaign never realized, is genuine - up to a point. Although Barack Obama's initial foray into the Democratic presidential selection was taken up by the white community far earlier than the black community, for whom Senator Obama was not quite black enough, now that he has breached the inner circle, that elusive black support has coalesced nicely.

But tolerance has its limits, even though the tantalizing vision of a black candidate having successfully convinced enough white American voters - the educated upper class, college and university students - that he alone is capable of transforming the country into the vision of achievable tolerance among its parts, and righteous justness will prevail, re-elevating America to its summit position within the world community.

One supposes that for the vast black population in that great country to be seen as equally representative of the greatness of opportunity and openness to personal advancement, young black men have to do more than temporarily log onto the concept beyond the "million man marches" which did not, in the final analysis, mobilize black men to honour the women and the children they leave in dire straits as they willfully pursue their own meagre agendas of self.

One supposes an inner sense of outrage burning the good Reverend Jackson's interior, in recall of his own run for the Democratic bid for the Oval Office. His family was trotted out as exhibit number one to solidify his credentials as a sterling and committed family man. He felt he could coast on the coattails of his close association with the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and he shouted his defiance of white denial from the rooftops.

But never did he castigate the failures of the black community to draw themselves upward from the hopelessness of a self-imposed dysfunctionality. He represented the aristocracy of the black community, those who had done well by themselves, through sheer determination and intelligence and education and Wall-Street smarts. Evidently seeing no reason to decry the self-imposed condition of the majority.

Best left to comedians like Bill Cosby. Who would there be left to vote for him, after all, had he committed to guiding the vast underclass of blacks. They would themselves be unlikely to take to the polls, but criticism of one is criticism of all, and it would be too risky to alienate the achievers from among the black community. In the process reminding the potential white vote that even a black candidate felt grief about the black fall-back to blaming white prejudice for ongoing black civil and familial lassitude.

Senator Obama may have some faults, and his unwise choices of association among others have caused him to backtrack and explain and ultimately disassociate himself. But he has earned high regard and honour in many other instances of declarations that reveal his moral imperatives. Not least among them his attempts to reassure both halves of the divide that a better world lies ahead. That it's eminently achievable, and he's the one to take the lead.

And with his timely and symbolic Father's Day message to the vast cadres of absentee fathers from among the black community, he took his courage in hand and delivered what had to be said. By none other than the singular black candidate who has forged a way to communicate with black and white, left and right, the doubters and the sinners. "Too many fathers are missing in action, too many fathers are absent without leave, missing from too many lives and too many homes."

Who could possibly fault that observation born of reality? That condemnation of neglect to the ultimate confusion of black children raised inadequately, without the communion. care and guidance a father could give his children - to perpetuate ad infinitum the troubling lack of conscience and discipline required for the successful rearing of the impressionable and needy young? Well, it would seem that Reverend Jackson could.

In aptly but surprisingly crude language, revealing of his simmering resentment.