The Case Against Barack

Barack Obama is many things: celebrity politician, multiracial posterchild and, to many, North America's next great hope for a better democracy.

But according to Glen Ford at Black Agenda Reports, Obama "personifies the definitive end of Black organized struggle in the United States."

More from Ford:

Barack Obama is the antithesis of Black Power, a man who promises with every word he speaks, with every nuance of phrase and body language, and through his voting record as a U.S. Senator, that he personifies the definitive end of Black organized struggle in the United States - a unilateral surrender to white racism. This is his appeal to the white masses: that they will no longer be challenged to confront history, or to relinquish privilege in the present.

Obama has already cashed in on his "Race, but not really, Card" - to the tune of $25 million dollars in contributions in the first three months of this year, three-quarters of it from corporations. This does not happen by accident. Since setting foot in the U.S. Senate, Obama has directed his entire message machine to the task of convincing corporate America that he is a friend who can be counted on to leave the actual Power Game in their hands. One of his first votes was to transfer most class action suits to federal courts, where multi-billion-dollar companies found guilty of race, gender or general employee abuse are fined the equivalent of the millionaire CEO's latest weekend at the casinos in Monaco. In the process of taking class action suits out of state courts, where the penalties to offending corporations have historically been much harsher, Obama voted against an amendment to put a cap of 30 percent on credit card debt charges. A fraction of that multi-billion dollar gift to the most unproductive sector of the economy wound up in his campaign coffers.

With Obama's campaign picking up steam, Ford and others are intensifying their critical analyses of Obama in an effort to gets folks to think past his appeal as just a liberal Black man running for the White House. But nearly a year ago, Ryan Williams, former president of the Marcus Garvey Movement in Kingston, Jamaica had this to say about Obama:

"Barack Obama is the Oprah Winfrey of American politics."

'Nuff said.