"Each generation must out of relative obscurity discover its mission, fulfill it, or betray it," Franz Fanon
Too soon to judge Mr Obama but.........
This event marks the culmination of a journey to achieve the American dream, to fulfill the quest to show that we are just as capable or competent as other folks.
I can salute those travelers for proving that a Black Man can occupy the highest office in the land and I respect their convictions.
But for me the dream of America, rises on a sordid history and is sustained in a current reality which is much more a nightmare than a dream.
But putting a brilliant black man in the office and a beautiful Black Family in the White House, could only amount to something short of victory for African People or humanity.
Because the cost, the price to achieve that dream would demand something that Brother Obama and his team, in my opinion, do not appear to possess.
That requirement is, the commitment to bring into reality a world that upholds the irreducible worth and dignity of humanity at all costs. A commitment that the likes of Dr King was prepared to fight for, to serve the people with and when necessary died for.
Being black, being African in my humble opinion, is about a way of constantly honoring life with the integrity of all our thoughts and actions. I would like to briefly refer to another of our brethren who rose to lead his people in even more dread and challenging times and did have to be principled in understanding his historic mission. Black as redefined by Jean Jacques Dessalines means lover of liberty and black is the color and texture of liberty.
Obama may well bring some of that to the Whitehouse, although I propose that he has already had to deny, disconnect from and disavow significant parts of himself, to get pass the guards.
Yes I am sure that Brother Obama, from his soul, may even be moved to pull out the harpoon fired into lives of the wretched of the earth by global imperialism.But like Brother Malcolm offered pulling out the blade halfway" as pragmatic as it might be, is not justice.
One of many examples of this conundrum is the planned redeployment of the hapless servants, dying and killing in Iraq, to do the same thing in Afghanistan.Obama must have been advised that the technology and skill, the art of war of the American military, was now advanced enough to totality obliterate the grim history. The fate of failure, of multiple imperial invasions into the lives of the Afghan people in that land that has suffered so much and for too long.
Obama, a student of history, should learn it's lessons and try something else, to win the peace, with the wisdom and maturity of peace, not with the brutal ignorance of death and destruction as the only solution. Unfortunately it strikes me that he, Obama, could be suffering from the same fever, that led so many to create more misery and ultimately fail in their imperial enterprise.
Dr King's legacy is, as is our other freedom fighters, to change the nature of this beast, these arrogant ways of thinking, resident in the highest corridors and houses of power in the land. If he could not, then he was willing to die trying to keep his pledge.
But King's vision extended beyond the beast. It was a vision of the Beloved Community, brought into reality by a revolution of values, yet aware of the threat of the triple evils. This beloved ancestor was looking for a better world at the mountain top. I doubt that it was about,being enstooled in the Oval Office. That would be sterling, only if the office itself was used to change the nature of the dominant culture, to one true to the principles of universal human rights and dignity for all.
This may be presumptuous and is in effect somewhat unfair to the brother, to suggest that he does not have "it". I can acknowledge that he can and probably is committed to softening the blows of oppression that fall on "his people", maybe even to help us "progress" in this current national and global order. I am sure that few of us wanted another 4 years of the abuse, the assault on humanity that came out of Washington.
I can salute him for that and my expectations are therein, guarded.
Obama's promises to address the ills of society, are laudatory but only valid within the tortured confines of the neo-liberal, agenda of integration.
I cannot give undue credit or expect him to fulfill an agenda, a sojourn for liberation and human dignity that he has not really claimed or been defined by. It would in many ways be unfair to judge him for failing to achieve those objectives.
I also must note that Obama the human and President Obama-the office, are not necessarily organic and my critique is sensitive to this reality.
So what does Obama mean to me. Well, I feel good, real nice to see a brother up there, sincerely, I get the same chills as when looking at the Williams Sisters, Tiger Woods, Muhammed Ali, trounce their opponents. Yes we can, we can win, but are we sure that the game we are in,is really about us and that the prize will be worthy of our investment. I feel that our dream, the promise we are reaching for, is way beyond the capacity and imagination of the White House, even with a black man in it.
But I do expect things to be a little less painful and maybe, brother might even slow down the rate at which the Titanic is going under.
I hope that the brother proves me very wrong and that the ceremonial spear his grandmother brings inspires him to rise and met Fanon's challenge, noted above.
Sizwe
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