Fallen Idols (How Black Leaders Fail Us)

0:00 And during the few moments that we have left, we want to have just an off-the cuff chat between you and me, us, we want to talk right down to earth in a language that everybody here can easily understand. the the uh the uh the uh fallen the the uh method that the white man uses, how the white man uses these big guns or negro leaders against the black revolution. They're not a part of the black revolution. They used against the black revolution. They controlled you, but they never incited you. They excited you. They control. They were contained. They

0:46 kept you on the plantation. It was a It was a It was a service of performance. It beat anything Hollywood could ever do. They came. I'm telling you what they said. Scared the white man. Fallen idol clan revelation. Clan revelation. I'm telling you what they said. Scared the white man. They used to receive. >> Believe it or not, this video was not supposed to be this long.

1:33 This was supposed to be at a time one of my shorter videos. It was going to always be about Blackabis leadership. It was always going to get into certain topics. But then some things happened to change its focus. I wanted to make an update on a topic I had talked about a few years ago in a video I released called The Truth About Black Conservatism. In that video, I made some criticisms of some of black America's most well-known, admired, and in many ways, powerful figures and how they contribute to problems in the black community that often get ignored. Since I made that video, a lot has happened. First and foremost, I have evolved politically and have come to further engage with radical politics and the black radical tradition. I've also seen my platform grow and expand in ways I

2:21 didn't even imagine were possible in the same time. Which means more eyes, more attention, more scrutiny, and more enemies. Enemies that I couldn't have imagined having when I was just recording these videos on my dining room floor. Enemies that I might describe as fallen idols. At the same time, our current political reality has become more and more dire. The quiet fascism that this country has existed in for generations has given way to open and overt fascist activity where even white people are being gunned down in the street by the state. This reality has all of us asking new questions and seeking out new answers to what is happening to us as a people and how to address it. And this video was initially meant to contribute to that

3:07 conversation. And then some interesting things happened. Some things happened to cause me to somewhat change and alter the scope of this video. Things that I'm sure many of you already know, but even more of you might be surprised to find out, but you'll have to keep watching to fully understand. I know I'm being vague, but I really want you to watch all the way through so that when I do get to a certain topic, you'll fully understand the logic I'm using to address said topic. That said, I know for some of you, especially those of you who will be meeting me for the first time, it might be asking a lot from you to lock in for that long. If a nearly three or 4hour YouTube video seems crazy to you, just think of it as a docue series that you might find on Netflix or Amazon or Apple TV, you can start and

3:54 stop whenever you like. You can skip around. And if you think you already know the full backstory or you just want to cut straight to the drama, I can't stop you. But you won't fully understand why I feel certain things about certain people or fully understand the whole point of this if you do. So, if you want to get the whole experience of what I've been working on going for the last few months, I'm going to need you to log in with me starting here. Though, one last thing before we really get started, I do want to let you know that unlike Netflix or Amazon or whatever, YouTube doesn't always treat its creators fairly. It gives corporations a lot of power over what we get to say and do here. So, there's a chance that certain things will be cut or muted or altered in this video by the time you watch it, that you may still not be getting the full vision

4:40 of what I've been working on here. In that case, the only place I can pretty much guarantee that you'll be getting the uncut version of this video is on my streaming service, Nebula, along with a lot of other exclusive stuff, but we'll save all that for later. So, to start us off, as with any good video essay, we're going to go back in time a bit. Specifically though, to my own past and my first memories of seeing black leaders growing up in Chicago in the 80s, a time when one man's name was constantly celebrated and championed in the city. And that name was Harold Washington. Harold Washington was so beloved that his name still elicits joy to this day for those who remember him and whose sudden death in office in 1987 still stands out as one of the saddest days I could remember as a kid. I was like 5 years old when Harold Washington

5:26 died and it was the first funeral procession I had ever went to and probably the first time I had seen my mother cry. I remember that line being like hours long. And for whatever reason, I vividly remember in my head telling myself that I should do my best to keep quiet and be patient because everyone around me was so sad and so serious. Washington was Chicago's first ever black mayor. And in only four years, he had done probably as much as anyone in that city's history to dismantle the corrupt core of the city government. He helped pull more black people and women into the city's administration. He created processes to make the city's finances more transparent. He helped black contractors and businesses get access to city contracts in ways that they were usually barred from doing and pretty much did everything possible to address the needs

6:11 of the city's most needy people. And then he literally died in office of a heart attack in 1987. I'm sure there's analysis or criticism of Washington that someone out there has or will have to conflict with the narrative I remember from my childhood. But overall, Washington's legacy, at least amongst black people, is pristine. He is seen as one of the greatest leaders the city has ever seen and for the most part seems to deserve that moniker. What's clear about his legacy is that he put the people first and fought against entrenched oppressive systems in order to represent the needs of the people. He was how we often imagine black leaders when they emerge from our communities and are carried by us into the halls of powers who represent black interests. But sadly, this is not always what happens when black leaders emerge. For example,

6:58 a little over 20 years later in the nearby city of Detroit in 2002, another so-called black leader who somewhat resembled Washington became Detroit's youngest ever mayor. His name waswami Kilpatrick and he was an immediate star in politics. He was charming, wellspoken, youthful, and touted as the first leader of the hip hop generation. He had a energy about him that black Gen Xers had at the time, but seemingly still carried himself with the traditions of the era of civil rights and social progress that came before him. Unfortunately, this was all very much a facade. You vowed to uphold honor, integrity, and loyalty in the performance of duties as your mayor as as mayor. You were a leader in this community, and you occupied the highest office in one of the largest cities in the nation.

7:44 With all the challenges faced by this city, you were expected to lead from the front and set the example. Instead, you violated your fiduciary responsibilities by misrepresenting and misleading the city council into accepting a legal settlement, which ultimately cost the people of Detroit in excess of $8.4 million. All in an attempt to protect your political career. Shout out to Kenny JD who does great pop culture deep dives but is also a Detroit native who was there when Kilpatrick was mayor. She has a full video on this dude that I'll leave in the description. But in short, this city with this deep black history and cultural legacy was grievously failed and exploited bywami Kilpatrick. He proceeded to be the worst black leader it had ever seen. Some details

8:30 about Kilpatrick's record include nepotism, money laundering, stealing, drugged out mansion parties, corruption, and an alleged mistress who was also a stripper that was murdered. And her murder case was closed before the police could actually investigate it. Or maybe the police investigated it and then lost most of the evidence because the murder weapon just happened to be the same exact type of gun that the police used at that time. But, you know, we won't worry about that. Again, shout out to Kenny JD. She has a great video on it. All of this is during his first term. Yes, his first term, as in there was a second. He was reelected in 2005 for reasons I really can't fathom. Thankfully, he would eventually be convicted of corruption charges and sentenced to nearly 30 years in federal prison in 2013, but by 2018 after only 5 years, he campaigned for an early

9:17 release that was granted by none other than President Donald J. Trump. A similar thing happened with Eric Adams in New York when he was brought up on numerous corruption charges and then had the feds decline to prosecute because he showed his belly to Trump all while claiming racism was the reason he was being prosecuted. >> If he doesn't come through, I'll be back in New York City and we won't be sitting on the couch. I'll be in his office up his butt saying, "Where the hell is it agreement we came to?" >> Olay has a video on all of his dirty [ __ ] if you want more details on that. And these are just the leaders that get caught doing dirt, the ones with obvious crimes on their resume. This doesn't get into the actual bad [ __ ] they do with their leadership. For example, going back to Eric Adams, he expanded the police state and ignored numerous human rights atrocities in New York's prisons.

10:02 He also invited Trump and ICE to wreak havoc on New York's immigrant population. It's no wonder it was Trump's justice apartment who also quietly closed Eric Adams corruption case, after which he ran off to the same nation he was accused of taking money from in the first place. Go figure. This is only a scratching the surface of the modern issue of black leadership or should I say black misleadership. Black misleadership is a concept greatly attributed to the late great Glenn Ford who made it a core framework of his analysis of black politicians right before and after the Obama era. This black misleadership class has always been among us. And it is the tension uh between these representationists, these who see uh only uh the goal of

10:49 being represented that is having a few black folks in business and in motion pictures. and maybe one day now is the day in the White House uh but do not see uh the need for a transformation of society. According to an article written by Ford himself that can be found on Hood Communist, he credits one James Warren with first using the term back in 2005 in an article titled 37 years of non-struggle misleadership. Ford goes on to define the black misleadership class as the following. Black misleadership class is not a scientific term. It is a weaponized political terminology with specific meaning based on black historical and current political realities. The term refers to those black political forces that emerged at

11:35 the end of the 60s eager to join the corporate and dual polyolitical mostly democrat ranks and to sell out the interest of the overwhelmingly workingclass black masses in the process. It is both an actual and aspirational class which ultimately sees its interests as tied to those of US imperialism and its ruling circles. It seeks representation in the halls of corporate power and dread social transformation which would upset the class's careful cultivated relationship with power. We know who those people are based on their political behaviors. Our job as conscious political people is to expose their treachery to the black masses who reject their misleadership. Now, to assuage the fears of the more hardcore black radicals in the audience, I do not think so highly of myself as to

12:22 perfectly translate the work or legacy of Glenn Ford, who passed away back in 2021. But I do want to make the attempt of furthering that last sentence because I think that last sentence is important for pretty much everything going on with black politics right now. If you've been locked into black political anything for the last few years, you've seen a shifting wave of energy happening amongst black voters, but not in the way that the mainstream media likes to imagine when they tried out a bunch of with messed up haircuts to ask for the hundth time in a row. Will this be the year that black voters vote Republican? >> What the hell do you have to lose? >> The answer to that question is and has always been no. And I really wish a lot of you all would stop entertaining that

13:07 as a serious question. However, there is a shift started with black voters, but it's not to the right, it's to the left. Congresswoman Haley Stevens saw more than $60 million spent by outside groups on her behalf. And Elsad supporter said that that's something that should not stand in politics. >> Who are you supporting in the Senate race today? >> Abdul. >> And why is that? >> Because it doesn't take money from Apac. We got to start taking care of home and instead of the same old status quo, Democrats Republicans all seem to have the same agenda for another country. And a lot of people in black political establishment circles are starting to get worried. After Kla Harris lost the 2024 presidential

13:52 election, there was a backlash from many black moderate and liberal voters against those to their left for not being more supportive of Harris, who aside from a sketchy past as a politician in California. Most troubling, Miss Harris fought tooth and nail to uphold wrongful convictions that have been secured through official misconduct that included evidence tampering, false testimony, and the suppression of crucial information by prosecutors. Laura >> also had a lackluster first term as the vice president where she did almost nothing to buffer against the still ongoing genocide in Palestine, let alone set herself up for a future run as president. >> If anything, would you have done something differently than President Biden during the past four years? There is not a thing that comes to mind

14:39 in terms of and I've been a part of of of most of the decisions that have had impact. >> And the result of her failure to win the election has been a second Trump term that has undoubtedly been far worse than the first and undoubtedly been far worse than if she were president. But thankfully it has manifested in a reaction movement from the left with the rise of the DSA as well as many other left of democrat voices in media and politics and just communities in general. There's criticism and limitations to all of these movements and what they mean long term and whether or not they are the real solutions for black people and our needs. But what's more important and interesting is that this disruption has manifested in a clash between black leftists and progressives who see the Democratic Party as broken versus black moderates

15:25 and liberals who seek a return to the status quo. And at stake in this battle is a Democratic Party's 60-year hold on black voters and black political thought. And this is why I want to engage with this concept of black misleadership. Because as a leftist, I see this as a moment where a lot of black people are looking for answers. And as Ford stated, they need to be encouraged to find those answers away from the systems and structures that have held us back for a generation. And to be clear, this is not an endorsement of the DSA or electoralism. I'm just using that as a framing advice and a starting point cuz any one of these new figures that I do like that have come out the DSA could still exhibit the same problems and platforms of black misleadership once the opportunity presents itself. So the goal instead is to set up a framework and a way of looking at things that allows you to

16:11 recognize the patterns and tricks that are used to lull black people to sleep with these misleaders. >> We all agreed tonight, all of the speakers have agreed that America has a very serious problem. Not only does America have a very serious problem, but our people have a very serious problem. America's problem is us. >> We're her problem. The only reason she has a problem is she doesn't want us here. >> And every time you look at yourself, be you black, brown, red, or yellow, a so-called negro, you are you represent a person who poses such a serious problem for America because you're not wanted. >> I want to start out by asking why certain folks emerge as leaders. What

16:56 frameworks do they apply to get us to lower their guard and allow them to be held up by us? Because once you start to think about that, once you recognize that our leaders, good and bad, often present a specific image to black people that we are known to get behind and support, it makes it easier to spot when that facade is actually hollow on the inside. For example, if you putwami Kilpatrick and Harold Washington side by side, you could believe that they were related. They both evoke an image of confident charming classically masculine authority figures. And this image clearly has some universal appeal. No matter what race or culture you come from, it's no accident that aside from a few female mayors here or there who have also had their own traditional aesthetic to appeal to, these black leaders all tend to be well spoken, cleancut, affable straight black men. And if we're

17:43 going to keep it a buck, we have to acknowledge that this image here in America is meant to imitate white images and concepts of gender and masculinity. >> This is a beautiful audience. It's a beautiful audience. >> An audience which I have been proud whether you know it or not to have worked for you for years. >> Even if I didn't get a vote out of this room, you would get from me 100% absolute head to toe, hip-to-hip dedication to your problems because that's what it's all about. Thank you very much. I won't spend a lot of time on this just for the sake of keeping on topic, but it's important to know that the ways in which black people idealize and define gender are derivative of white concepts of gender. But the hook is that these white images of gender were never meant

18:29 for us. They were modeled to us by society. We were expected to aspire to and idealize these images, but since slavery, everything that makes the performance of white gender possible has been explicitly kept away from black people. Black men were never meant to be seen as equal to white men. And the same goes for black women. And if we somehow did manage to embody that performance appropriately. They would usually just change the rules and flip the script on what the performers are supposed to be in order to keep us excluded. But this is all critical gender theory stuff that doesn't carry a whole lot of weight among us historically. So we still have been imbued with this desire to play these roles regardless. We still presume that these manifestations of gender are natural and good. And thus we reward those who can play those roles well. We

19:15 see images of traditional men and women who can perform that white gender while being black to be the epitome of success. But to be fair to us is not as simple as replicating white masculinity or femininity. We also have to have that black twist on it. It has to be well seasoned. If it's too white, then we're actually untrusting of the performer in question and whether or not they're kinfolk or skin folk. That's a phrase that's going to come up a lot in this video. All skin folk ain't kinfolk. A phrase that we all understand. And if you don't, you're probably not kinfolk. When we think of the concept of fallen idols who black people celebrate because they evoke this aspirational image of blackness, there's a lot of people to choose from. For example, Jasmine Crockett was highly beloved because she seemed like an around the girl that had

20:00 still made it to the highest halls of power in our government and wasn't afraid to, to be blunt, read people on Capitol Hill. Cy Booker flashed his big smile and just gave off that type of big brother energy for years while he was the mayor of Newark and then a senator in New Jersey. Hakee Jeff, Jim Klyber, Richie Torres, all of these folks, while they're bought and controlled by various corporate lobbies in Apac, not by us, they still manage to give off this energy and this image that makes us feel like they're a part of us when they're not. Meanwhile, people like Angie Dixon in Florida, because she doesn't have that corporate backing, are struggling to get the support of the Democratic Party. I could go on and on into the duplicitous nature of the Democratic

20:46 Party and how they weaponize this love for aesthetics to make sure that we're never overly critical of those black people they position in front of us to lead us. But really, I can get all of that done by talking about one person that really solidifies all of that. and is someone I know a lot of you are going to be very mad at me for criticizing everyone's favorite president and the master of this balancing act one Barack Hussein Obama >> uh can can I get some water come on up here I really didn't need a glass of water this is not a stunt >> believe it or not I've already made two videos explaining how Barack Obama failed black people and a lot of criticism that you can and should have

21:32 about his paying off the banks, the incomplete healthc care bill, the drone strikes, etc. So, I will just point you to those videos and a few others if you just want to understand why I think Barack Obama should be seen in a worse light. This video is not going to serve as the Obama is bad and here's why video. I promise I was gentle in those videos, probably more than I should have been. And despite all of that, a lot of folks haven't watched those videos because I think people just aren't ready for that conversation at scale. But I want to make sure that people understand that this section isn't trying to explicitly convince you that Obama is bad based solely off his political record. Right? Just for the moment assume that you might agree that Obama is not so great and in fact was pretty harmful to black people. And if that's

22:18 the case, and it is, I want to instead focus on why it's so hard for people to acknowledge this and how he got to that point in the first place. What exactly did Obama do to get him an infinite amount of grace with most black Americans to the point where my videos criticizing him are some of my least watched political videos? Obama is the ultimate misleader because unlike every other person that term might apply to, he can lay claim to actually being a real full-on leader, having truly been empowered by the system, by the state, by the American people at the highest possible level. You might look at most people in the black misleadership class as like middle management. Their job mostly is to hold us in place, but Obama was the man at the top of the food

23:03 chain. the president of the United States, the leader of the free world with his African name, his unambiguously black wife, his black daughters, his hobby of playing basketball, his love of hip hop, his unflapable response to his haters and critics, his randomly singing Al Green at the podium for really no reason. I so in love with you just came out the blue because he knew we were going to eat that [ __ ] up and we did this [ __ ] Listen, as as much critique as I have of Obama, I ain't going to front. In the moment, especially early on, the [ __ ] was kind of dope. You Z's and younger millennials may clown us for our Obama mania past,

23:49 but y'all wasn't there. People love this man. His crowds look like Michael Jackson crowds. Obama had something that has never been repeated, but it has been replicated. And if you pay attention, you actually realize Obama wasn't even doing anything new himself. He was just mostly running the same plays a lot of black leaders and misleaders have ran the entire time. The same plays you could attribute to a Harold Washington or awami kilpatrick, just with a level of sophistication and talent that had never been seen before. Obama figured out exactly the right ingredients to get black people on board with laser precision. Ingredients that if you really know Obama's story, he didn't have naturally. He had to build them as he went along. >> We call this day to bring attention to

24:36 uh Oxel's investment in South's lack of investment in multicultural education. Breaking this point down is going to be complex and a little precarious. So, I want to be clear that I'm calling Obama's blackness a performance for specific reasons illustrated from his life and his work and his legacy. I'm not saying that Obama's blackness is a performance based solely on the fact that he's biracial or the fact that his father was from Kenya and not Kentucky. I'm not trying to take Obama's black card or using nationalistic arguments championed by right-wing black weirdos in the internet who I won't even bother to name right now. But I am saying that how we've come to perceive Obama was meticulously crafted and we need to understand it so that we can stop it

25:21 from happening again. Let's start with the fact that Obama was raised by a progressive white family in Hawaii and in Asia. He spent his early childhood living abroad in Indonesia and then from 10 until graduating high school he was in Hawaii going by Barry as opposed to Barack. Uh my family actually called me Barry up until my father passed away when I was uh 20. And uh at that point I I decided that uh I should use the name that I was born with and have used it ever since. >> Out of respect >> out of respect for my father. Yeah. Now much much to the regret of political consultancy. >> Exactly. >> Yeah. >> This by itself isn't the hugest smoking gun and it is often the experience of a lot of biracial black children. Barack himself had the typical struggle of identity that biracial black people tend to have. However, it does illustrate the

26:07 fact that Barack did not have the same black socialization that most black Americans had. A socialization that he low-key pretended to have as he ingratiated himself to us during his presidential run. Obama didn't grow up in or around black church pews. >> I was pretty green behind the ears, not really knowing anything about Chicago, not knowing that much about the church. Obama didn't directly engage with typical American policing, especially in the 60s and 70s when many of his peers would have been learning harsh lessons about America. Obama didn't have those near universal experiences that root him in black American ethics, which again isn't an automatic disqualifier. It just makes your black different. And this isn't conjecture. Obama seemingly understood this about himself and did a lot of work to immerse himself in

26:53 blackness as a young adult from his early organizing days at Chicago before Harvard to his time working under Derek Bell, the father of critical race theory at Harvard. And one of the persons who spoke at that orientation was Professor Bell. And I remember him sauntering up to the front and not giving us a lecture, but engaging us in a conversation and speaking the truth that I've carried with me ever since. and then returning back to Chicago to work in communities after getting his law degree. Obama, like many biracial and economically privileged black people, recognized that there was a gap between their black experience and the ones most upheld and celebrated in black culture and communities. And he understandably sought an immersion experience. And he speaks of this himself basically throughout his first book, Dreams of My Father. They know too much. We have all

27:39 seen too much to take my parents' brief union, a black man and a white woman, an African and an American at face value. As a result, some people have a hard time taking me at face value. When people who don't know me well, black or white, discover my background, and it is usually a discovery, for I ceased to advertise my mother's race at the age of 12 or 13, when I began to suspect that by doing so, I was ingratiating myself to whites. I see the split-second adjustments they have to make, the searching of my eyes for some telltale sign. They no longer know who I am. I don't fault people, their suspicions. I learned long ago to distrust my childhood and the stories that shaped it. It was only many years later after I had sat at my father's grave and spoken to him through Africa's red soil that I could circle back and evaluate these early stories for myself. Or more accurately, it was only then that I understood that I had spent much of my life trying to rewrite these stories,

28:25 plugging up holes in the narrative, accommodating unwelcome details, projecting individual choices against the blind sweep of history. All in the hope of extracting some granite slab of truth upon which my unborn children could firmly stand. Dreams of My Father is greatly a book about Obama reconciling two things. his unique but conveniently palatable beliefs about race and his experience as yet another black man growing up without a father. It's his thesis on the validity of his blackness. And to be fair to him, his thesis is overall correct. Blackness isn't a monolith. Blackness has a lot of different shapes and permutations. And what matters most is one's dedication and willingness to serve black causes. The only thing you could choose as your own was withdrawal into a smaller and smaller coil of rage until being black

29:11 meant only the knowledge of your own powerlessness and your own defeat. And the final irony, should you refuse this defeat and lash out at your captures, they would have a name for that, too. a name that could cage you just as good like paranoid or militant or violent or but another way to look at this book which he openly admits takes some liberties with the truth is that it does serve to help solidify and maybe sanitize his blackness in the eyes of black people and to an extent white people alike. Barack Obama understood, maybe better than anyone ever, that he needed a mixture of black approval and white acceptability if he were ever going to be president, which according

29:57 to many of his biographers and peers at the time is something that he knew he wanted to do by his late 20s. You have to perform blackness well enough for us to see you and proclaim you to be part of us, to be part of our culture, and to be a paragon of what that means. We give you support. We give you credibility. We rubber stamp your blackness. And it's that rubber stamp, that connection that is then sold to systems of power. However, if you aren't acceptable to those white systems of power, if you're too abrasive, too radical, too unpolished, too unwilling to work within that system, then you won't make it very far. But Barack was low-key built in a lab to do both. >> Obama called me that night and I said, "G, I heard it went great. >> I really appreciate it. Thank you for taking the time." He's very kind.

30:42 >> And he said, "Why do you sound so surprised?" And I said, "I don't know, a black guy named Barack Obama from the south side of Chicago. I thought it might be a little challenging." And he said, "No, no, you don't get it." We talk about my grandfather who marched in Patton's army and my grandmother who was a Rosie the Riveter and we get along great. >> His dedication to this performance is low-key probably why he broke up with his then Asian girlfriend back in the late 80s before meeting Michelle Obama. And no shade to Michelle in this regard, but I bet money that she was the first black woman Barack Obama ever dated. That is something that's again that's not me. It's not conjecture that's written in the books. From a purely cynical tactical standpoint, Obama was right to feel this way. And this is not meant to take away from the fact that

31:28 Michelle Obama is and has always been widely known to be the more talented, intelligent, and dynamic person in that couple. She was a mentor for Barack when they first met, and she's arguably today still the most popular part of their union for a reason. Michelle being a key to Obama's success has also been documented by numerous historians. However, her talent and dynamicism aside, it has also been documented that black people, black women in particular, would have been less supportive of Barack Obama had it not been for the fact that he was with a dark-skinned black woman. In a time where darkerkinned black women were being erased in the public eye, Michelle was often one of few black women that black girls had to look up to. I doubt Barack understood all of that immediately upon meeting Michelle. I don't think he sent

32:15 out a casting call and said, "I need a dark-skinned black woman so I could be president." But he knew enough to know that if he wanted to be president as a black man and be fully embraced by the black community, showing up with a non-black woman on his side was not going to work. If you're willing to heed Ketta Scott King's words and not be afraid of the future, but have faith in God's grace, then I truly believe that to hear that there's no challenge that we can't overcome. Thank you. >> Black people's trepidation toward him was a consist concern in his early days as a politician, which I want to remind people of was not very successful. Obama won his first election on a technicality, a technicality that he personally exploited to disallow his

33:01 opponents to even be on the ballot, an opponent that he had a long-standing relationship with. He then lost in a landslide to Bobby Rush, a former Black Panther, for the nomination of Rush's congressional seat. He won his Senate seat in 2004 against a replacement Republican candidate after the original candidate got exposed in a sex scandal. and he only won the primary to be in that position because he was able somehow despite not ever winning anything up to this point to enlist the support of one David Axelrod. Axelrod especially at the time was a highly sought-after political strategist and he helped Obama craft his image to be that perfect balance between black approval and white acceptability. Axelrod advised Obama on his fame speech in 2004 that essentially started his presidential run. Axelrod chose Obama over Hillary and other peers in 2008 and this was after he helped Deval Patrick win

33:48 governor in 2006 in Massachusetts. Axelrod helped Obama learn an important lesson in 2008, which is that the real audience to manage is white voters. Because when you transgress against black voters, they will make excuses for you as long as they see you as still belonging to the community. And this is something that happened all through Obama's presidency and campaign. How important is race in defining yourself? >> I am rooted in the African-American community, but I'm not defined by it. Good to see you. How are you? >> I am comfortable in my racial identity, but that's not all I am. >> But most of the time, Obama left it to his surrogates to defend him when it came to race. In narrowing the differences between Obama and the majority white nation he was appealing to, the campaign simply set out to erase

34:35 race as a negative. This was no accident. The formula counted on white voters to be comforted by this approach and for black voters to be willing to look the other way. The story of this race is that race didn't play the decisive role people thought it would. David Axelrod, the campaign's chief strategist, told me shortly after the campaign ended. During the campaign, voters came to judge him as something other than just potentially the first African-American president. People very much came to judge him on his merits. >> And this is where the misleadership really shows its face. that pattern of giving Obama the benefit of the doubt and looking the other way that black people adopted during his presidency whenever he did things that actually didn't serve a black agenda. It's the same energy that allowed us to fall in line with him as he led black people for

35:21 the first time to embrace American exceptionalism and all of its features including nationalism, not the black kind but the white kind and most alarmingly support of American imperialism abroad. the Nobel Peace Prize Lord for 2009, President Barack Obama. >> But accepting the award, he had a surprise. The anti-war candidate would be a wartime president. >> President Obama may be the first person to accept the Nobel Peace Prize um and use it as an opportunity to lay out his philosophy of war. >> I cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people. For make no mistake, evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler's armies.

36:07 Negotiations cannot convince al-Qaeda's leaders to lay down their arms. Ever since the national pollsters began tracking African-Amean public opinion, surveys have shown black people to be consistently clustered at the left side of the national political spectrum. More than any other ethnicity, African-Americans have opposed US military adventures abroad by wide margins. Indeed, the sheer size of the bloodless gap between the races indicates that black international worldview differs quite radically from white Americans and to a lesser but marketked degree from Hispanics. That is until the advent of Obama. A Washington Post and ABC poll conducted between August 28th and September 1st showed 40%

36:54 of African-Americans supported Barack Obama's threats of air strikes against Syria. Two points more than white people and 9% more than Hispanics. Majorities of all three groups opposed bombing Syria. 56% of black people, 58% of white people, and 63% of Hispanics. But African-Americans were for the first time in polling history the most bellos major ethnicity in the United States. Before Obama, black people were always always the most anti-war population in the country by far, reflecting a history of black Americans recognizing that American wars abroad were reflections of their wars against us at home. And that supporting those wars was essentially

37:40 supporting our own oppression. something that I think we still understand now, but some of y'all some of y'all might need to update in that lesson. And that's probably because by the time Obama finished his second term, black Americans were supporting wars in ways that were unprecedented. This shift in black sensibilities in America was a simple process. We had allowed Obama to lead us into the American dream with the foolish assumption that one that dream was ever meant to be ours in the first place and that we would be allowed to possess that in perpetuity without consequences and two that America's history of imperialism and genocide abroad and domestic is something that we should want to be a part of in the first place. We were still and are still too caught up in the fact that it was a

38:25 black man with the levers of power in his hand. And we deluded ourselves into believing that Obama's effective maintenance of American empire was somehow beneficial to black people. Unlike the old empires, we don't make these sacrifices for territory or for resources. We do it because it's right. There can be no fuller expression of America's support for self-determination than our leaving Iraq to its people. That says something about who we are. Instead, Obama manifested an American dream, but black. And America is a

39:11 country built on slavery, genocide, and imperialism, which meant that that was Obama's job to do at the time. And he was always very clear that he wasn't the black president. He was the president of the United States. And in that regard, he was responsible for maintaining the empire the United States was. And I'm not sure any president in modern history has been better at that than Barack Obama for all the negative things that that comes with. The drone warfare, the neoliberal transfer of wealth, the militarization of police, the continued wars against the undeveloped world in the name of corporate power. None of these things were a part of Martin Luther King's dream or in the interest of the types of communities Barack Obama worked within on Chicago Southside. Black America's dream wasn't to be the one wearing the boot or holding the

39:56 whip. We weren't the ones imagining ourselves with the levers of power or imperialism in our hands. We were imagining us, all of us, free from those systems. But after Obama, it feels like a lot of black people were just satisfied with a black person holding that power regardless of what it meant to everyone else. And it's no surprise that after the rise of Obama, we see a rise in lowercase C black conservatism. There's this great skit from In Living Color that has aged worse than any other piece of comedy from the '90s, which was an era where Andrew Dice Clay was a top tier draw. Catch me early evenings, you [ __ ] bastard. You slanty eye cocksuckle. what you are. >> It's this skit where David Allen Greer plays the newly appointed second ever

40:41 black Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. I was just a child at the time, but I remember how big a deal it was that Thomas was taking over for Third Good Marshall, the previous black Supreme Court justice. I, like many people, didn't know that Thomas was a product of the Heritage Foundation, the long-standing conservative think tank that is the thought leader behind things like Project 2025. There's also the issue of Thomas's sexual harassment accusations from Anita Hill and the fact that he was appointed by George Bush. >> I am very pleased to announce that I will nominate Judge Clarence Thomas to serve as associate justice of the United States Supreme Court. >> But despite all of that, as is illustrated comedically by this skit, black people still expected Thomas to be one of us. We still, for some reason,

41:28 expected Clarence Thomas to be kinfolk when he first came on the scene back in the early 90s. >> So, let me get this straight. >> No matter what I do, no matter who I piss off, I'm here to stay. >> More or less. Yes. >> Oh, man. >> Just Thomas. >> I'd have a refill on my coffee. >> Yo, man, you better get out my face. This ain't no damn Dennis. Get it yourself. Now, Thomas obviously and very quickly made it clear that he was in fact not kinfolk. And while we understand that we got it wrong, I don't think enough of us processed why we got it wrong. Why we just assumed that a black man who had attained power and status was going to automatically advocate for a black agenda based solely off of racial loyalty and self-esteem.

42:14 We did not consider just how and why a man like Thomas would be in the position he's in in the first place. A position, mind you, that we did not put him in. Now, black people being the ones to proclaim someone a leader, to represent our needs, that's not a foolproof way to make sure the leader is actually one of us, but it's at least something to evaluate. And as I continue with the video, you'll notice a pattern of black figures being positioned in front of us, not by us, but by white power structures. And like it or not, Obama is an example of this. While Thomas pretty quickly squandered any goodwill that we might have gave him, as is seen in this skit, Obama's performance of blackness and his embodiment of certain ideals and aesthetics, the ones I talked about

43:00 earlier of being affable and charming and still masculine and authoritative, that gave Obama a lot of rope and excuses on his limited dedication to black people. Even as he openly made it clear he was not going to be the black president, we still kept saying, "Ah, yes, you are." Obama told us outright in the beginning that he admired Ronald Reagan before he was president. He signed a surprise $858 billion tax cut that would have made Reagan weep with joy and huddled with Reagan's former White House chief of staff Ken Duberstein for lessons learned when the Gipper governed amid economic troubles. Over the Christmas break, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs

43:47 tweeted that Obama was reading a Reagan biography. And just to confirm the bond, Obama recently wrote an homage to Reagan for USA Today. Quote, "Reagan recognized the American people's hunger for accountability and change," Obama wrote, conferring on Reagan two of his most cherished political slogans. >> "He distanced himself from people like Jeremiah Wright when Jeremiah Wright was speaking truth to power about the reality of America. We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back into our own front yards. >> The right thing we've talked about look

44:33 the uh I joined a church to worship God not a pastor. This whole notion that he was my spiritual mentor and all this stuff this is something that I've cons consistently discussed. I had not heard him make the offensive comments that ended up being looped on this show constantly and I was offended by them and ultimately led >> You never heard those comments. >> I hadn't heard those comments. >> He was selling them in the lobby to church. >> When Jesse Jackson and other leaders who had been in the game for years got caught throwing shade at what they saw was arrogance and talking down to black people coming from Obama. We took his side, not the people that had served us this entire time. Even if of course those servants were imperfect themselves. When Obama filled his cabinet with bankers and lobbyists, we said, "Hey, he's just playing politics."

45:18 When he co-signed his boy to become mayor over Chicago and presided over one of the most abusive eras of police misconduct the city had ever seen, we kept running to the fact that Obama was one of us and we had to have his back. Obama was kinfolk. And I have to challenge you to ask, was he? all of the manufactured stuff, the Al Green singing, whatever, all that aside, because that's not what defines blackness, right? I agree with Obama's stance that blackness isn't defined by one specific thing. What makes someone kinfolk is their dedication to the people, to a black agenda, or at least to protecting us from harm that they perceive and can intervene in. That's what should earn you the type of support

46:04 that we give to Obama. Not just the ability to perform a particular familiar black aesthetic. We have seen the limitations of black firstisms and inspiration and motivation. Black people don't need new role models. We need role players, especially since the role being modeled is often what intrinsically tied to whiteness. But I want to dig deeper into how that process of managing resources actually plays out. For example, one clear battle that has been going on amongst black people recently is a conversation around what's called respectability politics. A concept I've talked about before that sadly never seems to go away. I touched on this in an old related video when I spoke to the legacy of serial rapist Bill Cosby, who in between drugging and raping dozens of women had the nerve to preach about black men and women not respecting

46:50 themselves because they had weird names or listen to too much hip-hop. To be fair to Cosby, he did not create this concept. This concept is much older than even him and has existed as long as black people have existed in this country. And understandably so, considering the levels of antilackness that all of us have had to witness and engage in since slavery. There has always been a tension or desire for black people to separate themselves from the ugly image that we have been saddled with. And in that process, some problems have emerged where some black people seem to think that changing our image is all or even a major thing that is needed to fix black people's problems. This begets the concept of respectability politics, the term for which seemingly originated in 1993. Coined by Evelyn

47:35 Higinbottom. >> Coined by Evelyn Higinbottom. The politics of respectability described how early 20th century black women presented themselves as polite, sexually pure, and thrifty to reject stereotypes of them as immoral, childlike, and unworthy of respect and protection. Paisley Harris summarizes that respectability had two audiences. African-Americans who were encouraged to be respectable, and white people who needed to be shown that African-Americans could be respectable. Respectability also encompasses messages of class, status, and privilege denoted through dress, organizational affiliation, and behavior. Thus, respectability refers to a set of rules embodied by the white middle class that appealed to black American reformers and subsequently other marginalized groups as a tactic for social uplift. A perfect

48:21 modern example of this can be found in the recent policy being emphasized at Tuskegee University, one of the oldest and most prolific H.B.CU in the country. This policy outlawed bonnets and do-rags being able to be worn in classes, forcing students, pretty much all black students, to always have to have their hair be seen as presentable along with other rules. Now, if you know anything about black hair, you know that bonnets and do-aggs are immensely important items for the care of black hair and thus also staples of black aesthetics and fashion. However, because of this, they have been labeled as urban or ghetto or whatever euphemisms you want to use to imply that they are the wrong type of blackness. The type of blackness that even Barack Obama could not fake no matter how hard he tried. This decision

49:07 is clearly made with the intent of making the school less welcome to a certain type of black and gender performance. Black women with 3A hair are going to be far less affected by this policy than black women with 4 C hair. And this draws upon the ugly reality in past that many H.B.CU were low-key built on colorism. The school says it's to instill discipline, which is also some [ __ ] and fits perfectly into the respectability narrative that if black folks just work hard enough to discipline themselves and did more to fit in, that society would be less hostile to us. And this just isn't true. We were just as quick and likely to get beaten by clubs, chased by dogs, and lynched whether we were wearing regular street clothes or our Sunday's best. And although we're talking about Tuskegee right now, understand that I'm pretty

49:53 sure almost every H.B.CU has a policy similar to this in their books, they just aren't enforced. Or in the case of Tuskegee, for whatever reason, announced out loud for everyone to argue about on the internet. But it is fitting and ironic that this came out of Tuskegee this time around because Tuskegee just happens to be founded by maybe the father of respectability politics and a historical figure that I've been wanting to discuss for a while. One Booker T. Washington. The slave master took Tom and dressed him well and fed him well and even gave him a little education. A little education. gave him a long coat and a top hat >> and made all the other slaves look up to him. >> Then he used Tom to control them.

50:39 >> The same strategy that was used in those days >> is used today >> by the same white man. >> He take a negro so-called negro and make him prominent, >> build him up, >> publicize him, >> make him a celebrity >> and then he's becomes a spokesman for Negro >> and a Negro leader. Before I begin, I just want to be clear. I have a lot of love for all H.B.CU. I'm an H.B.CU grad myself. This is not intended to be shade to Tuskegee students who I'm sure aren't happy with the way they're getting all this attention. And I already know that there are people clutching their pearls at the mentioning of Booker T. Washington's name and the term misleadership. But it's really about time we've had a more

51:26 public reassessment and critique of Booker T. Washington's legacy in popular culture. It's important to start with him because he's one of the most widely revered, studied, and celebrated black civil rights figures in American history. And have you ever stopped to ask yourself how and why that is? >> From 1881 to 1915, he will achieve what to many is considered the impossible. He will build one of the most impressive education institutions in all of Afroame. He will in addition become the center of heated controversies, debates, even riots and by the time of his death, his name will be known throughout the world. >> In many ways, Booker T. Washington is the quintessential black American success story. Washington was born a

52:11 slave at the tail end of slavery and was freed after emancipation in 1865 at 9 years old. From there, you could genuinely say that Booker T. Washington pulled himself up by the bootstraps. He paid for college at Hampton University by working as a janitor there. And he did so well while he was there that years later when the president of Hampton wanted someone to help start a new project in the South, he was tapped for the job at only age 25. Pulling upon the experiences of self-reliance and hard work that had made him successful, Washington had his students of what would eventually become the Tuskegee Institute literally helped build the buildings of the college with their bare hands. And over the next 30 years, he led the college to be one of the most premier black colleges in the country, which is still is to this day. Shout out

52:57 to the Tuskegee Tigers. Tuskegee is a dope institution. Has a lot of famous graduates such as Lionel Richie, Betty Shabbaz, Ralph Ellison, Tom Joiner, and Derek Jackson. This is Derek Jackson. A lot of people think of him as a relationship expert and guru and all of that. Well, he and his wife are making this video. All right, that's it. That's all the suski shade. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I had Y'all had to let me have that one. Y'all had to let me have that one. I got a whole video about Jerry Jackson. Y'all can watch when you want to finish, by the way. But moving on. Washington's ethos of self-reliance and racial uplift was his guiding principle. He literally named his autobiography Up from slavery. His goal was for black people to find liberation via building our own structures of power and commerce brick by brick just like he had built Tuskegee. Congilling into what would eventually be known as the Tuskegee model. The idea of building black

53:44 structures and industries and economies is not by itself a bad thing. In fact, it's a fundamentally good thing. It's just not a thing that actually leads to black liberation. Surf alliance is a good thing. Independence from white institutions and dollars is a good thing because it means that we don't have to be subjected to the whims of white sensibilities and interest convergence. For example, we're boycotting Target right now or maybe not depending on who you ask. More on that in a future video. But this whole Target boycott and many other boycotts are manifestations of the fact that we don't have our own [ __ ] So the idea of building something for us by us, I'm with that. And that was what Booker T was doing with his Tuskegee model, going into black communities, teaching skills, and translating those skills into economic engine. And in many

54:31 ways, it was highly successful, almost too successful. Definitely too successful, but not in the way you're thinking. >> Mr. Baldwin, I understand that you're very supportive of Booker T. Washington. >> Oh, yes. I am for Mr. Washington because the work he's doing at Tuskegee is exactly right. Not just for the colored people, but for the entire South. He's not a fire brand, a rabbarazzer. He's a master politician who knows we're sitting on a powder cake and he understands that most white people will never accept negroes as their social equals. It's an impossibility. >> See, one of the keys to the Tuskegee model success was it stance on being accommodating to racism and white supremacy. And this is most notably illustrated in Booker T. Washington's

55:16 infamous speech, now known as the Atlanta Compromise in 1895. those of my race who underestimate the importance of cultivating friendly relations with a southern white man who is their next door neighbor. I would say cast down your bucket where you are. And before we cast judgment on this logic, we do have to understand that unlike other notable black leaders of the time, such as his ideological on and off again rival Web De Boyce, Booker T lived as a slave in the South and saw the barbaric and heinous nature of white violence firsthand. And for him, direct resistance was less desirable than a

56:02 truce or a compromise. While northern blacks were agitating for access to the machine, resisting segregation, etc., Washington felt that that was ultimately a harder route than just accepting the racism of whites in exchange for being left alone and that sentiment congealed into this speech. Cast down your bucket where you are. Cast it down among the eight millions of Negroes whose habits you know whose fidelity and love you have tested in days when to have proved treacherous meant the ruin of your fire sides. As we have proved our loyalty to you in the past, in nursing your children, watching by the sick bed of your mothers and fathers, and often following them with tear dimmed eyes to their graves. So in the future, in our humble way, we shall stand by you with a devotion that no foreigner can approach,

56:48 ready to lay down our lives, if need be, in defense of yours, interlacing our industrial commercial civil and religious life with yours in a way that shall make the interests of both races one. I'm not going to hold you that [ __ ] sounds really bad. Black Twitter would eat that [ __ ] alive right now. He sounds like a black Republican, which makes sense because low-key he was a black Republican and black Republicans today love them some Bookers E. Washington. More on that later. >> Known by his admirers as the modern Moses, his role in helping blacks establish themselves after their liberation from slavery is a testament to the man and to America. While the Tuskegee model was valuable and successful and did lift a lot of black people into a higher social, economic, and education status, the success was in

57:35 part due to its support by white institutions who saw it as preferable to anything that would actually challenge white power in their systems. One of the supreme ironies in Washington's career concerns the very contributions that allow Tuskegee to expand and prosper. His critics will claim that by his dependence on the kindness of the Carnegies and the Rockefellers, the Baldwins to finance the institute, Washington has become their unwitting tool, forced by his needs for their continued support into adopting positions that may not necessarily reflect the best interests of the country's blacks. >> It was successful because it wasn't going to be that successful. White newspapers applauded him. The president at the time, Grover Cleveland, wrote him a letter of congratulations. He made

58:21 extremely rich white friends such as Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller. He was even invited to the White House at the behest of Theodore Roosevelt. These are things that we have been taught to see as great accomplishments. But if you feel like I feel these days, these are all red flags. >> Good to see you. >> Great. Great. >> See, they forgot I was here now. >> They came in for >> We still love you, Mr. President. Where did that come from? >> Washington's principle of passiveness and permissiveness to racist and white supremacists and his position as a black leader resulted in him becoming the premier black figure of his time and imbued him with great power over black

59:06 people that he in turn used to stifle and resist more radical black efforts of addressing the plight of black people. The most notable example being his eventually strained relationship with web deo who at first supported and greatly aligned with Washington. But over time do the boyce became more and more radical and left-leaning much as you see happening with black people now becoming probably the most prominent American socialist of his time which eventually brought him into conflict with Booker T. Washington who to be blunt began to play a very dirty game to maintain his position with the white power institutions he had worked so hard to belong to. With the financial support of capitalist robber barons, Washington blocked controll and shares in black newspapers, blended spies and black organizations advocating agitation and

59:51 protest and paid black newspaper editors to attack his ideological competitors who advocated political strategies that rejected any accommodation to Jim Crow segregation for his much appreciated services. Washington was granted access to the White House and influence over federal job appointments for black people, a power he used to reward his acolyte and punish his critics. >> It sadly doesn't end there. Washington was even instrumental in colonial and imperial projects abroad. Whether due to his own hubris or due to being seen as useful, his Tuskegee model was employed to pacify and stabilize imperial projects across the globe, specifically in parts of Africa, Germany, and even

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