Amiri Baraka on Barack Obama
| October 5th, 2008
(photo by marklarson)
In light of the fact that I just added a lot of new material to his page—with at least twice as much still in the queue—and the fact that our presidential election is now less than a month away, I thought it only prudent to find out a little bit about what Amiri Baraka might think about our generation’s theoretical shoe-in, Barack Obama.
In a piece entitled “The McKinney Choice,” Kevin Alexander Gray very succinctly explains a lot of what I think Obama is doing with his campaign. From calling him a “status quo politician” to suggesting that he’s trying to align himself more closely with white voters. Baraka is quoted as saying that ”all those not supporting Obama are ‘rascals.’”
Over at the Washington Post, there’s a quote from Baraka saying that the only choice in our election is between Barack Obama or “that patient from the Vietnam War.” Unfortunately, this isn’t so much pro-Obama as it is anti-McCain, which seems to follow the rhetorical lesser-of-two-evils line of thought.
To conclude: it’s clear that Baraka does not like McCain. But what’s a little muddled is what (if anything) he actually supports about Barack Obama. So…
In other news, Amiri will be speaking at Slave Routes: Resistance, Abolition and Creative Progress, a symposium being held Oct. 9-11 at Harlem’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.
