It’s kind of like suggesting you have insight into the black socio-cultural machine because you understand the urban grit of the über hip-pop group Black Eyed Peas.

Certainly, Obama represents a type of black politics (and so do those with whom he frequently associates). It's the type with Ivy League politicos that talk in broad strokes, stress oneness and are comfortable for the majority to snuggle up to and call buddy. Though it's an important strand of the black political corpus, it does not singularly represent us. Nor should it.

Black politics can be the politics of the general while maintaining specifics of the black experience. The multiplicity is needed because of who — how — black people are.

Patrick, Obama, Nutter, Booker. All of these men represent The Establishment. And this is good.

Still, as long as The Establishment is responsible for oppression and marginalization, there are going to be black politics that don’t feel as warm and fuzzy. Politics that will push against. The likes of Delman L. Coates of Mt. Ennon Baptist Church and his "Enough Is Enough" campaign in Maryland; Kevin Powell, who is running for Congress out of Brooklyn, N.Y.; and Donna Frisby-Greenwood, a Philadelphia-based youth activist and director of the city’s Office of College and Career Awareness.

These voices are black politics — establishment and beyond. And though there is evidence of the oft-noted generational shift within it, as long as there is the constancy of racism and the stinging legacy of slavery, black politics will be around. The old-school kind.

So, reacquaint yourself with the likes of the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Randall Robinson, Ron Dellums, Maxine Waters — and whoever else you might wish Obama would replace — so you don’t get spooked when "change" comes and it's not the kind you expected.