"Obama Bucks" & "The Birth of a Nation"

The Angryindian (who like me is not an Obama supporter) sent the racist story behind this image my way.

The story and its implications goes a little like this: The Chaffey Community Republican Women, a womens group affiliated to John McSame's party in California produced the image to press the racist point that Obama's face is most likely to appear on foodstamps rather than any other US currency.

Foodstamps (for those of you outside the befokde US) were once distributed to poor Americans to purchase food at grocery stores (credit-like cards are used now instead of actual paper foodstamps).

Racist whites often assume that most Blacks live off foodstamps because they are lazy, unemployed, and insolent wards of the state. Many of the same racists also believe that Blacks have a great fondness for fried chicken, ribs, and watermelon.

It is for this reason that the "Obama Bucks" image contains depictions of these foods (and Kool Aid of course!).

Characterizing Blacks as lazy folk who eat fried chicken and watermelon is a mainstay of racist American popular culture. The 1915 silent film by D. W. Griffith called "The Birth of a Nation" highlights these racist themes while also celebrating the rise of the Ku Klux Klan as an agent of white supremacy.

In one part of the movie Black political leaders (played by whites in blackface) are shown eating fried chicken and watermelon while sitting in a chaotic government chamber.

Griffith in 1915 was speaking to white fears (inclusive of the rape) about Blacks and their political position in the era of Reconstruction. A major question in this era, and one Griffith's movie answers in the negative, was whether freed Black slaves could be integrated into white society.

The "Obama Bucks" image is perpetrating much of the same kind of thing, with a twist of course. Like Griffith's film, the image implies that a Black president cannot be trusted to advance the 'civility' of whiteness in politics (and society).

The image (and the intention behind it) is racist and disturbing exactly because it purposefully mobilizes this historically worn denigration of Black folk.

The not so silent implication is that an Obama presidency will advance a chaotic and bestial 'blackness' that will amount to the kind of stealing from whites that Griffith crudely depicts.

And so like Griffith the women who circulated the "Obama Bucks" image are asking whites whether Blacks (and Obama) should be trusted as integrated equals and political leaders.

The answer is obviously based on the course of American racism and McSame and his cronies are counting on whites to rise up in 'patriotic' whiteness and vote against Obama.

It is sad that 93 years after Griffith's film there are still many white Republicans and other klans folk who find it hard to come to terms with Blacks as integrated equals.

Onward!

Image Credit for "The Birth of a Nation"; Image Credit for "Obama Bucks".