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)

Barack Obama with Kenya's Prime Minister Raila Amollo Odinga during a visit to Kenya in 2006. Will an Obama victory ruin the evil image of the United States held by many people around the world?

 

BBC NEWS VIDEO: Will race really be that much of an issue in the U.S. election?, Oct. 24, 00:04:15RealVideo

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.

 

The hard-drinking Barack Obama Sr.: A history-making trip to America.

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]