October 08, 2008 @ 11:03 am

The Endorsement

Danyel Smith

VIBE's Editor-in-Chief, announces our endorsement of Senator Barack Obama for President of the United States

I’m worried about us a little bit. I love you all to such a degree, you don’t even know. But I am worried. I’m worried that we’re not going to vote. Because this is not about fun. Or coolness. Or talking, over martinis, about how “amazing” Senator Obama is. There is no fancy invitation. No nothing. 

What are we going to do? 

I will see you at the ballot box, or I will see you in Hell. We will talk about how it could have been. We will toast to how it might have been. We will have no excuse. We will look in the mirror. And we will be sorry.

That’s how the first draft of this editor’s note ended. It’s how I feel. Some thought it was harsh. I didn’t.

­I, being Danyel Smith Wilson: Daughter. Sister. Wife. Cafeteria Catholic. Californian. Brooklynite. Author. African-American with Filipino roots. Editor-in-chief. Proud member of a multicultural staff of executives, content creators, senior and junior editors, designers, photographic professionals, fashion, music and pop culture experts. Proud member of what has unfortunately come to be known as The Elite Media. Proud U.S. citizen.

From all these places, I am clear about what must be done. The staff is behind me. This is a formal endorsement, by VIBE magazine, of Senator Barack Obama of Illinois for President of the United States of America.

We stand behind him—and we were the first music magazine to do so, back in September 2007. We are asking you to stand up for him on November 4. And now the Senator is asking you to stand with him as well. Yes, he’s asking everyone in this country to stand with him, but via his letter to the VIBE readers, he’s specifically asking you.

"Worried” is actually an understatement.

I am scared to death of all kinds of things that we have stood by and let happen. The misleading of Congress about Iraq. Darfur. Drug gangs taking over whole parts of Mexico. From the Brooklyn Bridge to the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta levees— our basic infrastructure is crumbling. Public schools? Mostly a hot mess. Freedom of the press? Fading before our eyes, while attacks on personal privacy increase. No intelligent conversation regarding gun control. This country’s prison population? More than 2 million in jail and 41 percent are African- American. Almost 19 percent are Latino.Earth? Our home is getting warmer every year. Ask the people from Houston standing in line for fresh water and generators. Ask the people from New Orleans. This world is small, and while I have no desire to break into a chorus of “Kumbaya,” I do know we’d better figure out a way to get along, to agree or disagree, because as supplies of everything on this planet get smaller and the rich keep getting richer and the poor keep getting poorer, the last thing we need is rash, ravenous people in office.

We need a cool head and a firm hand. We need strength. Experience of all sorts. A person who values communication. Who sees people of both genders and all races and ethnicities as equal. Someone who does not come from a long line of status-quo thinking, someone who has no nostalgia for the good-old days when institutionalized inequality made things extra-nice for those on top. We need someone who rolls back his cuffs and works. Someone who gets it. Who, even when the criticism is mutual, gets us.

And it’s time we stopped acting like we can’t stand up for him. Like we’re too... hip hop. People from hip hop culture saying things, on and off the record, even in this magazine, about how we need to just let him do him or I don’t need to be in the picture with him...I’ll just support from afar. 

NO.

I am done with all that. Wasn’t ever really with it. This is a music and lifestyle magazine, but it’s so often considered solely a “hip hop” magazine, Obama writing a letter to the VIBE readers is him reaching out to this culture of ours. We are obviously flawed. But who isn’t? And believe it or not, a lot of us go to church (a lot don’t). Many of us went to college. Some of us didn’t. We have jobs and kids. For the most part, we get along well with races other than our own. WE BUILT HIP HOP FROM NOTHING TO SOMETHING. WE CAN DO ANYTHING. We have been moving and shaking in the America that helped Senator Obama rise to his current heights. We must not fail him now, at the very last.

We value freedom and aspire to be better than we are, and to live in a country that will be better than it is. We must vote for Senator Obama and for Senator Joe Biden. We must make sure our friends get to the ballot box. We must reach deep for every bit of idealism that we had at the beginning of rap music. We must not be cool. We must not again make manifest the “apathy” label that has been thrust upon us. This is not a moment to be reviewed or dissected, or gazed upon from an ironic distance. This moment in history is ours. Our country will not be okay if Obama loses.

You know what the man says, We’re the ones we’ve been waiting for. I am counting on you. All of us at VIBE are. Let nothing stop you from voting for Obama.

As ever,

Danyel Smith

Article tags: Barack Obama, Joe Biden, John McCain, Politics, Sarah Palin 

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