The Southern Color Line

The renewed American threats to Latin American sovereignty occur when Black, brown and indigenous (Indian) populations throughout the region are in the midst of a political awakening, a deep social transformation in which Venezuela's Chavez, Bolivia's President Evo Morales and Ecuador's President Rafael Correa are major players. The non-whites of Latin America are asserting their rights to self-determination - that is, their rights as Indians, or as persons of African descent, regardless of majority or minority status in society. Where they are majorities, non-whites are seizing political power.

Long retarded by the fiction that Latin America has no racial problem, people of color are finally confronting the racial dimensions of Latin American poverty (disproportionately non-white) and oligarchy (always white).

As usual, the U.S. is on the white oligarchy's side. So is Barack Obama, whose support for the oligarchic, super-corrupt Colombian regime amounts to backing a barbaric, color-coded caste system. One need not be fluent in Spanish to understand the meaning of political cartoons in the newspapers of the rich that portray Hugo Chavez as a monkey.

African Americans and Solidarity

Wider war is coming to South American and Africa, an inevitability given the Democrats' failure to choose a real alternative to the Republicans. There is absolutely no indication that Barack Obama (or his fading political twin, Hillary) will disassemble the U.S. foreign policy elements that were put in place specifically as tripwires for and facilitators of wars. Quite the opposite. Obama will maintain over one hundred thousand military and civilian personnel in Iraq, with others "over the horizon"; step up the militarization of Africa through Africom, continue backing the Ethiopian occupation of Somalia, and possibly draw neighboring Eritrea into a larger conflict; attempt to destabilize Hugo Chavez and other progressive leaders of mostly non-white constituencies in Latin America, with the aim of seizing control of fossil fuel resources.

"We have still not forgotten our self-determination right to declare solidarity as Black people with whomever we choose."

African Americans, despite their relative quiescence compared to the roiling Sixties, will respond to these aggressions through solidarity with Washington's victims on both continents. After 40-plus years, we have still not forgotten our self-determination right to declare solidarity as Black people with whomever we choose. We can confidently predict that President Obama will overreact to dissent, especially to significant Black protest. He already revealed his character and core worldview in the confrontation with Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Let us revisit the incident:

Barack Obama's denunciation of Rev. Wright's narrative on American society's genesis in genocide and slavery - a narrative with which the vast majority of Blacks are in general agreement - was in fact a demand that Blacks cease telling their own story, in deference to white opinion and the foreign policy interests of the United States.

In framing Rev. Wright's critique of the United States as "not only wrong but divisive," Obama came perilously close to charging the minister and those who think like him with something resembling "un-American" activities. Wright's worldview, said Obama, is "divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems - two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all."

In short, Blacks of Wright's political persuasion are culpable for more crimes against the planet than Hitler's propagandists blamed on the Jews. If any of this were even half-true, most people would agree that all those who sympathize with Rev. Wright should be silenced and imprisoned, for the sake of humanity!

Barack Obama is not yet president, or even the Democratic nominee, but he has already made it clear that he believes African Americans are obligated to uphold the honor and reputation of the United States under any and all circumstances, refrain from actions or statements that might create "division," and avoid agitation for either their own rights to self-determination or anybody else's.

I think I smell a thug.

• Reprinted with permission from Black Agenda Report