The Spark

the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist

“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx

Barack Obama’s Reactionary Appeal

Mar 3, 2008

Speaking before a black audience in Beaumont, Texas, Barack Obama said, “It’s not good enough for you to say to your child, ‘Do good in school.’ ” Obama then lectured them to turn off the TV, radio and video games, “buy a little desk,” and help their children with their homework–or call the teacher if they don’t know how.

Saying, “I gotta talk about us a little bit,” Obama said, “We can’t keep on feeding our children junk all day long, giving them no exercise...a bag of potato chips for lunch or Popeye’s (chicken) for breakfast...”

What garbage! He tells working parents that they need to spend more time with their children–as if they choose to work 12-hour shifts day after day after day. He tells them to fix their kids a “proper” breakfast or lunch–as if they choose not to have time before they have to rush off to work in the morning. He tells parents to help their kids with their homework–when the schools don’t even have books for the students to take home with them. He lectures them on nutrition, as if they choose to live in cities where they can’t even find a decent grocery store within city limits.

How dare he! Obama makes it sound like it’s just a matter of foolish choices–and he acts as though his privileged position came from wise choices he made and not from the wealth and relative privilege he was born into.

Obama is speaking to that reactionary part of the white–and black–population that blames poor black people, and poor white people, for the problems created by a society run for profit.

And he is telling the capitalists that he is ready to serve as their henchman–against the working class and poor.