More from Invisible Man:
- I turned away, bending and searching the dirty snow for anything missed by my eyes, and my fingers closed upon something resting in a frozen footstep: a fragile paper, coming apart with age, written in black ink grown yellow. I read: FREE PAPERS. Be it known to all men that my negro, Primus Provo, has been freed by me this sixth day of August, 1859. Signed: John Samuels. Macon. … I folded it quickly, blotting out the single drop of melted snow which glistened on the yellowed page, and dropped it back into the drawer. My hands were trembling, my breath rasping as if I had run a long distance or come upon a coiled snake in a busy street. It has been longer than that, further removed in time, I told myself, and yet I knew that it hadn’t been. I replaced the drawer in the chest and pushed drunkenly to the curb.
This juxtaposed with Ralph Nader’s comments re. Barack Obama on a radio show after the election:
- “His choice, basically, is whether he’s going to be Uncle Sam for the people of this country or Uncle Tom for the giant corporations.”
— a remark he refused to back down from on Fox news the next day.
The first reaction, of course, is anger at Nader for once again pissing in the punchbowl, and with a racially insensitive epithet to boot. Yet his statement echoes an uneasiness I felt this afternoon, while discussing Invisible Man in class and drawing the obvious parallels with this historic moment. I couldn’t help hearing the voice of the nameless narrator’s grandfather, the one who constantly chides him for talking like the white man, thinking like the white man, acting like the white man… Nader is wrong, wrong, wrong, but he’s also right. Wrong because this is a historic moment, a breakthrough not only for African-Americans but Americans and America itself… a long-awaited release and relief from the political nightmare I felt the country entering exactly eight years ago. We all deserve some time to celebrate and savor the moment and reflect on what it means. And Obama deserves some time to assemble his cabinet and begin the tremendous job of repairing the government that lies before him, before the criticism starts pouring in.
Right because — unfortunately, tragically — we are all invisible men (and women). We have allowed ourselves, as I heard a caller on NPR mention today, to be transformed from citizens to consumers. Corporate capitalism is the nebulous “they” (though there are other forces; even this is simplistic, I know) that has hypnotized and brainwashed us and made us unable to think and act as subjects and as part of a cohesive community in a scary world. A classmate today said that she thinks the “socialist” tag is so scary because we have come to believe that money and things are physically a part of us. Obama is a bright and hopeful new voice, but he is also a politician and the head of a party that has done little or nothing to serve the people for far too long. It’s legitimate to wonder if he will change that.
We must keep these questions in mind and hold the new government accountable for following through on the change we need. But for now, it’s time to relax a little bit, and enjoy the promise of that change.
[edit] And on the lighter side:
Obama Win Causes Obsessive Supporters To Realize How Empty Their Lives Are
