A Poet's Warning and Obama's First Speech

Dear Mr. President,

Chapter 5 of your memoir, Dreams from My Father, recounts your discover of the power of words and your ability to move people by them. Your very first speech at Occidental College during a rally for divestment from South African is short, barely a minute, just a few lines, but spoken from the heart as your friend Regina says, and captures your emotions, knowing your words “had them, that the connection had been made” between you and those gathered on the quad. Here’s what you said: “There's a struggle going on,’ …My voice barely carried beyond the first few rows. A few people looked up, and I waited for the crowd to quiet. ‘I say, there's a struggle going on!’ The Frisbee players stopped. ‘It's happening an ocean away. But it's a struggle that touches each and every one of us. Whether we know it or not. Whether we want it or not. A struggle that demands we choose sides. Not between black and white. Not between rich and poor. No—it's a harder choice than that. It's a choice between dignity and servitude. Between fairness and injustice… A choice between right and wrong…” As I read this, I wondered where that young man’s passion for right went, for dignity and fairness and justice. The same man who uttered those words 3 decades ago now presides over the greatest surveillance state in history, orders extrajudicial assassinations, ignores the Constitution he has sworn to defend, calls truth a threat to national security, and prosecutes whistle-blowers while rewarding liars and murderers. What so twisted you to use your gifts not for justice and the common good but for secrecy and suppression, the tools of tyrants and dictators? Earlier in the same chapter, just before you leave Hawaii for Occidental, you recount a conversation with Frank, the old black poet who warns you that college isn’t going to educate you but train you. “They’ll train you to manipulate words so they don’t mean anything…They’ll train you to forget what it is that you already know. They’ll train you so good, you’ll start believing what they tell you about equal opportunity and the American way and all that shit. They’ll give you a corner office and invite to fancy dinners, and tell you you're a credit to your race. Until you want to actually start running things, and then they'll yank on your chain and let you know that you may be a well-trained, well-paid nigger, but you're a nigger just the same.” My god, Mr. President, is that what happened? Is that the price of power?