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President Obama Protesting at Harvard in 1991

Andrew Kaczynski of Buzzfeed discovered this little gem of a video, in which then-law student Barack Obama spoke at a protest in favor of Harvard Law Professor Derrick Bell.
Kaczynski explains what the protest was all about.
Bell was the first black tenured professor at the school, and a pioneer of "critical race theory," which insisted, controversially, on reading issues of race and power into legal scholarship. His protest that spring was occasioned by Harvard's denial of tenure to a black woman professor, Regina Austin, at a time when only three of the law school's professors were black and only five women. He told Harvard he would take a leave of absence — a kind of academic strike — "until a woman of color is offered and accepted a tenured position on this faculty," and he launched a hunger strike to dramatize his point.
Obama was a major figure on campus, the first black president of the Law Review. Some friends, in a prescient joke, just referred to him as "the first black president." He had a reputation as a conciliatory figure, not a confrontational one like Bell.
Probably the most amazing thing about it is the fact that Obama's speech-giving style is so little changed since his days at Harvard. Obama has the same soaring cadence, dramatic pauses, and light-hearted jokes that you find in almost every one of his speeches

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Comment by Douglas Ou-ee-ii-jay-ii Jack on March 8, 2012 at 3:40pm

Pamylle, Yes there are women of colour & brilliance, which we desperately need in the government of our institutions and nation.  I like  the way you have put this.  Words like "race" are 'shorthand-logics' abbreviations implying much more.  Robin-Lee seems to have confused her passive-inactive "knowledge of brilliant people of all colors" with the real active challenge in a multi-racial society supposedly democratic society of creating institutional balance representing the 'rainbow' of our cultural personalities and programs for implementing these such as Affirmative Action.  Beyond government based programs to represent the rainbow, it is more a matter of 'Becoming the change we want to see in the world'. The Haudanosaunee (Iroquois = 'People of the extended home') Great Law of Peace is based in mutual-aid, proximity of the extended-home https://sites.google.com/site/indigenecommunity/relational-economy/...  and inclusive economic time-based accounting in the Production Societies.  Most don't realize that the Great Law of Peace is part of an 'indigenous' (Latin = 'self-generating') heritage on every continent.

Still like most others, my expectations of Obama are so high.  To see Obama continually fall for the 'bone-of-oil-contention' and 'hates' in his continuous 'destabilization, arming of militants everywhere, war, lawless imprisonment and assassination' policy is frightening.  We have enough problems with the destruction of real-democracy through paperless computerized voting controlled by the elite, elections which require 2 billion dollars per candidate to become elected and the associated debt to the real powers.  Early after his election, Obama gave speech, giving Mohandas Gandhi as his favourite human and activist 'model', yet Obama seems illiterate and ignorant to the practices and programs which Gandhi used.  Our Canadian political parties including the left New Democratic Party have a huge problem of the 'hates' and as Obama have been beating the war drums over Libya, Syria and other places around the world instead of reaching for formal recorded equal-time published dialogues.  Like Pamylle states we will greatly benefit from indigenous leaders like Oren Lyons.  Its time to re-establish the indigenous sovereignty here.   https://sites.google.com/site/indigenecommunity/relational-economy/...

Comment by Pamylle on March 8, 2012 at 12:40pm

I think you're missing the point of "affirmative action" (greatly disliked by many Euro-Americans, of course).

Does anyone think there was NOT "a woman of color" at this point in history, who was more than adequately qualified for a tenured position at Harvard ? Of course there was !  And since there was not even ONE with a tenured post, was it not a good thing to insist this imbalance be a priority ? Bravo, I say ! Bring the Rainbow to the table.

I don't expect every candidate to satisfy me on all counts, and I'm often disappointed in Obama. I'm happy to have a President of intelligence, reconciliation & courtesy, whatever his color, of course (the last one - from the privileged class - could barely speak two sentences together...no one can tell me George W. wound up in the White House based on any merit of his own). But I do rejoice, that someone who might have lived in my neighborhood, whose color looks like so many of my brothers & sisters, is there in the White House. It is a great hope to many; it has lifted many hearts.

Personally, I'd like to see an Indigenous brother or sister as Secretary of the Interior, now that might be some great "affirmative action". Oren Lyons, perhaps. Plenty of good folks to choose from...

Comment by Robin Lee on March 7, 2012 at 6:50pm

Douglas...I understand completley...the problem is when race alone is the deciding factor ...Obama and his professor were acting on very  racist attitudes when the theory is " Pick a person BECAUSE of the color of thier skin" not on qualifications. The whole arugument of well a person of color had less opportunity to excell doesnt hold water when I know as many brilliant people of all colors... 

Comment by Douglas Ou-ee-ii-jay-ii Jack on March 7, 2012 at 6:28pm

Robin, RE: "Since when is race . . ." As you walk the red road, you are becoming more aware of sensory dimensions which have opened up for you.  While senses are common to all human beings, many senses are greatly diminished or even dormant in those who have completely institutionalized themselves, living, playing and working in boxes away from the fullness of life.  With white dominance prevalent still in so many government, industrial, educational institutions, so have 2-Dimensional lifeless perspectives dominated.  'Race' is just a symbol of multi-sensory, multi-dimensional thinking.  Those races who have not held positions of institutional dominance have had the privilege of keeping more of their senses and indeed increased 3-D neural organization have a form of 'integrated-qualifications'.  I believe you understand your own 'racial' question, for institutional managers who don't understand this integration and therefore keep their domaines filled with linear 2-D thinkers. There are people of all races who think in 3-D, but its culture is quite limited to those who are raised in such families and communities having more interaction and less linear media and institutional 'mind' control.  www.indigenecommunity.info

Comment by Robin Lee on March 7, 2012 at 5:29pm

Since when is race more important than qualifications?....

Comment by Douglas Ou-ee-ii-jay-ii Jack on March 7, 2012 at 3:18pm

There is something citizens must understand about the institutional training of people like Barack, who take on as well a kind of 'Monolectic (one-sided) self-righteousness', which the Military-Industrial-Media-Complex is able to tap into so easily for our endless wars. When Barack authorized/promoted the assassination of Osama he was feeding on a culture of 'hates' described by George Orwell in his book '1984'.  When Barack fell deeper into the 'hates' and promoted assassination, regime-change and bombing destruction of Libya's Green Movement infrastructure he and much of the left are biting into a self-destructive bullet. https://sites.google.com/site/indigenecommunity/structure/1-convert... Everything the left & right zenophobically hate about the 'other' is a mirror of ourselves.  Only 'dialectic' ('two-sided') engagement of perspectives from both sides of an issue, will help us out-grow the 'hates'. 'Indigenous' (Latin = 'self-generating') knowledge of council in circle, winter-eve debates, inclusive economy, Caucusing (Iroquois ='grouping of like interests') etc is ancient and has held together humanity under the Great Law of Peace on every continent and every sea.  https://sites.google.com/site/indigenecommunity/structure/1-both-si... 

Mohandas Gandhi based Satyagraha (Hindi = 'truth-search') from his dialectic training as a lawyer to engage both sides.  Gandhi would ask, "What are your best intentions and how can we help you fulfill these?  ALL WAR IS UN-NECESSARY when we require dialectic engagement by both sides.  Everyone has a 'dialectic' right to engage his fellows in questions of common concern.

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