Election 2008: A (presidential) race comes full circle
Glen Arbor Sun
Cape Coast Castle, a haunting old slavery fort on the Atlantic shores of Ghana, was converted into a museum in the 1990s with help from the Smithsonian Institution and is now a tourist destination for, notably, African Americans to make their ancestral journey homeward and, quite possibly, back to the musty dungeons where their forefathers were held in shackles awaiting the Atlantic Passage.
But what I found most interesting during a visit to Cape Coast Castle in 2002 was a video at the conclusion of the guided tour offering a chronological journey through history — beginning with daily life before the European conquest and ending with modern-day African American heroes in the United States. The local fishermen, who hollowed out felled trees to make canoes and painted spiritual symbols on them, morph into prisoners packed into ships filled to the scuppers, sailing west, toward centuries of plantation slavery. Eventually their faces radiate hope as the video progresses, throwing off the chains, winning their freedom, marching, voting, and morphing into the likes of Frederick Douglas, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., Jackie Robinson, Muhammad Ali — heroes for both Africans and African Americans, we are to believe.
Yet, sadly, the bond between Africans and African Americans is not so simple, and those two communities haven’t done enough throughout history to help one another. The undertaking by African Americans in the 1820’s to return east and build their own nation, Liberia, proved a bloody failure; middle-class or wealthy African Americans who visit Cape Coast Castle today are called “ubrunis” (white people) by the locals, who perceive them as foreigners; when an African war refugee is resettled in an American city and given government handouts today (this according to my fiancé, who works at a refugee resettlement agency in Chicago), their disenfranchised and jobless ancestral brethren in the neighborhood sometimes react in jealousy.
Could one man heal those deep wounds, simply because of his racial lineage, and simply by becoming the next president of the United States? That’s the question on my mind as African-American Democratic voters line up to cast their ballots this election primary season. Illinois’ junior Senator Barack Obama may need their support to unseat New York Senator Hillary Clinton, whose husband won the overwhelming trust of the African-American community during his presidency in the ‘90s, and to win the general election in November.
Will blacks see Barack as one of their own, even though his father was Kenyan and his mother hails from Kansas? Will they back the candidate who pulled off a stunning victory in white-bread Iowa and has excited young Caucasians across America? Do they even have enough trust in the political system still holding their necks like a noose? And will their votes be counted this time?
A friend of mine, local musician Crispin Campbell asked his African-American friends in Inkster, a downtrodden neighborhood near Detroit, what they thought of Obama’s candidacy (he visited them before the primary season began), and their alarming response spoke volumes about the level of black disenfranchisement in American politics today. “Forget it,” he was told with a shake of the head. “Whites are never gonna let a black man become president.”
This is a community for the most part stuck in a deep, desperate and impoverished rut. The haunting images of black New Orleans’ residents waiting on their rooftops for helicopters (the national guard arrived five days after Hurricane Katrina flooded the city) — or being tear-gassed as they gathered at City Hall in late 2007 for the right to reclaim their homes in the Ninth Ward — is only the tip of the iceberg. As many as one-third of all young African-American males of incarceration age are in prison or on parole, many for crimes as ridiculous as possessing small amounts of marijuana (Iowa, the location of Obama’s first primary victory, by the way, has the largest rate of incarcerating blacks over whites in the nation).
And yet the Reverands Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, and countless leaders who represent the African-American community at the grassroots level (not you, Oprah), have yet to back the first bid for the White House by a black man who has a shot at winning in November.
The charges that Barack Obama — his speeches, his message and his politics — are too white (and centrist, and vague) are nothing new. And given the state of the black community, they must be respected. After all, in Obama’s Iowa victory speech, he intentionally mentioned “red states” before “blue states,” and he buried the lines about Dr. King and Selma, Alabama, and water hoses in the middle of a speech that focused more on unity and hope than it did on accountability for racism, illegal wars and unsustainable environmental policy.
That’s because Obama doesn’t just represent hope for African-Americans (and Africans). He represents hope for all Americans (and people everywhere in the world) who are weary of eight years of sucker punches and attacks on the Constitution, and logic, from the Bush administration.
Laura Washington, an African-American columnist for In These Times magazine in Chicago — where Obama’s activism and political credentials were forged — wrote last August: “Playing petty plantation politics may feather a few nests and puff up some chests, but Obama is looking to turn the black political equation upside down. If he goes all the way, black politics will never be the same. That’s a good thing.”
She continues: “The Obama candidacy is dead in the water if he adopts a sectarian agenda. Until now, African-American presidential candidates have made little serious effort to extend their attention beyond the base. This is one big reason why black politicians usually crash and burn when they seek office in white majority districts.”
Obama has already passed that threshold. Just imagine if the American people, black and white, give him the chance to deliver his own “I have a dream” speech from Pennsylvania Avenue on Inauguration Day, a year from now.
http://www.glenarborsun.com/archives/2008/01/election_2008_a.html
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