by Obiora Embry

Created on: February 07, 2010

Prior to 2009, we were looking forward to great and positive changes as we ended 2 presidential administrations—really one—without an “elected” p(R)esident in the White House. We were filled with goose bumps as we contemplated the possibility of having the first Black U.S. President. However, when Obama was elected as the 44th U.S. President in 2008, he did not become the first (1st) Black U.S. President because there had already been 5 or 6 U.S. Black Presidents—based on the ideology that has been historically used to define a person's ethnicity as “Black.” [Aside: DNA tests and archaeological evidence have proven that human life began in Africa, therefore all U.S. Presidents have had African ancestry].

Obama's presidency began a couple of days before the 200th anniversary of the birth of President Abraham Lincoln, a person that President Obama has praised for his commitment to freeing the Africans that were enslaved before 1861 and even after his assassination in April 1865 (the Emancipation Proclamation did free enslaved Africans in the Union, however, it did NOT free the 3.5 million Africans enslaved in the Confederate States of America. Furthermore, the (2nd) 13th Amendment freed the enslaved Africans by abolishing slavery through its ratification in December 1865 by eight of the eleven former Confederate states). Frederick Douglass in his speech at the unveiling of the Freedmen’s Monument in Washington, D.C. said the following about Lincoln:

                   He was preeminently the white man’s President, entirely devoted to the welfare of white men. He was ready and willing at any time  during the first years of his administration to deny, postpone, and sacrifice the rights of humanity in the colored people to promote the welfare of the white people of this country. (“Oration in Memory of Abraham Lincoln”. Frederick Douglass on April 14, 1876. http://www.teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index .asp?Documentprint=39).

Throughout Obama's Presidency, there have been some positive changes in which he has kept campaign promises, but to a large extent his administration has been a continuation of the previous 2 Presidents [Bush Jr. (Bush Sr.); Clinton; Bush Sr.; and Reagan (Bush Sr.)]. Well, how so?

President Obama has continued and deployed more troops in the illegal overt wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—the

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