Forget black enough, is Obama gangsta’ enough to be the first black president?

By Toure Muhammad

Is he black enough? This question has been dogging U.S. Senator Barack Obama since he decided to run for the highest office in the country earlier this year. Ironically, no one is asking if Hillary Clinton is female enough or if John Edwards is white enough or if Bill Richardson is Latino enough.

As for Obama, most people know something of his background, by now. His mother was white American and his father was Black African. He grew up in Hawaii and Indonesia. After graduating from Harvard he came to Chicago to do community organizing and got into politics by way of the Illinois State Assembly. He unsuccessfully challenged U.S. Congressman Bobby L. Rush back in 2000. Then he ran for the U.S. Senate and won. Finally, he announced plans to run for president of the United States and the campaign coverage became absolutely ridiculous.

Obama must have felt as if he was on an episode of MTV’s Punk’d. Did your mother’s ancestors own slaves? What color is your Jesus—Black, white, or papersack brown? Do you participate in ALL of Black History Month? How do you feel about zebras? Do you think they are white with black stripes or black with white stripes? Here’s a newsflash: some journalists simply refuse to let good reporting get in the way of a good story.

Basically, with the question of whether Obama is Black enough, White America wants to know if Black America trusts and accepts him. Now Black Americans are asking that very same question, but for a completely different reason. The implications and connotations of this question are quite different when passed through the lips of a Black American.

Black people already know he is black enough. Years ago, he married a sister from the southside of Chicago, he can play the dozens, and gets his hair cut by a black man in a black barbershop. Enough said. When a black person asks that question, they really mean “are you gangsta’ enough!” Barack, are you gangsta’ enough to be the first black president?

For example. Obama, if you were president during Hurricane Katrina would you have been gangsta’ enough to fly over New Orleans and reach down with your own two hands to pull people up to safety? If you saw a 400lb brother on a roof crying for help, would you have said, “he ain’t heavy, he’s my brother” and snatched him up into Air Force One while wearing a fresh pair of Nike’s Air Force 1s.

Would you have been gangsta’ enough to open hand slap former FEMA head Michael D. Brown across the face on national television? “Brownie, you’re doing a horrible job!” WHAM! Would you have blasted the media outlets who said white survivors were finding food while black survivors were looters? That’s what black people want to know.

The biggest cause for concern that I have is that Obama graduated from Harvard. Now here’s an institution that has messed up more black folks than crack cocaine! A crackhead has more sense than most Harvard educated black men.

I’ll prove it. If a crackhead and a young Harvard educated black man were standing on the corner waiting for a bus and the police drove up and said, ya’ll better be off this corner by the time we return. That crackhead has enough sense to scurry off. But that Harvard man…. “How dare he talk to me like that? Why, I’m going to call my lawyer. Blah, blah, blah,” he would say. The next day the headline would read: “Black man shot by police.” And that crackhead would just shake his head. “That fool did not have enough sense to leave.”

Clinton knows how to take a punch so she is gangsta’ enough. And as for Edwards—anyone who can spend $400 on haircut is gangsta’ enough. So forget the black enough question. Let’s see if Obama will exercise more sense than a crackhead and be gangsta’ enough to handle his business like a true playa’.

(Toure Muhammad publishes Bean Soup Times, a satire and entertainment news publication. He also serves as the communications director for Congressman Bobby L. Rush. He can be reached at toure@beansouptimes.com)

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