It’s easier to fight the external aggressor than it is to fight someone who looks like you [Barack Obama]. We have to grapple with this until enough people become convinced that it’s not about individuals and that it’s about institutions and systems of oppression. I don’t think most people yet see it that way. We struggle to try to help people understand that it’s not about individuals. It’s about white supremacy, capitalist oppression and imperialism. But the majority does not share the radical consciousness we try to imbue. Black consciousness is oppositional, but oppositional does not necessarily mean radical. Oppositional means that people have a clear enough perspective that allows them to see an injustice and maybe a set of injustices and the desire to change those injustices. A radical consciousness requires a change of an entire system. And people in general, not just black people, people in general are not born with radical consciousness. We have to bring that kind of consciousness to them through education and persuasion. Black people see the election of Barack Obama as oppositional in terms of opposing white supremacy. But we want to tell people that just electing a president, even from a very conventional political point of view, is not enough.