NYU Black Renaissance Noire Summer/Fall 2011 | Page 7
BRN-FALL-2011.indb 5
I admit I still admire much about
President Obama and will vote for
him again, if he decides to run. What’s
the other alternative? Mitt Romney,
Rick Perry, or Michele Bachman?
All of them are far worse than Mr.
Obama. Perhaps going forward we will
see a bolder, more hard-edged, more
hands-on, creative President Obama,
by the time the so-called “super
committee,” of twelve members of
Congress weighs in on future cuts in
the budget, some time around
November 23rd. Maybe then we will
see what appetite President Obama has
for fighting hard for his agenda and
not compromising so quickly—or as
some have characterize it, “caving in”—
to Republicans. If he continues to
compromise before he has to, or “caves
in,” it will prove disastrous for his
re-election efforts, in my opinion.
All of this is very depressing and
dispiriting—especially for AfricanAmericans to witness—and it’s even
possible the nation will never fully
recover from all these seemingly
intractable differences we are going
through. What we need is some
wisdom, articulated by wise people
who might help pull the nation
together to solve all our very deep
problems. If we don’t pull together,
I fear it could lead to another Civil
War or at the least rampant killings,
assassinations, even the collapse of
the republic many of us Americans
hold dear. My hope is that none
of this comes to pass, that we pull
ourselves together as a nation, before
we all fly flailing off the proverbial
cliff and perish in the abyss below.
We have pulled together another fine
issue of Black Renaissance Noire for
your enjoyment. In this issue we have,
fiction by Earl Lovelace, Honore Jeffers,
Jeffrey Renard Allen, A. Igoni Barrett
and Allison Hedge Coke; poetry by
Sherwin Bitsui, LaTasha Nevada Diggs,
Geoffrey Jacques, Kim Foote Coleman
and Esther Louise; non-fiction by
Ishmael Reed, Monique Clesca and
Alain Ricard; interviews of painter,
Michael Marshall and Allison Hedge
Coke by Margaret Porter Troupe; and
visual arts by Jose Bedia, Michael
Marshall, and Marc Chamaillard.
We hope you enjoy the read, and, as
always, let us know your thoughts.
I want to personally thank Megan Goins
for the fabulous job she did filling
in for our esteemed assistant editor,
Marlon Burgess. n
BLACK RENAISSANCE NOIRE
Other leadership questions I have
for this President are his propensity to
compromise through negotiations
before he even has to, and his failure to
fight for stellar people he selected to be
part of his administration, like Van Jones,
Elizabeth Warren, and others. Politics
is a blood sport, is hand-to-hand combat.
I think Mr. Obama doesn’t like to lead
in this manner, though I believe he will
have to learn to fight in the trenches,
bare-knuckles style, with these racist
white people (who believe in fantasy
over facts and will stop at nothing to
dash the President’s re-election efforts),
if he is to succeed in gaining a second
term. Republicans in the Senate and
Congress will continue to fight tooth
and nail to stop anything Mr. Obama
wants to accomplish. This, however, is
to be expected, given the conservative
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