OBAMA AND KING'S CONCURRENCE:
CONJUNCTION or DISJUNCTION?
BY Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman
On Monday, January 21, 2013, Barack
Hussein Obama, a black man, will be publicly inaugurated for a second
term as President of the United States of America, presently the
richest and most hetero-potent nation on earth. That same day, the
national holiday commemorating the birth, life, death, and legacy of
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., another black man, will also be
observed all across this same land.
Such a first-of-its-kind, historical
concurrence, to say the least, is iconic in both American and world
history. So much so, it might be said to rival, if not to supersede,
the irony richly elucidated within the Biblical account of
Joseph,Pharaoh, and Jacob in Genesis 37-49, when a slave became Prime
Minister.
Joseph, youngest son of Jacob was given
a coat of many colors, which excited his eleven brothers' jealousy
and envy. But, especially galling to them was his recurrent
meglomaniacal dreams of himself that he shared with them in
metaphors. So, to be rid of him and “to see what would become of
his dream,” they sold him to some traveling Ishmeelites as a slave.
They, then, ripped and dipped his multicolored robe in animal blood
simulating an attack, and lied to Jacob, their father, that he was
dead.
Joseph, this former slave and prisoner
in Egypt, not only rose to save Egypt from starvation through its
“seven lean years,” but he also rescued his own Hebrew people who
had sold him into slavery in Egypt.
No metaphor should be overworked,
however. After all, scientists tell us that life is never isotropic,
or equal in all directions. On the contrary, life is anisotropic,
unequal and asymmetric: cosmologically, biologically,
philosophically, historically, and theologically. Translation: life
bounces more like a spiral football--unpredictably--than like a
spherical baseball, basketball or golf ball, all of which bounce
true.
Yet, as humans involuntarily and
autonomically compare and contrast all things, instinctively and by
nature, a few personal asseveration’s may be hazarded. First, but
for Martin Luther King, Jr.'s life and sacrifices, there would be no
African American President of the United States to inaugurate in 2013
nor in any prior inaugural year. Second, no one appreciates this
first point more than President Barack Hussein Obama, himself, being
a keen student of history, law, and political philosophy. He
continually expresses his gratitude to God, to his wife, Michelle,
and especially to his historical and biological forebears, for the
opportunities that facilitated all the fruits he now enjoys. He did
so in his two autobiographies: Dreams of My Father and in its
sequel, The Audacity of Hope! He will do so again.
Conjunction can be destiny or chance,
as energy can be either a dot or a wave; likewise, disjunction. No
man can know the future, when the present itself is but an ephemera,
perceptible only as sensation! That is why we study history it is all
that one can know. History seeds, waters, oxidizes, and fertilizes.
That is why Dr. King's “Dream” was
“deeply rooted in the American dream,” and its source documents.
Those documents are “The Declaration of Independence,” The U.S.
Constitution as amended, and the Emancipation Proclamation, whose
issuance 150 years ago was celebrated on January 1. These documents
conjoined to create the ideal of America. But, it took the slave
labor of the black man and the black woman from 1789, the year of the
country's founding, until 1865, the year of the Confederate surrender
at Appomattox Court House in Virginia, to “hew this stone of
freedom” from the resplendent marvel of that ideal. The national
disjunction that occurred over the status of these black denizens who
obtained their freedom, by any means necessary, spawned the
Underground Railroad, Kansas-Missouri Border War, John Brown's Raid
on Harper's Ferry, and inevitably, Civil War-- “Freedom War”--
itself.
Certainly, President Obama's election
and reelection represent undeniable political progress, which Dr.
King would, of course, salute. But, Dr. King's life was cut down when
he, like Jesus Christ, troubled the economic waters of America.
Despite partial and inspirational political progress, “it's the
economy, stupid” as former President Bill Clinton's campaign slogan
touted it. There, in the economic realm, the unfinished business of
the America ideal, as expressed and as sought by our martyred Dr.
King, can conjoin with, and can fructify in and beyond the second
term of our black President, Barack Obama.
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