Obama: Our self-inflicted wound

BEST Theory or rather, “Black Electoral Success Theory” supposed in the aftermath of the Civil Rights struggle, that the US electoral system, and the proliferation of African American candidates and elected officials, would provide Blacks a path to economic and social parity with mainstream society: “You don't need the bullet when you've got the ballot.” President Obama is the latest example of the failure of the this hypothesis, and validates Audre Lourde's maxim that "The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house" .

How did it get to be that in 2011 the wealth, health and education chasms between African Americans and their national peers become so vast, so gaping that Black family income is 20 times LESS than whites? How is this possible after over four decades of electoral successes nationwide in urban, congressional and state politics? The disparities which continue to be a part of Black life in contrast to the lives of other ethnic groups calls call into question the viability of this electoral system, and more importantly, issues of our place, or lack thereof, in this society despite our contributions edifying it.

One could argue that this President inherited the economic turmoil, wars, and class divisions exacerbated by the previous Bush/Cheney Administration; one could argue that this president faced and obstructionist Congress ensconced in overt/covert ideology that would never let a Black man succeed at the presidency of the United States of America; or one could argue that this president's policies haven't had time to take hold and he needs another four years to set the house in order. But you'd be wrong.

This president is the one who surrounded himself with the same, business as usual characters to run our finances and our treasury; Geitner and Bernanke are of the system of bankers and financial experts that caused our global economic catastrophe in the first place. That should have been a warning sign right there.

Other red flags were raised during the Bush/Cheney administration, when then Senator Obama along with Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi and the congress they led offered no articles of impeachment against an administration that had lied the nation into war, looted the treasury, remains reasonably suspicious of complicity in 9/11, to list just a few very investigatable/impeachable offenses against the American public. Impeachment is one of the best processes we have to protect against political abuse by the elite, and that trio threw that very necessary option, like the public one NOT in Obama's health care plan, under the bus.

And now, In the pre-election fury leading up to 2012, the president must contend with a new beerhall pautch in the form of a “Tea Party” that is largely of his (and Reid and Pelosi's ) making. By failing the call the criminal adminsitration that ran this country down the drain on the carpet, the Dems now find themselves on that very carpet....see Obama in August 2008.

It was the candidate Obama who put on the vest of social democracy, and spewed out the rhetoric of hope and change; not the throngs who lined the streets to fill auditoriums to hear his message. Obama used the language and ideas of a civil rights struggle he now seems resentful to be reminded of. Which points to a conundrumof historic proportions for the community Obama professes to be of. The malaise flowing through this president's electoral base emanates from the source, not our political naitivity.

Rashard Zanders