Obama has set US black record

By: James N. Kariuki
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[ Posted On: 2008-07-15 ]

Few people know precisely what Barack Obama's position is on various issues that are pressing to Americans and humanity.

What is known is that a black man has emerged from nowhere and is in a position only a step away from the most powerful office in the world. This is a remarkable feat in a society where a black person is traditionally looked down upon.

If this thinking is correct, it makes Obama a unique symbolic figure — he represents black people everywhere. Accordingly, assessment of his performance, should he become the next US president, will be a collective judgment of black people. This will be so even though the challenges to face him will be vastly larger than him individually. He is stuck in the W E B Dubois' 1900 prediction that the most stubborn problem to face mankind in the 20th century would be that of race.

Obama would no doubt argue that the 20th century is now behind us and the world needs to move on beyond race. Nobody represents this aspiration of race-less world better than the Illinois senator. He is not representative of blacks or whites in their pure form; he is genetically an embodiment of both. In this sense, he represents them all.

And America has responded kindly. Should Obama go no further than he has already, he has more than broken the political record of his black predecessors by bringing out the best of America that many believed did not exist. White America has come out in droves to vote for Obama because they believe in his message.

Unlike former black presidential aspirants, Obama does not make white voters feel guilty or threatened. They in turn have responded; Obama defeated a seasoned politician in Mrs Hillary Clinton.

!B>In the broad sense, Obama is part of a historical past that has moved black people from the chains of slavery, a process that may soon witness one of them climb to the seat of ultimate power.

It was a fellow politician from the same State of Illinois as Obama that declared that slavery was not an acceptable form of life for the US. President Abraham Lincoln's proclamation that a nation could not long endure half free and half 'unfree' triggered a bitter civil war that in the end saw black people 'legally' free.

Half a century later, President John F Kennedy would insist that all Americans, including black ones, were entitled to the privileges of their American citizenry. As an act of ultimate symbolism, he sent federal marshals to ensure that black students had the right to enrol at the University of Alabama. This was done in blatant opposition of the State Governor, George Wallace, and in full glare of national television. In the end Wallace backed off.

A crisis was defused; racial justice prevailed.

Kennedy was brutally cut down in November 1963 but his successor, President Lyndon B Johnson, was equally determined to see justice extended to all Americans. Johnson's notion of creating an American Great Society, prodded by the civil rights movement, led to legislations that extended voting rights to Blacks. Further, Johnson launched Affirmative Action, a programme to boost the underprivileged educationally, economically and otherwise.

Those in our midst who doubt that State intervention can make a difference in uplifting an underprivileged segment of society need to take a look at the spectacular results of American affirmative action. Today, four decades after its launch, African-Americans have penetrated all the political and economic positions of power in government and the private industry.

This drastic tsunami has been accompanied by a generation of black youth that believes in itself. Regarding a black presidential aspirations, it does not understand why it cannot happen right now. Obama is part of this attitude of mind. His ardent black supporters were issued the right of passage by Kennedy and Johnson.

All these dynamics are at work. What is more, America may be ready for what Prof Ali Mazrui has termed post-racial America. Was the coming of Obama preordained by history?

Article Source: http://www.afroarticles.com/article-dashboard

About The Author: James N. Kariuki - is head of the African Diaspora Unit at the Africa Institute of South Africa in Pretoria.

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