> Greentext

There's a lot to hate about Obama but there is one thing he did establish that Malcolm X would nod grimly at; something that may justify his inclusion on a wall of revolutionaries:

Even if a black man who becomes President rules the country like a moderate Republican and is the absolute exemplar of their Christian values, he won't be accepted by the majority of white men. Not only that, they will churn themselves into a frenzy of over-reaction. They will elect a new Hitler just to make themselves feel better. They will lose their goddamn minds like rabid animals, like their grandparents who took their kids to see lynchings and get photographed next to the naked, brutalised corpse.

This point could not have been demonstrated if Obama had not done everything to dance to their tune.

It demonstrates the sheer self-destructive, nihilistic racism inherent in the American system. It shows that electoral politics is not going to fix it.

Obama did not mean to do this. Many revolutionary figures do not. And he did not suffer like the others. So it's still a questionable choice, but perhaps not an indefensible one.