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| Actual bus; Serial #1132. |
On 01 DEC 1955, one young black woman in Montgomery, AL
decided she had been a second-class citizen long enough. She had witnessed
others of her “color” humiliated in ways that I—as a “Southern Born and
Southern Bred” man—am ashamed to even acknowledge. She started a movement by
keeping her seat. She lit a fire, by remaining cool. She politely refused to
give up her seat on a bus to a white male passenger. Four days later, the
Montgomery Bus Boycott began and lasted for 381 days. Today, her willingness
and her courage to do what she felt was right for her people, and by extension
this country, she is known as the “Mother of the Modern Day Civil Rights
Movement”.
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| President Obama's picture observing 57th anniversary. |
Saturday was the 57th anniversary of her
deciding to remain seated. So what did our president do to mark this anniversary?
He released a picture of himself sitting alone on the same bus, and presumably
the same seat Rosa Parks refused to give up. (NOTE: From what I
remember she sat on the side with the doors, not the driver's side. From the photo,
he is on the driver's side.)
I do not agree with the way this man is inserting himself
into history. Just read the following statements and ask "What does Barack H. Obama have in common with USA Blacks?.
- He was not part of the Civil Rights movement.
- He is not a descendant of slaves, like most Blacks.
- He never sat at a segregated lunch counter, nor did any of his ancestors.
- His father was from Kenya that studied at Harvard then returned to Kenya.
- His mother was white.
- He grew up in Hawaii and Indonesia.
- He attended private schools, then went on to Occidental, Columbia, and finally Harvard Law School.
In Dreams from My
Father, he wrote he was waiting on his mother in the lobby of the American
embassy in Indonesia and picked up a copy of Life magazine. While perusing the magazine, he states he found an
article about a black man in America who underwent chemical treatments to
lighten his skin. He states the article included a picture of the man who
looked sick, like “a radiation victim or an albino.” Obama writes, he reacted
in horror “I felt my face and neck get
hot. My stomach knotted; the type began to blur on the page….I had the
desperate urge to jump out of my seat…to demand some explanations or assurance.”
He could not believe that life was so bad for this black man, that he wanted to
undergo horrendous treatments in an attempt to appear less black and more
white.
Many magazines and newspapers reported the story then a search
was conducted for the original article. Guess what? There never was any article
published by Life magazine. Obama was
then questioned, hoping to spur his memory. He thought it might have been in Ebony magazine. Not the case. An
exhaustive search for any publication carrying the article turned up nothing
except a book written in the early 1960s by a white man who took skin
treatments to darken his skin, so he could try to experience what black men
endured living in the South. Dinesh D’Souza in his book The Roots of Obama’s Rage,[i]
posits Obama got the idea from reading Frantz Fanon’s book Black Skin, White Masks. Obama admits to reading this book in Dreams From My Father. The book recounts how some
laboratories are searching for a “denegrification” serum that could lighten the
African skin color so they could live as peers to the French that controlled
Algeria. What was Obama’s motivation for not only distorting the facts—assuming
he was recalling reading the book—but making up the facts? I believe he did so
to gain an emotional connection to USA Blacks.
While campaigning in Selma, AL in March 2007, he made a
statement “Don’t tell me I’m not coming
home to Selma, Alabama.” The crowd sat silently. He had to make the connection. “Something happened back here in Birmingham
that sent out what Bobby Kennedy called ripples of hope all around the world.
Something happened when a bunch of women decided they were going to walk
instead of ride the bus after a long day of doing someone else’s laundry,
looking after someone else’s children. When men who had Ph.D.s decided that’s
enough and we’re going to stand up for our dignity. That sent a shout across
oceans so that my grandfather began to imagine something different for his son.”
Obama asserted that because of these actions, President John F. Kennedy and his
family started an airlift mission to travel to Africa and bring back young
Africans and give them scholarships to study. Obama stated his father got one
of those tickets, and because he came to the USA to study at Harvard, he met his
wife and then had Barak H. Obama, Jr. The problem with this is, it is not true.
Yes, there were airlifts from Kenya to the US, but they were funded by
philanthropists and had nothing to do with the Kennedys. Obama, Sr, did not get
one of those tickets. Furthermore, his father came to the US in 1959. The Selma
March did not happen until 1965. Obama, Jr. was born in 1961. Perhaps all the
discussion on where he was born
impacted his memory on when he was
born. Regardless, this was another misrepresentation of the facts, but this one was a
material misrepresentation. What my mom, would call a lie.
I think the President has created this “biography” to make
him acceptable to “true” American Blacks. In a previous blog I wrote of the hypocrisy
of claiming whites voting for Romney is racist, while Blacks voting for Obama
is not. People actually smirked when Colin Powell was asked why he was voting for President Obama. The insinuation is that he endorsed and voted for him because of his skin color. If so, that is fine. But other than skin color, Barack Obama has nothing in common with the true
American Blacks. He has no Civil Rights credentials and he certainly does not
share the same lineage of the people he so desperately wants to identify.
Had Colin Powell, Condi Rice, Oprah Winfrey, or other notable Blacks who either lived with prejudiced bigots, forced to use separate building entrances, ate at segregated lunch counters, or were forced to give up their seats on a bus, released this picture, I would wholeheartedly accept and applaud it. They represent the results of Parks' and others' efforts six decades earlier. They were a part of our country's darkest moments, yet rose above it. President Obama's picture does not give Rosa Parks the recognition she deserves.
On that day 57 years ago, the “custom” allowed blacks to
ride the bus, but only in black-only sections that were dependent on the number
of whites riding. The blacks were forced to give up their seats, either to move
to the rear, get off entirely, or stand up. On this day, there were more whites than normal, so the bus driver approached her
and three others. He told them they must give up their seats for the “whites”. All
four got up. Three moved to the rear and she moved from the aisle seat to the
window seat, and there she remained. The bus driver threatened to call the
police if she did not comply and asked for the last time if she was going to stand
up. She replied, “Why don’t you stand up?” I like to think she was asking the
bus driver to not physically stand up but to do so metaphorically—for him to
take a stand, to ‘stand up’ for what is right and just. I don’t know. But, her
question rings just as true today as on that late Thursday back in December
1955. Why don’t we stand up for what is right? Mr. President, the same question
goes to you as well. “Why don’t you stand up?” Put aside your narcissistic view
of yourself, your desire to create a socialistic society, and your constant efforts to pit the “have-nots” against the “haves”. Instead, represent all of America, and what is
best for the entirety of the whole. If not, If he continues, I feel this picture when viewed by those in the future could be captioned, "President Obama riding with all the people he helped."
"I would like to be remembered as a person who wanted to be free…so other people would be also free." Rosa Parks.
"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction….Man is not free unless government is limited." Ronald Reagan.
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