The Seduction of Colin Powell
[Hoje Macau, Macau]
The Daily Nation, Kenya
Radical
Anti-American Order Threatened By Obama Win
"For Africa and the Third
World, an Obama win might have far-reaching effects that we aren't yet fully
prepared for. … An Obama victory would leave many Third World intellectuals and
nationalists either jobless, struggling for relevance, or scurrying back to the
drawing board to explain an America led by a Black president. Of course,
they'll also wish that he met some misfortune at the hands of a red-neck."
By Charles Onyango Obbo
October 22, 2008
Kenya
- The Daily Nation - Original Article (English)
At the start of
August and with the Democratic Party convention a month away, I could only find
a sprinkling of Africans who thought Illinois Senator Barack Obama was going to
beat Senator Hillary Clinton in the race to be the party’s presidential candidate.
And none of this small number of Africans gave him a chance against Republican
Senator John McCain.
It was only a
month ago that a few African voices on Internet lists and chatrooms began to
express confidence in an Obama victory.
Still, the
majority believe he'll be assassinated during his first few days in office,
because America is simply too racist a society and isn't ready for a Black
president.
But now with the
national polls showing Obama up on McCain by anything between 10 and 14 points,
the ranks of believers are growing. However, the fat lady still hasn't sung. So
despite the glowing polls, Obama doesn’t have this election in the bag yet. In
fact the fat lady is only now ascending the stage. But it would be perfectly
reasonable for Obama’s Kenyan relatives in Kogelo to order new suits and
dresses in preparation for a grand victory celebration in America after
November 4.
Barack Obama with his Kenyan relatives: Planning for a bash?
In the United
States, an Obama victory would be history-making enough. But for Africa and the
Third World, it might have far-reaching effects that we aren't yet fully
prepared for.
In many parts of
the world there is an entire industry built around anti-globalization,
involving activists and non-governmental organizations that agitate against the
inequities and imperial transgressions of America. A major drive of this
anti-Americanism is the moral culpability of the United States on the issue of
racism.
There are many
racist societies in the world, but through slavery, America is seen as the one
that most benefited from it, and as the modern democracy that has the worst
record for tackling racism.
For example,
India, which still has the caste system 
,
elected Kocherill Raman Narayanan as its first “untouchable”
president in 1997. But America, where racial segregation was outlawed as early
as 1856, is still considered unlikely to elect a person of color as president
more than 150 years later.
The most America
is expected to do is have fictional Black presidents, as in the addictive TV
series 24. Certainly not in real life. But even
then, the first Black president in the series, David Palmer (a convincing role
played by Dennis Haysbert) loses office [he decided not to run for re-election]
and is later assassinated by White conspirators.
His younger
brother Wayne Palmer (in an extremely flat performance by D.B. Woodside), is
also finished off in a plot by Palmer's White vice president.
The White hand
striking down a promising Black, Hispanic or Asian prospect is a central part
of the narrative of the evil American empire. If you take that away - more than
50 years of scholarship and political mobilization in many countries fall
apart.
If Obama is
elected president, thousands of public intellectuals, radical professors,
social activists and nationalist politicians and journalists will be plunged
into crisis. Then they will have to explain how it's possible that a Black
person could be elected in this profoundly racist country.
Posted by WORLDMEETS.US
Obama’s
nomination has already unsettled many, because part of this global narrative on
America also considers U.S. Democrats to be hypocritical liberals. They're
happy to pose as being anti-racist as long as minorities serve mostly as
sidekicks. Therefore, the thinking goes, Black people can sit at the high table
with White liberals, but not at the head of the table.
Again, this is
best illustrated by the TV series West Wing, in the White House of very
liberal Democratic President Josiah Bartlet, which has marginal Black
characters like presidential assistant Charlie Young.
And when Hillary
Clinton and especially her husband, the man once referred to as the “first
Black president” seemed to play the race card against Obama, the cynics felt
vindicated. Ironically, although the Republicans are more openly racist, they
do better. It took George Bush, not Clinton, to appoint General Colin Powell
and Condoleezza Rice as U.S. secretaries of state.
The best election
result for the global radical non-American intellectual order, therefore, is
for Obama to lose. That would confirm the dominant orthodoxy that America is
racist; and/or that it has a very corrupt political system which allows the
Republican-linked establishment to steal elections.
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The hard-drinking
Barack Obama Sr.: A history-making trip to America.
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An Obama victory
would leave many Third World intellectuals and nationalists either jobless, struggling
for relevance, or scurrying back to the drawing board to explain an America led
by a Black president. Of course, they'll also wish that he met some misfortune
at the hands of a red-neck.
And to imagine
that this “crisis” wouldn’t have occurred if a Kenyan student called Barack
Obama hadn’t gone to the United States on scholarship, become a deadbeat
father, and left his son behind in America to be raised by his mother!
[Posted by
WORLDMEETS.US October 23, 10:24pm]
