Barack Obama and the New Plantation

Published in Issue 494 of The Black Commentator on November 15, 2012
Republished in thepeoplesvoice.org (USA) on November 25, 2012
By Larry Pinkney

“I freed a thousand slaves – I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves.” –Harriet Tubman

The insidious role of many so-called ‘mulattos’ on slave plantations in the U.S., Haiti, and elsewhere was to contain, control, and neutralize the field slaves for the benefit of the plantation administrators and ‘masters.’ They were more articulate, and better fed and clothed than the plantation field slaves. Their loyalty was to the plantation masters, not the slaves.

Today however, there is a New Plantation, and everyday ordinary Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people, in varying degrees, are all on this 21st century plantation. The ‘masters’ and plantation administrators of this present-day New Plantation are the avaricious corporate elite and their unprincipled minions, and the field slaves are the ordinary people of all colors.

This is the fiendish genius on the part of the U.S. corporate masters having selected Barack Obama to head the U.S. Empire, which is a role that he demonstratively savors and has carried out against ordinary people in this nation (and around the world) with an insidiously devastating effectiveness.

In less than four years the articulate Barack Obama has, in the name of “hope,” “change,” and progress, 1) destroyed the single-payer universal health care option, 2) in contravention of U.S. and international law – launched many thousands of murderous predator-drone missiles against the people of the sovereign nations of Libya (North Africa), Somalia (East Africa), Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Yemen, 3) taken political subterfuge and non-transparency in government to new lows, 4) signed into law the draconian NDAA indefinite-detention provision, and 5) assumed unconstitutional and dictatorial powers with his own bloody ‘Kill List’ etc.

Indeed, Barack Obama has ushered into being a New Plantation in the U.S. – complete with his own network of non-critically thinking “sheeple,” who excuse his every act of murder abroad, destruction of civil liberties inside the U.S., and his de facto collaboration with corporate hegemony and economic austerity against the everyday people of this nation and world. This 21st century New Plantation in ‘America’ represents a terrible mockery of the historical and contemporary struggle and numerous sacrifices that so many ordinary people of all colors have made.

Barack Obama’s (U.S. corporate/military) New Plantation has psychologically and economically neutralized and re-enslaved an overwhelming amount of people in this nation, including a large portion of Black America.

We everyday people of all colors are slaves on this New Plantation, and will remain so, unless and until we recognize our own enslavement and act to free ourselves and each other. In the words of Harriet Tubman: “I freed a thousand slaves – I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves.”

Remember: Each one, reach one. Each one, teach one. Onward, then, my sisters and brothers. Onward!

Larry Pinkney is a veteran of the Black Panther Party, the former Minister of Interior of the Republic of New Africa, a former political prisoner and the only American to have successfully self-authored his civil/political rights case to the United Nations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In connection with his political organizing activities, Pinkney was interviewed in 1988 on the nationally televised PBS News Hour, formerly known as The MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour, and more recently on the nationally syndicated Alex Jones Show. Pinkney is a former university instructor of political science and international relations, and his writings have been published in various places, including The Boston Globe, San Francisco BayView newspaper, Black Commentator, Intrepid Report, Global Research (Canada), LINKE ZEITUNG (Germany), 107 Cowgate (Ireland and Scotland), and Mayihlome News (Azania/South Africa). He is in the archives of Dr. Huey P. Newton (Stanford University, CA), cofounder of the Black Panther Party. For more about Larry Pinkney see the book, Saying No to Power: Autobiography of a 20th Century Activist and Thinker, by William Mandel [Introduction by Howard Zinn]. (Click here to read excerpts from the book.)