Academic

Yes We Can. But We Shouldn?t!

By Marc Lamont Hill

From the beginning of his presidential campaign, which unofficially began with the release of his second book The Audacity of Hope, Senator Barack Obama has been positioned as an underdog against the Clinton machine. Now, with polls showing him in a virtual dead heat with Sen. Hillary Clinton, the media has constructed his early success as a David-over-Goliath narrative that proves that ordinary people have the power to slay the beast that is Washington through a radical politics of hope. Unfortunately, the Obama campaign has perverted the concept of hope by wedding it to a dangerous politics of compromise, concession and cunning.

Within the black faith tradition that Obama appeals to, hope is the belief that, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, our circumstances can be transformed into something previously unimaginable. It is this notion of hope?coupled with organized resistance from the people catching the most hell?that led to the end of slavery, Jim Crow, and apartheid. In Obama’s corporate-sponsored universe of meaning, however, hope is not the predicate for radical social change, but an empty slogan that allows for a slick repackaging of the status quo.

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Full post as published by BlackProf on February 05, 2008 (boomark / email).