Writing at Black Star News, Dr. Wilmer J. Leon says that the question shouldn't be "What should President Obama do for black America?" It should be "What will black America do for itself politically, and when?"
… Now what? When you look at the electoral map of red states and blue states it becomes fairly obvious the country has politically re-segregated itself with a solid Republican South — except Virginia and Florida — and this re-segregation falls along racial lines.
Many White voters are voting their sentiments instead of their interests. As Tim Wise writes in Between Barack and a Hard Place, Obama's success is meaningful but "the larger systemic and institutional realities of life in America suggest the ongoing salience of a deep-seated cultural malady — racism — which has been neither eradicated nor even substantially diminished by Obama's victory."
In the wake of this recent victory and with the new political capital that has been generated, the African American community must move away from the politics of personality — just being grateful that there's an African American family in the White House — and mature into a politics of policy outcome. The time for deference and timidity has passed.
Read Dr. Wilmer J. Leon's entire piece at Black Star News.
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