Dr. Boyce Watkins
www.BoyceWatkins.com
When 50 Cent says something, most of us don’t listen. As a hip hop fan, I don’t even listen to his music anymore, since it has gotten extraordinarily whack. But when a Nobel Prize Winner agrees with him, that makes you do a double-take.
When asked why he supports Senator Hillary Clinton, 50 Cent (I referred to him as “Fiddy” when we discussed him on CNN and BET) had this to say: “I don’t think America’s ready to have a black president. I think they might kill him.”
“Fiddy” is no stranger to assassination. He was shot 9 times in one outing, and to his credit, he was able to walk away. As some of my friends in hip hop would say, “That’s gangsta.” But 50 Cent’s presumption that Obama should not be supported because he might get killed came off a little silly. Most of us just laughed, since 50 Cent is not exactly known for political punditry.
But “Fiddy” was not alone. Nobel Prize Winner Doris Lessing, who seems to be pretty hardcore herself, was also rapping about the idea that Barack Obama may not last in the White House.
Lessing felt that Obama “would certainly not last long, a black man in the position of president. They would murder him,” said the 88 year old British author.
Wow, 50 Cent is now speaking in lip synch with Nobel Prize Winners. That’s uhhhh….interesting. It also appears, ironically, that 50 Cent was the visionary in all this analysis, since he said it first. That’s as scary as Rush Limbaugh, a high school graduate and recovering drug addict, becoming the intellectual leader of the Conservative Republicans. But given the depth of conservative Republican arguments, that is hardly surprising.
I have admittedly defended 50 Cent in multiple venues and I don’t regret one word of it. I consider him to be a different kind of genius, the kind that is able to come out of a house full of drug abusers and addicts and still make a Vitamin Water Deal that netted him half a billion dollars. Most of us would not be able to accomplish that, especially after getting shot 9 times.
But I must take “Fiddy” and Ms. Lessing to task on their joint speculation.
Obama could be shot, I agree. After all, he patterns himself after John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, both of whom are six feet under as we speak. But the notion that this additional risk implies that Mr. Obama should back off the White House excludes one critical fact: This history-making run for the White House is not about Barack Obama.
The Barack Obama movement is not about one man. He is deservedly considered to be the leader who reminded us of a greater purpose. However, a movement of this magnitude is NEVER about one person. It is about the millions here and abroad whose lives will be impacted if Obama gets to the White House and does the right thing.
Notice that I used the word “if”.
I agree with my friends Marc Lamont Hill and Roland Martin, who seem to feel that none of us knows what Obama is going to do until he has done it. Anyone who follows politics knows that a politician can tell a lie and the truth at the same time, all while eating a slice of pizza. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are master politicians and neither would be successful at their craft if they were not.
But to give Obama the benefit of the doubt, the truth is that he has sparked a political forest fire. The fire is burning with hope, passion, dreams and desires of a country that is ready for something better. One undeniable truth is that the fire is much bigger than the match that started it. King and Kennedy realized this, and so does Barack Obama.
50 Cent, in his blinged out world, may not have thought about these issues and I forgive him for not being hip to what’s going on. But as they say in hip hop, “If you don’t know, then act like you know”. “Fiddy” and Lessing have now been educated.
Dr. Boyce Watkins is a finance professor at Syracuse University and author of “What if George Bush were a Black Man?” He does regular work in national media, including CNN, FOX, ESPN, CBS and BET.
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