Obama’s victory can’t be underrated
Nov 16, 2008
THOUGH I found David Ssepuuya’s article “Why is Obama regarded black and not white?†nice prose, it failed to interrogate the issue of racism and politics. Yet this is the essence of the debate about Barack Obama’s victory.
By Kintu Nyago
THOUGH I found David Ssepuuya’s article “Why is Obama regarded black and not white?†nice prose, it failed to interrogate the issue of racism and politics. Yet this is the essence of the debate about Barack Obama’s victory.
As a Pan-Africanist, an ideology that believes in the equality of all people, Black or White, I celebrated the Obama election because it was ‘On the road to Damascus conversion’, of most Americans to their nearly 300 years ago, constitutional tenet that affirms that all men are equal.
Indeed, given that the occupant of the White House’s Oval Office is the most powerful and influential individual on earth, Obama’s elevation is a fundamental statement to all bigots.
Early White immigrants into America escaped European tyranny. Their new liberty was institutionalised in the American constitution, whose prime architect was Thomas Jefferson. That is why American democracy is also referred to as the Jeffersonian Project.
Ironically, however, America’s founding fathers deliberately excluded Blacks and indigenous Americans in their democratic vision. Africans were imported as slaves without rights.
Incidentally, the revered Jefferson, a southern States gentleman from Virginia, was a slave plantation owner and widower, who cohabitated with a Black slave mistress. A woman with whom he produced children who unfortunately, could not be easily traced. They never inherited his name, property or status, given that they were auctioned off in slave markets.
Let us recall that up to 60 million Africans, mostly from the West African coast and present day Angola, were abducted (which should remind us of Kony) by slave traders to the Caribbean and the Americas. But that is part of the story, for only Africa’s best and most economically productive people got abducted.
In addition, many other Africans were killed resisting these abductions, or through the resultant famines and diseases that followed.
Under Western civilisation, Blackness was defined by the possession of just one drop of African blood. That is even if your mother (as in Obama’s case) or father (as with Jefferson’s example) were lily white. More fundamentally, however, Blackness was a sentence to deliberate structural marginalisation for one and his offspring. It actually took a civil war to stop slavery in the United States. But this did not stop the marginalisation.
In the “Deep South†it was quite commonplace for white vigilante groups such as the Ku Klux Klan to lynch African Americans in cold blood amidst fanfare, as a way of ‘putting the Black man in his place’.
To politically contextualise this marginalisation, let us recall that George Bush defeated John Mcain in the 2000 Republican primaries by falsely claiming that the former had an illegitimate child with a Black mistress.
In America, African Americans only got the vote in the 1960s, and they are an endangered species. While constituting approximately 10% of the American population, they are more than 30% of all prison inmates. Single motherhood, a legacy traced to slavery, is commonplace in the Black ghettos.
A number of Blacks are undereducated and hence unemployed. Many associate with alcoholism, drugs, street gangs, prostitution and other forms of crime. Their few upright role models are mainly athletes and rap artists.
In turn, this explains the fundamental nature of the Obama election, that affirms the iconic civil rights leader, Dr. Martin Luther King’s call: People should be judged, not by the colour of their skin, but rather by the content of their character.
Obama’s victory cannot be underestimated. His victory might fundamentally undermine age-old racist mindsets, while also encouraging Blacks to strive for the best.
The writer is a political analyst and writer
THOUGH I found David Ssepuuya’s article “Why is Obama regarded black and not white?†nice prose, it failed to interrogate the issue of racism and politics. Yet this is the essence of the debate about Barack Obama’s victory.
As a Pan-Africanist, an ideology that believes in the equality of all people, Black or White, I celebrated the Obama election because it was ‘On the road to Damascus conversion’, of most Americans to their nearly 300 years ago, constitutional tenet that affirms that all men are equal.
Indeed, given that the occupant of the White House’s Oval Office is the most powerful and influential individual on earth, Obama’s elevation is a fundamental statement to all bigots.
Early White immigrants into America escaped European tyranny. Their new liberty was institutionalised in the American constitution, whose prime architect was Thomas Jefferson. That is why American democracy is also referred to as the Jeffersonian Project.
Ironically, however, America’s founding fathers deliberately excluded Blacks and indigenous Americans in their democratic vision. Africans were imported as slaves without rights.
Incidentally, the revered Jefferson, a southern States gentleman from Virginia, was a slave plantation owner and widower, who cohabitated with a Black slave mistress. A woman with whom he produced children who unfortunately, could not be easily traced. They never inherited his name, property or status, given that they were auctioned off in slave markets.
Let us recall that up to 60 million Africans, mostly from the West African coast and present day Angola, were abducted (which should remind us of Kony) by slave traders to the Caribbean and the Americas. But that is part of the story, for only Africa’s best and most economically productive people got abducted.
In addition, many other Africans were killed resisting these abductions, or through the resultant famines and diseases that followed.
Under Western civilisation, Blackness was defined by the possession of just one drop of African blood. That is even if your mother (as in Obama’s case) or father (as with Jefferson’s example) were lily white. More fundamentally, however, Blackness was a sentence to deliberate structural marginalisation for one and his offspring. It actually took a civil war to stop slavery in the United States. But this did not stop the marginalisation.
In the “Deep South†it was quite commonplace for white vigilante groups such as the Ku Klux Klan to lynch African Americans in cold blood amidst fanfare, as a way of ‘putting the Black man in his place’.
To politically contextualise this marginalisation, let us recall that George Bush defeated John Mcain in the 2000 Republican primaries by falsely claiming that the former had an illegitimate child with a Black mistress.
In America, African Americans only got the vote in the 1960s, and they are an endangered species. While constituting approximately 10% of the American population, they are more than 30% of all prison inmates. Single motherhood, a legacy traced to slavery, is commonplace in the Black ghettos.
A number of Blacks are undereducated and hence unemployed. Many associate with alcoholism, drugs, street gangs, prostitution and other forms of crime. Their few upright role models are mainly athletes and rap artists.
In turn, this explains the fundamental nature of the Obama election, that affirms the iconic civil rights leader, Dr. Martin Luther King’s call: People should be judged, not by the colour of their skin, but rather by the content of their character.
Obama’s victory cannot be underestimated. His victory might fundamentally undermine age-old racist mindsets, while also encouraging Blacks to strive for the best.
The writer is a political analyst and writer