So, is this blog, on the whole, about fighting racism with racism? I'm having trouble understanding just what you've written, rather than chalk it up to my lack of intellectual prowess; I'll go ahead and attribute it to sentences lasting an entire paragraph. Why be so wordy?

I don't mean "dumb it down," I just mean the only reason to say the word "obsolescence" rather than restructuring your sentence to say the word "obsolete," is the same reason authors use French phrases in works that would have been just as well without.

I read about six paragraphs and then stopped.
I'm sick of critics dragging Obama in the dirt, prejudging him before he's even sworn into office.
It's like they want to be the first to tear him down so they can march to the spotlight and revel in their cynicism.
No one man can solve all of a nation's problems, especially a nation currently struggling as much as we are now.
Maybe he won't change a thing. Maybe he'll change everything. Most likely, though, he'll change some things and not others.
Bottom line: I know he's no miracle worker, but let's wait and see what he does as President before we crucify this modern day Jesus.

I would encourage those who left negative comments to go back and read it in its entirety and struggle through the parts that may be difficult. Personally I did have to use an online dictionary - and am glad that regardless of whether I agree or not I learned something by reading this. As for the content this article was the best commentary on the election all season and is a devastating critique of the spectacle of Obama's victory. I am sure that it is already working to strengthen white supremacist hegemony. We need to Want More people, hope is not enough.

I'm sorry, but this type of academic cynicism makes me embarrassed about being within the "ivory tower" that people rightly complain about. Who exactly are you invoking as "happily surrendering" their politics just because Obama got to power? To the contrary, the Obama presidency is an icon of an opportunity that has been opened to demand change from the government, not to become complacent. Or do you assume that change is impossible? Your narrative claiming that everything will remain the same no matter who is in power seems to belie the very transience of history. In my opinion, you have plenty of "pessimism of the intellect" but not enough "optimism of the will," as Gramsci well pointed out.

You are also forgetting Obama is a politician, and as such he could not afford to blast the "Founding Fathers" in his speech. I give him enough credit for questioning the narrative of their infallibility and the mythos of "pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps" that underlies the American capitalist dream. Yes, US nation-building has too much momentum to stop in one presidency, but that does not mean that having leaders who have questioned its efficiency is meaningless. Should we condemn Obama's aim to close Guantanamo as further proof of his neoliberal, multicultural support for white supremacy? I feel your simplistic reading of Obama's words as in "solidarity with a liberal racist consensus" is, to say the least, politically naive. Wake up and smell the coffee!

I know there is much to celebrate with an Obama presidency. But still, it's sad to me that we have become so resigned to the status quo that we will celebrate and worship a return to centrist Clintonian politics. I think that on top of all the more concrete devastations, that is the worst of Bush's legacy. The first time I read this, I felt a deep self-aggrandizing satisfaction in my own cynicism--a disgusting feeling of congratulating myself for having the right radical credentials. But the second time I read it, I read the words of someone who still dared to dream. I saw not cynicism so much as a sincerity of belief in and dedication to creating a world without prisons, without police, without imperialism, and without all other forms of genocide and caging. Isn't that worth investing our power, our dreams, our hopes in more than a Black president at the helm of the machine?

"this historical moment calls for an amplified, urgent, and radical critical
sensibility, not a multiplication of white supremacy's "hope.""

Great article. I agree with everything but certain aspects of the tone. What we truly need is an amplified, urgent, and radical critical sensibility that is also a multiplication of ITS hope. The "dreadful genius of the Obama moment"-- maybe. But there is actual (not just sentimental) hope too, in this moment. Change has happened, historically, in many different ways, some of it even through that deeply flawed body we call a democracy. Now, more than ever, we need a radical critique that is not merely reactionary, but both incisive and IMAGINATIVE: that sees the moment in terms of its constructive possibilities as well as its "being problematic." You write: "The political work of liberation from racist state
violence—and everything it sanctions and endorses, from premature
death to poverty—becomes more complex, contradictory, and difficult
now." I agree. And I would encourage us all to look at this increasing complexity not as dangerous, but as a gift--it means this conversation, even already, is reaching new ground.

i think, the main point of Dr. Rodríguez's article is that the structures of violence that we survive and oppose go beyond questions of who is in the presidency. his argument is that we should organize our politics in opposition to the war-making state and its agents. he calls on us to demand changes we want, not the Changes (TM) we think we can get. i for one am not interested "genocide management," as a political project. but i think now, more than ever we must confront what the state is and what it is meant to do-- kill people.

I agree. This is a really thoughtful analysis of the election. No one is trying to tear down Obama. Rather the article was precisely about that - he won't fail or succeed as president...he will just be... a president. The article is more about us and what Obama represents to us. Since he is going to be merely a president (perhaps a popular, intelligent, articulate and diplomatice one at that) and not the revolutionary or transcendent figure some portrayed him to be, we all have a choice. Do those of us whose political allegiances bind us to radical liberation struggles surrender and join forces to liberal multiculturalism just because its face has changed? The problems before us have not vanished but, as Cornel West said, they are merely colored with a new hue.

There is one tiny issue I took with this article (as someone who did cry on election night at the sight of seeing so many others crying at seeing the dream of an entire movement being realized). Rodriguez's analysis of the More Perfect Union speech is an interesting one. I didn't take it as a disavowal of Reverend Wright at all. Rather than disavowing, Obama stood up and explained. Rodriguez is correct, however, in noting that implicit in Obama's explanation of Wright is agreement and apology, which does end up painting the Reverend as a caricature.

I appreciate this article, though, for mainting clarity and a sense of purpose amongst the euphoria.

The nation is a cancer. It destroys and there is not nation, on the planet, that does not. There are no leaders without blood on their hands.

We cannot forget that we must always push against the comforts of the nation (even when that comfort is a "liberal" multiculturalism) in order to contest it. What would the post-national world look like? I don't know and none of us ever will if we do not critique and agitate against the soft and hard parts of the national body.

Shall we let this body die? Do we administer chemotherapy and excise the tumor? This is the fundamental subtext of this article. Furthermore, how do we feel about that death when we are the hands and the fingers and the toes and feet of that body?

I don't see Obama as a curative. I see him, instead, as remedial bridge from one state to the next. Yes, under ANY President the United States will have blood on its hands, domestically and internationally. But had Al Gore been the President over the past 8 years, we would never have gone into Iraq. Would that make us innocent and pure? No. What nation is?

These differences matter to me. I will work and critique and agitate and see any President, including an Obama Presidency, for what it is. At the same time, the lives of millions of Iraqis that could have been saved, and perhaps now will be saved, is not small thing. It is not helpful to our cause to dismiss the saving of those lives as mere "genocidal management." I realize that people will still die and be imprisoned. But lives will also be saved because Obama is the President and not John McCain. Just ask Iranians how they feel about that distinction.

I think we must do what we do--resist. But we cannot allow our critique to elide the fact that while the structure of the oppressive nation is intact, and that Obama will do little to undo that, he will conduct the business of American politics in a way that could mean millions of children will have their parents and their future.

Dr. Rodriguez makes a good point, but I think the inaccessibility of his writing is a detraction. Many people are excluded from considering his arguments because of the way he structures his sentences and his choice of words, which is ironic considering what he is writing about. Those who come from poor and working class backgrounds are the first to be excluded from his analysis because they are less likely to have access to quality educational experiences, but this means that many people of Color are also left out of the conversation. Perhaps, he intends for a select group of people to be able to really understand what he is saying? It is interesting that so many comments are about trying to decipher what he saying.

That said, I agree with Alvaro. It is important to consider the political concessions that must be made in order to be elected president. We won't know what Obama will do until he is in office, and for all we know, we may finally have a president who is willing to consider radical views.

Obama is not the product of a movement in any sense of the word. He's a politician. It's important to remind people that he will be a disappointment in terms of truly radical change. If this article is just meant to be a corrective to the current narrative, more power to the writer. But in terms of actual movement-building it's also important that Rodriguez mention something about how electoral politics is not really the best area in which to begin seeking social change, that it needs to start with informing regular folks about their options in terms of governance and how their daily lives connect with decisions made in DC. I agree w/ the commenter M re the language of this piece: if the writer is seeking to inform, chances are the people who understand what he's saying already agree in some way. It's just too inaccessible and downright negative in terms of inspiring people to believe that they can have power over their own fates.

In the meantime, is the writer suggesting that the poor/working class/people of color stay away from mainstream government in order to prevent it from being legitimized by their presence?

Thanks --

It surprises me that on the night of November 4, when I watched Obama's victory speech, I found myself crying. Intellectually, I knew that Obama was becoming part of the same political system, the same state, that is incarcerating and waging war on so many people.

But against my will, I cried. Is it because he recognized me, a queer person, as part of an American community that includes queers, third world nations, aliens and outcasts? He did not use those words, but my ears heard them somehow.

Is it because he talked about America as an unfinished democratic project, a nation that still needs to reckon with the history of slavery, a nation that can and will and must reckon with the history of slavery? (although he failed to mention so many other forms of state-sponsored terror and racism that are far from over).

No, that's not it. I cried because the day before the election, people who usually look at me on the street and see that queer person looked at me and saw a fellow citizen who was going to join them in electing a new president. People who usually look at me as that white person from the white neighborhood from the white university looked at me as part of a black, white, latino, citywide coalition that was about do something together.

Would I like to build community around a more radical political project than electing a neoliberal/centrist president? Yes. But for now, let my body release tears of relief as it remembers a few days, november 3, november 4, november 5, 2008, when it could walk across a city as if all of the fences and checkpoints were falling down. Let my eyes remember a few days when they did not look away in shame.

Let my body remember that sensation, so that it can move again like that, into much more radical political futures.

the import of this analysis is that white supremacy is not about white people: people of color can be-and sometimes are to a much deeper extent-wrapped up in defending white supremacist structures and configurations. in fact, the hegemons depend on it.

and this is part of the struggle. getting people to realize that the language of multiculturalist white supremacy is not about being inflammatory, but about historical and material specificity. white folks and people of color have a hard time with this.

The following short article is from the website www.revcom.us (Revolution newspaper). I thought it may add to the conversation here about Dr. Rodriguez's very thoughtful and timely essay, maybe as a "reality check" for people who refuse to put on their critical thinking long enough to consider his well articulated position.
__________________________

A “post racial” America?

There is much hope among Black people broadly, as well as among many people of other nationalities, that the election of Barack Obama has brought a “new day” for the situation that African Americans face. A hope that with a Black President in the White House, there will be a major course change in the long, ugly history of racism and white supremacy in this country, which has meant so much brutality and suffering for Black people, from the days of slavery up to today. You could see this hope in the faces of hundreds of thousands of people who gathered at Grant Park in Chicago on election night for Obama’s victory rally—a huge multi-national gathering in one of the most segregated cities in the U.S. But on that same night, in the same city, there were vicious reminders that this is still America.

In Chicago’s West Side, Christina Ballard and Cornelius Voss were driving home on election night with young family members when white cops in unmarked vehicles came up alongside their car. According to a federal lawsuit filed by the family, when the children in the car cheered for Obama through the open car windows, the cops yelled “white power” and “n****r” and sprayed pepper spray into the car.

Also on election night, a group of family members, all under 18, were celebrating outside a West Side house when several cops discharged pepper spray near them. When the youth fled into the house, the armed cops battered down the front door, knocked down several people inside, and shouted racist insults. Niger Arnold, 31, was visiting her mother at the house, after spending the day working at a polling place. She told the Associated Press, “My mom’s blood pressure went sky-high. I couldn’t breathe. I was scared.”

Did Obama denounce these outrages by racist police in his “home city”? No. Did he speak out this summer when the Chicago police went on a murderous rampage, shooting 12 people (all Black and Latino) over a 3-week period, killing 6? No.

On the contrary, last April, when a New York judge acquitted cops who fired 50 shots at Sean Bell, a 23-year-old Black man, and killed him just hours before his scheduled wedding, Obama said, “We respect the verdict that came down.” At the same time, he warned people who were outraged by the verdict that “resorting to violence to express displeasure over a verdict is something that is completely unacceptable and counterproductive.”

A “new day” for Black people now that Obama has been elected? The cold truth is that the oppression of Black people is a major pillar of the capitalist-imperialist America—and this will continue as long as this system is in effect, no matter who is in the White House.

Please see , www.discussrace.com

Thank you , Peace .