Don't Ask Barack for No 40 Acres OR a Mule

Okay, my peeps, I'm not exactly telling you to stop huffing the Obama glue yet. We need to enjoy the love affair for as long as we can, because the man has to clean up eight year's worth of a big steaming pile of you-know-what—he's going to get his hands dirty. What I am encouraging you to do is temper your expectations.

Mainly, don't go clamoring for reparations for slavery.

Does the government owe us? No doubt, but it shouldn't come in the form of a big ole' check that you'll just run out and blow on some Jordans and a Caddy. Nor should you expect the first black president to push the issue of reparations. It's not a case of whether we should worry "about what white people think." We shouldn't. But the fact of the matter is, they hold a much larger portion of the voting bloc than we do, and as far as I'm concerned, Obama's margin of victory in the popular vote was entirely too close for comfort. This means his margin for error is much tighter. His opponents are wringing their collective hands waiting for him to give black people some sort of unfair advantage, whatever the f*ck that could be. You KNOW this. And the public is fickle. As soon as a Democrat screws up they vote in a Republican and vise versa (except for the last eight years of mass mania.) So what I'm saying is, just because your brother got himself a phat job doesn't mean he's going hire you to be his personal assistant.

What you should expect, in fact, demand, is that Barack begins to build social programs that will invest in the long term elevation of disenfranchised people from across the rainbow. This includes, but is not limited to a few basic reforms:

• Eliminating ghettos. Ghettos are created when poor people are confined to a few areas within a city typically as far as possible from "everybody else," and when transportation to other areas is inadequate at best. This sets up an "us" vs. "them" mentality in both the rich and the poor, leaving no room to imagine a scenario where people of all income levels can reside together. This means building mixed-income housing developments, where a $400/month apartment exists in the same complex as a $2,000/month apartment; building HUD houses in middle-class neighborhoods. It can and has happened in cities across the country, and should become standard practice. Of course there will always be gated communities and the like, but that's fine. We don't want to live with them anyway.
• Socializing health care and education. If you're afraid of the word "socialism," do some research about how well Canada has done with FREE health care and education. And they're still a capitalist society. The two can be integrated successfully.
  
• Investing in truly effective job training programs. I'm not talking about just teaching people how to type so they can work a cash register. I mean building well-funded community centers in the 'hood where people can receive anything from high-quality academic enhancement tutoring to training in the latest computer technology. You want folks off of welfare? This is a good place to start.
  

Now when I say "basic reforms," I don't mean simple or fast. But a well-fed, skilled, healthy black person is a lot less likely to bust a cap in your ass than one who's doing whatever to survive or because he feels like his little three block stretch of turf is the only thing he can really call his. These and other reforms will take a while to get rolling and will require a concerted effort to keep rolling, but in the long run, perpetual motion will kick in and they have the potential to correct the decades of ill we've been combating since Emancipation.

Don't hold your hand out to Barack. Hold your fist up, and make the man that YOU put in office do right the right way: invest, invest, invest in the poor and working class for generations to come. Then we can buy our own damn mules.