Well-written and compelling piece over at HipHopDX.com by Andreas Hale:

Excerpt:

As I stare at my television, I wait for Obama to say something profound about the Sean Bell case while he is in the midst of delivering yet another round of gas/war/food rhetoric to the public. Someone finally asks about the Sean Bell case. You know what that is kids?

Catch 22: Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

I’ll explain later.

Obama stammers a bit before being as vague as humanly possible in regards to how he feels when cops who shower an unarmed man with 50 bullets are acquitted of all charges. He basically sums it up to “taking precautionary measures to ensure these things don’t happen again,” followed by something to the effect that we must “respect that judgment and not react.” What the hell does that mean?

See, I’m not questioning Barack Obama’s blackness. I’m not likening him to any black man who cares more about the mighty dollar than our community. I’m questioning what Barack Obama can and can’t actually do in the oval office. He’s a politician and has to play the game of a politician. When situations like this arise, I would love to see Obama with eyes of fire. I would love to see him make a joke out of our flawed judicial system. I would be elated to see him articulate the black struggle to the American people in a manner that is not as threatening as it is educational. I would love to see a black man who genuinely is hurt by how society treats minorities, stand up on national television and in so many words say “fuck that shit! That shit ain’t right!” (devoid of the curse words but filled with the same passion of course).

Obama can’t and will never ever be able to do that as president of this country. But I will still vote for him with the understanding that his contributions during his first four years are more inspirational to minorities than tangible.

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