This is not about Barack

From the AP:

Atlanta Minister to Challenge Lewis

By BEN EVANS – 22 hours ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — Rep. John Lewis' waffling over his pick for the Democratic presidential nomination has earned him a primary challenger.

Markel Hutchins, a 30-year-old minister, announced Wednesday that he would run for Lewis' congressional seat in the Atlanta district. Hutchins said he had been considering a bid for several weeks but was ultimately swayed by Lewis' recent equivocating over whether he supports Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton or Barack Obama.

"Political experience can often times lead to political indebtedness, and I think such political indebtedness has caused Congressman Lewis in some real sense to separate himself from the winds of change that are blowing in his own congressional district," Hutchins said.

Link: Atlanta Minister to Challenge Lewis

Today is John Lewis' birthday. He is 68 years old. His challenger, the man pictured above, the Rev. Markel Hutchins is 30.

I'm sure it's very flattering to an Obama supporter's idea of a people driven movement to think that Obama is such an important figure to inspire a young man to run for office against an intrenched incumbent but that isn't what's happening here. If we could have an honest moment from Rev. Hutchins I would bet that he had been thinking of running for more than a few weeks. John Lewis' fumbling has provided the opening he's needed to run. Barack Obama isn't the reason, he's the excuse.

The post civil rights era within black America has been a time of silence. There are conversations about class, education, violence and most importantly the results of the civil rights policies, that people like John Lewis risked their lives for, that we as a people have not bothered having.

I'm talking about Bill Cosby-like rant but an real conversation where myths are laid bare and where there are real proposals to move forward.

There has been no honesty about the civil rights movement in black community. This is understandable because the men and women who faced down water cannon and police dogs don't want to hear criticism of what they fought so hard to achieve but that doesn't mean that the lack of attention to how those changes were implemented hasn't been disastrous.

Desegregation of schools meant the firing of good black teachers and closing of black schools. It meant the busing of black children like me to hostile white schools that weren't the least bit interested in actually educating black children but warehousing them in separate classrooms. How much institutional knowledge has been lost on how to teach our children?

The upward movement of blacks into universities and the workplace because of anti-racism laws and affirmative action has meant that there is a larger black middle class. Affirmative action has largely benefited white women. Is that what was meant when those policies were proposed?

What about the people in the ghettos of this country that have been left behind by their richer friends and relatives? Is that what we were fighting for?

There is no feeling that lessons should be learned from those years or god-forbid we should be doing things differently.

Instead we have older leaders who are used to their lofty positions who haven't had anyone call them to account for decades. A recipe for intellectual and political lethargy.

So it comes to Markel Hutchins, first of what I'm sure will be a wave of young blacks who actually lived the policies that men and women like John Lewis fought for, who can speak to a new way of doing things.

We all are indebted to our elders sacrifice but holding up a picture of being hauled off by the police sometime in the 60s will no longer be enough to keep the questions from coming.