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 Published Brownsville Herald June 15,2008

The Political World Series is on all the media all the time. The league pennants have been pretty much settled. The Democratic Party has advanced a candidate that looks good at first blush but Barak Obama has a more than a few questions that need to be resolved and positions that need to be considered. Mr. Obama’s star became apparent at the Democratic Convention just a few years ago. His speech and charisma propelled him to a national prominence that even the previously “omnipotent Clinton Machine” could not overcome. The mere fact of his nomination for the most important position in our country has already redefined the United States as a much less racist society than is often attributed. 

The Primary campaigns raised a number of questions that taken as profile rather than a set of separate incidents have caused many to wonder at what kind of leader the real Mr. Obama will be. His voting record speaks of what has been termed as the most liberal in the Senate. Further, in the campaign, Mr. Obama spoke of solving many of the Nations ills by increasing taxes on the “wealthy” and buying solutions with that money that comes from our paychecks every week. What concerns me are the perceptions created by the exposes that seem to place him, for nearly all of his adulthood, in a culture of supporting social change through violence. (Relationship with William Ayers, a former member of the radical group the Weather Underground who is now a professor of education at the University of Illinois in Chicago) This picture is supported by the values and social attitudes (a “Black Value System” that  refers to “our racist competitive society” and includes the disavowal of the pursuit of “middle-classness” and a pledge of allegiance to “all black leadership who espouse and embrace the Black Value System.” It defines “middle-classness” as a way for American society to “snare” blacks rather than “killing them off directly” or “placing them in concentration camps,” just as the country structures “an economic environment that induces captive youth to fill the jails and prisons.”)  of his church, its pastor and community that he was a part of for over 20 years.  More »