The railsplitter's stew, Obama serves up contempt

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The Railsplitter's Stew, Obama Serves Up Contempt
essay: Frederick B. Hudson

An historically spliced rendering of the ironic symbolism that Barack Obama chose to "cling to" throughout his presidential campaign and into the presidency.

There was a shadow over President Barack Obama’s luncheon on Tuesday, January 20. A tall man, who wore a top hat and sprouted whiskers sometimes, casted it. Obama chose to theme his inauguration around the life of the tall man from Illinois -- a fellow dubbed "the Great Emancipator" by some -- Abraham Lincoln. Thus, the Obama Congressional Inaugural Committee chose a menu based upon food Lincoln supposedly enjoyed.

The culinary delights included: a seafood stew appetizer; a main course of pheasant and duck, served with molasses baked sweet potatoes; and finally dessert of apple cinnamon sponge cake.

The guests for this feast included U.S. Supreme Court justices, cabinet members and congressional leaders.

All three branches of the Federal government honored the rail-splitter from Illinois, who saw no real impetus to free the ancestors of Obama's own wife.

Lincoln stated in a letter to Horace Greeley, a founder of the Liberal Republican Party, a reformer, and a politician, soon after the conflict between the North and South began over slavery laws in new territories began that "if I could save the Union without freeing any slaves, I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do it."

The question then arises: Would Michelle Obama have been eligible as a free person today -- if Lincoln had his way -- to be invited to this feast? Would Roland Burris, the newly appointed and embattled senator from Illinois, who seems to be of African origin, have been present?

These are not merely rhetorical questions, since worldwide leaders have hailed Obama's election as America's redemption of the scourge of slavery. Before Cardinal Pio Laghi, a veteran Vatican diplomat, passed away, he invoked a spiritual halo over the November 4 election, calling the event "a liberation from that horrendous original sin for so many years stained the image and nature of the United States, and that is slavery."

So, the swearing in of Obama on January 20 on Lincoln's Bible was not just the installation of a new Chief of State; it held parallel vistas and backward glances at distorted historical tales and convoluted freedom edicts.

According to distinguished black historians like Lerone Bennett Jr. and Benjamin A. Quarles, Lincoln's opposition to the extension of slavery into new territories was based on economic and racial motivations. He felt that slave labor would discourage poor whites from settling in the West, since the whites' labor would not be as much in demand. Indeed, the recipient of Lincoln’s letter of indifference to freeing the slaves, Horace Greeley, is the author of the famous statement "Go West, young man, go West and grow up with the country."

This template of Western expansion was celebrated at the Obama luncheon since the organizers borrowed a famous painting from the New York Historical Society to display over the china replicas of Mary Todd Lincoln's design. The picture depicts untouched wilderness; it is called "View of the Yosemite Valley."

These pristine lands were coveted by Irish immigrants, in particular, who flooded Ellis Island in the wake of a white potato famine in their native land in 1845. It is poetic justice that the luncheon will include sweet potatoes which are are native to the tropical parts of South America, as opposed to the white potatoes of Ireland which died profusely before the Irish arrived in great numbers in the United States. Even more tellingly, an "inferior Negro" -- George Washington Carver -- developed more than 100 uses for the sweet potato despite his poor status, according to Lincoln. Some of the products Carver found for the sweet potato include writing ink, shoe blacking, fillers for wood, synthetic silk and wool. Perhaps these technological innovations could have been discussed at the luncheon while all these brilliant minds pondered over crises in the needed greening of the environment and new technologies to revitalize the economy.

Ronald Takaki notes in his landmark study of immigration, "A Different Mirror," that the "Irish despised and degraded the condition of the blacks, who presented to them a very ugly resemblance of their own home circumstances …"

Under pressure from the Irish among other groups in the North, Lincoln adapted a policy which Benjamin Quarles has described as the "hands-off-the-Negro policy." The ambitious politician hoped that slavery could eventually be ended in the South by providing compensation for slave masters willing to free their slaves. He felt that the races should exist apart and hoped that some Negroes would choose to return to Africa.

It was only after the rebel states, beginning with South Carolina, began seceding from the Union in 1860, that Lincoln was forced to move to crush the rebellion. He had no concern for those darker residents who in the words of a slave owner quoted in "Advice Among Masters; The Ideal in Slave Management in the Old South" essentially would not have the intelligence to separate the pits and stems served in the apples and cherries served at the January 20 luncheon. The slave owner further postulates that he had concerns about "what could be done with the litter niggers who are so prone to commence their depredations in the orchard while it is still in the bud."

What will happen to this celebration of historical and contemporary contemptuous racist colonialism by an administration while it is still in the bud?

Maybe some good jazz will make the meal go down better.

LeRoi Jones (now Amiri Baraka) says in his "Blues People:" "the middle class black man bases his whole existence on the hopeless hypothesis that no one is supposed to remember that for almost three centuries there was slavery in America, that the white man was the master and the black man was the slave." This knowledge, however, is at the root of the legitimate black culture of this country. It is this knowledge, with its attendant muse of self-division, self-hatred, stoicism, and finally quixotic optimism that informs the most meaningful of African-American music.

Here is what I would have proposed for background music at the inaugural meal:

First, "The Sermon" by Jimmy Smith. It was the day after Martin Luther King Day. Next, "Song for My Father" by Horace Silver -- for Barack Obama’s father who was one of the despised. And finally -- for the Obama daughters, who are the next generation and the hope of all -- "Speak Like a Child," by Herbie Hancock.

Good listening all.

Frederick Hudson is a management consultant as well as writer. His practice is centered on non-profit management and public relations for progressive causes . His previous writing has appeared in The New York Times, New York Magazine, The Amsterdam News, tbwt.org, counterpunch.com and a wide variety of other media outlets.