Maravi

(TALKZIMBABWE) Give us President Obama, America!

Give us President Obama, America!
Obert Madondo - Opinion
Tue, 04 Nov 2008 03:29:00 +0000

THROUGHOUT the current historic US Presidential campaign, I resisted joining the Barack Obama bandwagon. Resentment? Certainly! As a black intellectual, I simultaneously love and hate this exceptional man of prodigious political talents. His rhetorical skills are hard to beat. He has scaled height no person of color, anywhere, has reached before.

But my resentment assumed a certain profile. I resented the Democratic candidate's dominant persona as a conciliatory black man who makes white Americans less uncomfortable about slavery and racism by avoiding these two important issues in US history. The idea that that someone with mixed parentage – black and white – is black, revolts me. It's inspired by the archaic notion of white supremacy.

I rejected the simplistic insinuation that this historic election and, in particular, Mr. Obama's candidacy, is a panacea for racial tolerance.

Now barely six hours before this historic election, I'm won over. I surrender, completely, to the call for change that he and millions of his supporters have been making since the campaign kicked off almost two years ago.

By by nominating Mr. Obama for President of the US, and supporting him thus far, Americans invited us all on an irreversible journey toward racial tolerance. They invited us to believe in possibility.

Mr. Obama took us a step further. He gave hope a new meaning. He has convinced us that the change we always aspire to starts with hope. It's final attainment comes from action and sacrifice. That is why Americans have been swarming Mr. Obama's rallies in record numbers.

You can almost say say these millions are searching beyond the person they seen everyday in the mirror for the true self. Such has been Obama's effect on me. He is a black man is on the verge of becoming the most powerful individual on earth.

I aspire to travel the phenomenal journey he has traveled. I want him for my role model.
Over the past few weeks I have poured through the junior Illinois Senator's biography in search of myself.

Mr. Obama's mixed upbringing speaks to the tolerant quality of his white mother and other whites around him, particularly his just-passed grandmother.

The highlight of Mr. Obama's stint at the Harvard Law School was his presidency of the globally-respected Harvard Law Review. He served three terms with the Illinois Senate and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School.

His election to the US Senate in November, 2004, was preceded by an electric keynote address at the Democratic National Convention earlier in July. Mr. Obama's 2008 Presidential campaign has been nothing but phenomenal.

In defeating Hilary Clinton for the Democratic nomination, he performed a giant-killing act. The Clintons are dynastic to American politics.

Mr. Obama's fund raising has been record-busting. He out-gunned everyone else. And he did so mostly through individual Americans. He motivated them to invest in the future they yearn for and deserve.

But I join the ranks of brand-new Obama supporters with an overwhelming sense of impending doom. I'm nervous as hell.

While millions of Americans from all racial and ethnic backgrounds are determined to walk America into a new chapter of history - Voting a Black President – the American electoral process is imperfect, prone to fraud, even.

The 2000 US Presidential Election was lost by Al Gore and won by George W. Bush via hanging chads, “electoral problems” in Ohio and Florida, defective machines and the Republican-dominated US Supreme Court.

Most polls and pundits give Mr. Obama a healthy lead over Senator John McCain, the Republican candidate.

But an ugly creature called the Bradley Effect – hidden racism - makes an Obama victory prediction deriving from the polls a scary thing.

Leading up to the 1982 California governor's election, polls suggested that Los Angeles Mayor, Tom Bradley, a Democrat and African-American, held a healthy lead of anywhere from nine to 22 points over Republican George Deukmejian. Mr. Bradley lost the election.

Political theorists believe that during polling some respondents who did not want to appear bigoted said they would vote for Mr. Bradley. In the privacy of the voting booth, they gave their votes to their true love, Mr. Deukmejian, a white man.

The Bradley Effect is a potential spoiler in the 2008 US Presidential election. Millions of Americans who are telling pollsters that they could vote for Mr. Obama may turn out to be closeted racists who will not, and never would, vote for a black candidate under any circumstances.

These closeted racist are willing to ignore the fact that, in Mr. Obama, America has an individual whose charm and magnetism that transcends America's borders. Mr. Obama is the first American presidential candidate to be revered in Manila, London, Canberra, Rio de Janeiro, Moscow, Harare – everywhere. Is this really the same black man arising from the humiliating dungeons of slavery? Is this the same black man with roots in Africa, a continent still largely viewed as intellectually, materially and politically backward?

In the past few days, Canadians have been streaming down to the US to campaign for him. We are witnessing a potential revolution in the direction of racial tolerance.

Even hardcore Republicans, former Secretary of State Colin Powell and former Bush press secretary Scott McClellan among them, recently endorsed Mr. Obama.

These progressive Republicans and all of liberal America also face a conservative, right-wing America that see things differently. In its bosom, white supremacists, bible-wielding religious fundamentalists, closeted and open racists thrive.

Remember Bill O'Reilly's infamous Michelle Obama “lynching party” gaffe, one of the many instances of vocalized hidden racism we have witnessed during the last couple of months?
Well, Mr. O'Reilly still has his daily, 2-hour radio show, heard on more than 400 stations across the US. The O'Reilly Factor on The Fox News Channel is still one of the highest rated of any cable news show in the country.

Other right wing talk show hosts have repeatedly portrayed Mr. Obama as the “other”. In May, Fox News contributor, Liz Trotta apologised for suggesting that Mr. Obama should be assassinated along with Osama bin Laden. In June, Fox News anchor, ED Hill, called Mr. Obama and his wife's on-stage fist-jab victory gesture a “terrorist fist-jab.

Some evangelical radio station in Ohio recently featured pastors praying for God to help voters vote His will – for Mr. McCain.

Hate or love these these right-wing hit squads, but their freedom of expression is solidly enshrined in the First Amendment of the US constitution.

Mr. Obama has repeatedly countered these racism-inspired stabs with conciliatory rhetoric, insisting that there was neither a white America nor a black America. He has insisted on hope and positive change.

Inspiring as his rhetoric and campaign has been, Mr. Obama speaks to the American collective, which is prone to hidden individual racial animus.

The Gallup Poll of October 31 to November 1 shows Mr. Obama leading Mr. McCain 52% to 41%, nationally. Undecided voters account for 8%.

Frankly, how could anyone still be undecided at this stage of the contest? Besides, this election is historic in two important ways. Mr. Obama is the first African American to be nominated by a major American party for President. Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska is the first Vice-Presidential nominee in the Republican Party's history.

The problem in America and other so-called racially and ethnically diverse countries is that one can not talk about race or express their true feelings without fearing recrimination or distortion.

There is just too much political correctness.

And thanks to political correctness, closeted racists are, officially, “undecided voters”.

In the privacy of the voting booth they will put their mark where their true love is – with Mr. McCain. Or maybe they are still genuinely undecided and need that extra bit of information to make a final decision? What will stop them deciding that Mr. Obama has a funny name or that he doesn't exactly look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills?

They could punish Mr. Obama for the sins of his former pastor, Reverend Jemeriah Wright, labeled by the right to be an anti-American extremist. They could pretend that Osama bin Laden is planning another major terrorist attack on the US and opt for the Republican party, considered stronger that the Democratic party on national security.

Some analysts believe that the Bradley Effect could account for 6 points against Mr. Obama.

Whatever the outcome on Tuesday, Americans will be telling the rest of the world where they stand on race relations. To many people of color all over the world, Mr. Obama's candidacy represents increased white acceptance of blacks as equals.

An Obama victory will signal a decisive shift away from America's racist past and sprint toward genuine racial tolerance.

By sticking with Mr. Obama thus far, America has invited us all to an irreversible march towards a future without symbolic gestures of racial tolerance. As a black man transcending race, religion and ethnicity, he is a gift to the world.

An Obama presidency in the United States will lure us into the search in our midst for our own Obamas. An Obama presidency will be America's gift to the rest of the world.

Obert Madondo

Labels: BARACK OBAMA, ELECTIONS

posted by MrK @ 3:53 AM