Adamu Adamu
7 November 2008
opinion
Long before that Tuesday, November 4, Barack Obama had already been elected president by a wary and expectant world; and American voters were out that day merely to confirm the extent of the local landslide.
Though it was to choose the new US president, the election accomplished more than that; because, as people cast their votes, many things were happening all at once.
First, it was so obvious that it was not just Red or Blue that was being chosen; it was American democracy itself that was on trial. Though the people had been given such an obvious choice a confirmed Republican failure and an unsure Democratic promise what they were choosing was not visible on the ballot. They were choosing the future America's and the world's. Second, the American Dream was itself in the dock. Would the sleep continue; would the nation wake up; would the dream be realized, or would it all turn into a nightmare? But the system had already passed the test by bringing Obama in as a contender, the very first time for a person of his antecedents; and what remained was just the icing on the cake of his candidacy. Barely four hours after polls opened, Senator John McCain conceded defeat: Obama, the unlikeliest man for the job, had got it. For Obama, it brought to a successful conclusion almost two years of a grueling campaign.
No doubt, for African Americans, times have changed for them, as can be seen in this comparison with of Obama with Malcolm X. Both Obama and Malcolm were gangling six footers, of athletic build, with kindly looking faces one long and the other oval both were witty and extremely intelligent. Both were accomplished orators, passionate and able to draw copious tears, and they were capable organisers. Malcolm wanted to read law and might have taken politics as a vocation. In almost every quality Malcolm X was better: he was wittier, more intelligent; and he was incomparably a more eloquent spellbinding orator. Though they resembled each other so much in words and deeds, their destinies would be vastly different because they lived in different times. Malcolm died three years after Obama was born. But he failed where Obama eventually won.
At school, in the early 1950's, Malcolm said he wanted to be a lawyer, just like Obama would do 30 years to come; but they said he couldn't, even though he was the best in the class. They said he could only be a carpenter, and, as a result, he left school. On the other hand, because the times had changed, Obama was not only able to study law; he did so at the very best of the Ivy League schools. And once outside school, he seemed to have made up his mind to pursue a career in politics with as they said, 'the flimsiest curriculum vitae of anyone who had ever wanted to be president,' which was not surprising; because he himself said he had 'audacity of hope.' The rest is now history.
When he started out without he didn't have the assured support of even the African American community; because, strictly speaking, he is not one of them. Few of them have white mothers, and fewer still African fathers. And while he is certainly not white, for some of them, he is not black enough; but the election has shown that he is what really matters he is American and so capable of realizing the Dream. Against all odds, he was elected.
The election of Obama has proved more than a hundred declarations of the American constitution and more than all the gains of the so-called civil rights struggle ever can, that the Republic and its accompanying alluring American Dream is not just for those with blue eyes, blonde hair and pale skin. It is for every American to aspire to and now to attain.
For those looking for a role model, and that will mean the overwhelming majority of African Americans, Latinos and the legion of non-white immigrants, here, indeed, is the ultimate role model a black man as the President of the United States of America. It is not that inherently he can not do it; it is that, given all the variables, he will never come near to getting the chance, but Obama got it.
He had made a choice. Though from a broken family, has managed to keep his own intact. He avoided becoming junkie, a disc jockey; and he didn't take to crime or Rap music. He is not an absentee, or a single, father; he doesn't do drugs, and he has been to college the very best of them that there are in the US. He was really intellectually and mentally prepared for the job.
However, despite all the preparation and his array of acquired and God-given gifts, Obama will not have been elected president of any non black-majority country in the world. What happened last Tuesday is only possible in the United States, a country founded on the highest human ideal, though it has not always lived up to them; a country where you can be what you want to be if you help yourself, though this has not always proved possible as a result of the effect of that prejudicial, mutually-reinforcing, self-fulfilling stereotypes the people have made of themselves and of each other. Obama broke the jinx. But there you are.
Today, for him, this is a period of great expectations, and the whole world is his Pip and Oliver expecting more and asking for it. He has promised change and he must deliver on it; but can he?
The people of the United States voted for him because they wanted change a change in their living standards, a change in how their nation is governed and how it is viewed by the rest of the world, and a change in what an American president does to make the world a safer or more dangerous place-and they expect Obama to bring about all these changes. And in particular, African Americans and Latinos who have, in Obama's words, 'rejected the myth of their generation's apathy, expect him to be the magic wan with which to cast off that very apathy.
Europe expects him to be the first among equals of fellow travelers into a new world of peace, prosperity and financial-market discipline; the Middle East expects him to be an honest broker; Muslims in particular wish to welcome an American president who doesn't hate their world and won't act with such violent venom and so much animus against it, someone who can see through and beyond the Zionist veil and take decisions that are in the interest of the people of America; and the African continent expects to see an American leader who is really interested in helping and is ready to do something genuine about its efforts to get out of poverty and the debt trap. The list is endless. Obama's election is good for African Americans and all those who have hang-ups about their social and cultural acceptance into the hallowed precincts of America's power structure, those who have doubts about the reality of the American Dream. He has won and so have the people of colour, but it will be a costly mistake to imagine that with this victory their battles are over. They may just have begun. With this, they may have arrived; but they have still to put down their luggage in its proper place at the right destination. Obama is the president of the United States of America and not just of black America.
It should be obvious that this victory will not solve the problems of cocaine and crack in America's inner cities overnight or at all. Nor will it solve the related problems of crime, absent fatherhood and perpetual dependence on welfare and drugs. But it can help focus the nation's attention and searchlight on the right and effective way to look for their solution. And that is all that an Obama can do for them. The rest should be tackled by the renewed confidence that this victory has instilled in the people of colour. But this election victory is not just for the people of colour. It is an even greater victory for the majority who made it possible. Blacks only took the victory; its architects are white. But in the end, perhaps it is unhelpful to look at this election in terms of colour only; because those who cast their votes did so only as Americans. And Obama won, not because he is black but because he is the better of the two and the best of the lot that took part. But can he deliver?
He just might, by putting together a formidable team, and by listening to the world. He has to do something about the peril that faces the world, the wars that George Bush unleashed, the financial crisis that he caused, and the hatred that he caused for the US across the world.
But right after winning the election, Obama started on the wrong footing; he found it necessary to reiterate that he is a true friend of Israel. And if he wishes to understand what imprisons US leaders, he has only to ask himself why he didn't find it necessary to say he is a true friend of Canada-a peace-loving next-door neighbor that has not grabbed anybody's land. If leaders of the US had kept to the ideals of the Founding Fathers of their republic, they would have been all over the world fighting for the cause of Good instead of fighting for the cause of Zionism. If they had done that, America would have been hailed all over the world with as much enthusiasm as the odium with which it is denounced today.
But whatever happens, Obama has made history. And how remarkable it is: he didn't reach the shores of the United States of America in the Mayflower, and neither did his ancestors. He also didn't land at Plymouth Rock; but unlike Malcolm X, to whom he is almost an heir, the Rock didn't land on him, either. He is just the union of those who did and those who didn't. But all the same, going by his acquired antecedents, it is out of Uncle Tom's Cabin, not quite unlike Abraham Lincoln's log cabin, that this African American made the leap into the White House and the Oval Office, there to preside over the nation's cabin-et. And this feat, like Neil Armstrong's moonwalk, may just be one political step for a man; but it is, without doubt, a giant leap for all races in the US and the world.
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