On Tuesday, November 4, 2008, when Americans went to the polls to elect their 44th President, I was among a massive group of young and old Australian professors, and a massive number of young white American students at James Cook University in Queensland, Australia. Their absolute joy at Obama’s victory was incredible. One young white American man cried openly as he screamed Obama’s name. Who would have dreamt that a genuinely African American (son of an African immigrant who married a fully black woman) would hold such an appeal to whites around the world? But it was President Barack Obama’s fresh idealism, his superb oratorical skills and his extraordinary ability to draw millions around his vision, that sealed his appeal for many. His innate and extraordinary belief in the power and possibility of change in America and people’s belief and confidence in this vision is the source of Obama’s triumph on Tuesday. It is this overwhelming possibility in the human spirit and the restoration of hope after almost a decade of war, terror and fear, that has struck a deep chord with many Americans who voted on Election Day (November 8, 2008), and felt so powerfully by peoples in every nation around the world.
His message of racial unity came from a genuine place. He too had suffered the indignity of racial prejudice but who saw the value of harwork and the power of a good education. His message is contagious, not because Barack Obama is saying anything extraordinary or novel, but because people have become exhuasted with the monotony of their socio-economic, cultural and political condition, and a lived existence of depravity, hatred and apartheid-like divisiveness. But many commentators – although firmly believing in the desire and requirement for change – have begun to wonder aloud about America’s readiness to shift deeply entrenched attitudes towards each other to realise the type of change that Obama speaks of.
Sitting down in Australia – a country still considered to be perhaps the most racist in the world, I, too, wonder whether all societies which are deeply racialised, where xenophobia is the accepted attitude and where powerful (white) groups cocoon themselves within their own nests in pretence that their commanility offers protection rather than embeds social apartheid – are ready for the kind of change Obama’s victory represents.
This continuing debate about change and a society’s readiness for change harkens back to a keynote speech I had the privilege of giving at a postgraduate dinner while I was a student at the University of Waikato in New Zealand back in October 2003. Having had many discussions about the smiliarities and differences between New Zealand and Jamaica, I had concluded then that there was a lot that Jamaica could learn from New Zealand and vice versa, and indeed a lot we could all learn from our varied and varigated societies. The trouble is, as I noted at the dinner, is that there would have to be an enabling environment, a space created, a mechanism set up to enact or effect this two way learning process.
Importantly, as many observers are pointing out in the case of America’s race problems, there has to be a readiness and a willingness to take on the challenge, a deep desire to embrace new cultures, lifestyles, peoples. Such change requires an openmindedness that tells you that your society is inescapably changing as the world itself changes or ought to change as part of the natural evolution that all societies undergo. Critically, the inhabitants of the country must possess or develop the overarching humility needed to succeed in the relearning process. So the real question must agaiun be posed – are societies that are deeply racialised ready, willing, and meek enough to undertake this process of adaptation and change? And are those from minority communities able or willing to accept the challenge of helping to teach folks in hegemonic groups such a difficult lesson, to recondition their attitudes to people of differing races, classes and religions?
I cannot speak much for other socities as well as I can speak for Jamaica and the West Indian community. ‘Despite our colonial history of oppresion and enslavement, Jamaica’s national motto, ‘Out of many, One People’ represents our desire for embrace. Our societies were constructed from a variegated mix of races, cultures, values and peoples derived through conquest, slavery, indensturehsip, colonialism and globalisation. Societies such as America, New Zealand, Australia and many within the European continent had no such nurturing. It may be said too that the opportunity for this kind of social conditioning had been squandered. It is for this reaosn that these societies seem ill-prepared to fully accept the reality of ‘openness’, multi-culturalism, and therefore change. America, however, proved on November 4, 2008 that it can grow and adapt and, importantly, CHANGE.
Three related incidents blugeoned me years ago into this sad reality in Aotearoa. The first was racial remarks made by New Zealand talkback host, Paul Holmes about former United Nations Secretary General, Kofi Annan in 2003. Holmes referred to Annan as a ‘cheeky darkie”. (This was my introduction to racism outside my own country). The second was the immediate production of caps/memorabelia to advertise, promote, commodify, proft from and institutionalise an extremely offensive racial remark. The third was the relative silence of civil society, politics and academia on this matter and the cowardly attempts by some groups to explain away/rationalise rather than outrightly condemn any semblance of racism and bogotry.
The great West Indian novelist, George Lamming, in his seminal literary work entitled ‘In the Castle of my Skin’ called upon both the coloniser and the Afro-West Indian to step into each other’s skin in order to understand their collective plight. Obama’s call for change in America replicates this call for unity, understanding and compassion. The ‘cheeky darkie’ event in Aotearoa back in 2003, the nature of the immigration debate in America, and widespread xenophobia in Western Europe reflects the widespread ignorance about the black struggle across the world. It is a struggle dismissed, unstated, effectively denied. The Jews never let us forget their holocaust, but the Black holocaust is continually forgotten: They have managed to cow us into silence while the Jews make films and build museums to solidy, embed and immortalise their suffering. Obama’s victory was a swift reminder to the world of that struggle and how far along from the cottonfields and the slave plantations black people have come.
As my Australian colleagues congratulated me on the momentous Obama victory, and while they themselves beam with glee at this positive result, I doubt they truly understood what it means for us as black folk. Unless you had artrived at your place in the world from the incredibly hideous suffering and oppression of the Middle Passage, slavery, colonialism, neo-colonialism, and neo-coloniality, one would totally misunderstand the black man’s anguish, and the deep-seated depravity that he feels – and the absolute elation he would feel for Obama; to bear witness to this journey from slavery and the plantation to the Presidency and the White House. Only Mandela’s exit from his Robben Island prison after twenty-seven years to the Presidency of South Africa could compare.
I know that when Obama ask for change, he is not only talking about racism, but this is perhaps the area requiring the most immediate change across the world. It would thus behoove my colleagues in academia, politics, civil society and the media not to be in silent acquiescence with those perpetuating racial hatred, xenophobia, apartheid and hate. When we remain silent, it means we approve of the status quo. The paradox for us as thinkers and students of a new age is that we are here to learn, reframe, theorise and diagnose our own politics, history, development, culture and values from within the context of societies which everyday clebrate their progressiveness, liberty and freedom of expression. These are soceities which laud their accomplishments in extending rights to those traditionally marginalised – women, homosexuals, prostitutes etc. But it would appear that immigrants, refugees, blacks, Asians do not fall within this bracket of rights. There can be no half-rights.
Racism is inimical to multiculturalism. It abhors the diversity many developed societies applaud and celebrate. It runs counter to the enabling environment and humbling space needed to foster change and learning between our different groups. Societies such as America, New Zealand, Australia and those of Western Europe have two options: They can either continue to be arrogant, small-minded and racist, or it can choose to excite the imagination of citizens and visitors to the uniqueness of its vast and rich plurality of cultures, peoples, beliefs, religions and values which will render it attractive to the world. It is only then that any of its group can speak of change without courting doubt, sarcasm, indifference and pity.
