The South African Civil Society Information Service
A nonprofit news agency promoting social justice. Seeking answers to the question:
How do we make democracy work for the poor?
A nonprofit news agency promoting social justice. Seeking answers to the question:
How do we make democracy work for the poor?
By Saliem Fakir · 13 Nov 2008
It would be a squint-eyed view to read in Obama’s victory just a historic moment for African-Americans in the United States of America (USA).
It should be granted that Obama’s entry through the front door of the White House rather than the back door, once reserved for black cleaners only, does mark a turning point in black history.
African-Americans have come a long way since the days of slavery, the civil rights movement and many other sacrifices they have had to make to claim their rightful place in Anglo-Saxon America as fellow citizens.
Obama’s victory is no longer, as Henry Louis Gates Jr. noted: ‘all those black collective dreams deferred’. It is as if hundreds of years of collective black yearnings and dreams have been answered.
But Obama also means a lot more than just a victory for black America.
Ben Okri enthused: “There is an angel of change over America. It has been here for some time, but only the young in spirit noticed.” (Sunday Times, 9 November 2008)
A significant number of young Hispanics, whites (particularly white men) and Asians too voted for Obama. A new generation of young who are more accustomed to a multiracial and multicultural America saw in Obama the figurehead and symbol that represented and could define an image of a new America. If he were not there, they probably would not have voted.
Certainly not, for any more a worse contrast to the image, of what Okri called Obama’s mysterious and consistent authority, than the incoherent, pale and rabid Sarah Palin, as her presence overshadowed that of Johan McCain. She and McCain represented old America and its archaic twisted logic.
Daniel Finkelstein also noted poignantly that the reason Obama won and what the Republicans never understood is that “the American people are becoming, literally, a different people.” (Timesonline, 4 the November 2008)
Joe Klein, in a recent Time Magazine (5 November 2008) column said something in a similar vein: ”It (America) is no longer a ‘white’ country, even though whites remain the majority. It is a place where the primacy of racial identity... has been replaced by the celebration of pluralism, of cross-racial synergy’.
There is a truth in Klein’s observation even if he may have not noticed the future. By 2042 white Americans will be in a minority.
A white lens will no longer dominate how America looks at itself and when it looks at the world America won’t see a white world.
It is the sheer weight of demographic change and the rise of brown, yellow and black people elsewhere in the world that has forced America to put on a new pair of glasses to see clearly.
A shift, ironically, as a result of America’s own failed social engineering elsewhere in the world during the eight years of Bush’s rule and preceding Republican policies. An era marked by America’s trenchant abuse of its power and in which it has made its own world awry.
Instead of recognising and working with the world’s diversity, it sought to homogenise the rest of the world into its own image. Hence, Obama’s rise is so timely because America is at the cusp of change going away from it, rather than towards it, like it used too.
Klein even boldly added that the vote for Obama represented a no-vote for the Reagan era. Meaning a vote against old white America.
The germ of a new image has long hovered over the dark skies of changing America. Its good spirit and existence in the ether has yet to unfold. Only time will tell whether it is squandered or used to good effect.
For this they need a new leader -- man or women different from their own. Someone extraordinary and special, who can easily assimilate and fit into the coming new world order. An order in which the culture and colour will be different. A world, where the white lens no longer works, as it falls prey to chronic opacity.
Klein must have imputed this studying Obama’s life history - his multi-racial and multi-cultural upbringing - to see how Obama anticipated and envisaged the need for a leadership that in many respects is the stamp of the future.
Obama shaped his entire image around the quintessential figure -- the man who could bridge the chasm of cultural chauvinism, bridge the racial divide and engage America with the world’s diversity with less hostility. He has the intuition and internal resources to do so.
He is and has become what time and accident will never allow an ordinary American to be -- the symbol of a universal cosmopolitan figure. Because of his unique family history, he is half of everything: American/African, white/black, Muslim/Christian, Hawaiian/Indonesian and so on. He is the unwitting inheritor of good fortune and a man of the time that is now.
Since Bush contrived the vortex and storm that drove the ‘clash of civilizations’, Americans have ever-since looked for a new cosmopolitan president who can deliver them from Bush’s ‘axis of evil’ and make peace with the world.
A leader who could play the redemptive role, to take America out of its abyss, to once and for all raise its moral stature and ensure that American citizens no longer walk the earth, heads low in shame, as citizens of a pariah state in the eyes of the global community.
Obama’s unique good fortune and life history, super cleverness, colour and impeccable timing boded him well. It positioned him to grab at history, as history is just about to turn a corner away from American exceptionalism and pre-eminence into the churning of a new world order.
Obama, in a sense is giving America one more chance to be in and with the world.
To quote what Wole Sonyinka, in a celebratory press conference in Lagos, called eight years of Bush’s ‘misrule’, and where Obama could ‘gatecrash’ us all into the ‘third millenium’.
Obama will need big shoulders to carry all these expectations from Americans and the rest of the world, but only time will tell the measure of change. Time will also tell whether he will be the leader he is supposed to be.
America is being given a chance, as it gave itself the chance to produce one of the finest leaders for a very long time. It is best they do not allow Obama to squander it, but rather to take advantage of a narrow moment of goodwill that has received the victory of Obama. World patience is thin. There will not be another chance for America after this one.
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