'The greatest loss of wealth to people of color in modern U.S. history'

"The U.S. economy is in big-time trouble and Africans are bearing the brunt of the crisis at this point, although a lot of people are going to pay prices. It's much more than what people understand. And one reason it's more is that a lot of what's happening to African people is not being reported as something that's happening to African people.

"You hear in general terms about people losing homes to sub-prime mortgages, etc. [Black Agenda Report] reads that 'the sub-prime lending debacle should cause massive rethinking among those who have long proclaimed that the route to black equality is through wealth accumulation'.

"It talks about how the 'catastrophic losses inflicted on blacks and Latinos in the U.S. at the hands of predatory lenders has resulted in the greatest loss of wealth to people of color in modern U.S. history'. It says that 'banks and other lending institutions trap blacks and Latinos in predatory lending schemes as a matter of policy'

[ ... ]

"And it leads to other kinds of contradictions, contradictions of deeper poverty and a deeper scramble for resources that are not there, in our communities in particular, where it's been so badly hit. It means more police, more police violence and things like that. And then there's Barack Obama.

"The U.S. has to use whatever means it can to secure resources around the world. It has to engage in escalated struggle against China and the European Union and other forces out there. And there's Barack Obama.

"That's a serious contradiction that we are confronted with, because they're going to have to do terrible things to African people. They already are doing terrible things to African people. And Barack Obama doesn't have a program any better than Hillary Clinton's when they're dealing with the mortgage situation. And he won't even say that something is happening to African people here.

"That's why Africans ourselves are not aware that this is something that's specializing in attacking us, because nobody will talk about the implications. Nobody will say, 'this is the summation – look where people are losing their homes; look where it's happening', right? That's a serious problem that we are confronted with.

"A greater problem is that people do not understand the nature of the system itself. People are looking at Barack Obama because he looks like us and assuming that somehow this is a great thing that all these people voted for Barack Obama.

"Part of a whole counterinsurgency policy all over the world has been for the government to kill off revolutionaries, and at the same time they're killing off revolutionaries, to raise up these other kinds of organizations as false solutions. So when struggle gets real serious, they kill off, murder leaders and then raise up these substitute organizations that pretend to be standing for something. They killed Dadan Kimathi in Kenya, who headed the Kenyan Land Freedom Army and then raised up Jomo Kenyatta. They did that stuff all over the world and created these phony organizations..."

~ from Barack Obama and the Crisis of U.S. Imperialism ~