Specials DIVERSITY EMPLOYERS MAGAZINE Spring 2011 - Anniversary Commemorative Issue

President Barack Obama and the Prospect for Hope Rising in America

By Obi. O. Akwani
Editor, Minorities' Global Village

February 23, 2009

I began to hold my breath and cross my fingers long before November 4 last year. I remember precisely the moment the hope truly rose in me. The primaries were just beginning for the Democrats; Senator Hillary Clinton of New York was in the fray along with Illinois' Senator Barack Obama and the other presidential contenders. I was sitting at my desk going through my emails and one of them that I read that day was from a colleague in New Orleans, Louisiana. We were comparing notes on Clinton and Obama. I had always been an admirer of Hillary Clinton, well before Obama came within my radar scope. As I watched her handle herself in public as the wife of a presidential candidate, the First Lady of America and senator, I discovered Hillary Rodham Clinton to be a woman of uncommon courage and political wisdom. She has shown herself to be a woman of intelligence with very few illusions. The idea of Hillary Clinton as the president of the United States of America was a very appealing one. But then there was Barack Obama.

The old cynical me was finding it difficult to believe that a Black man could be allowed to go far in the American presidential contest. I was more than eager to see the Republicans booted out because of their doctrinaire obstinacy, which had brought disaster to America and the world in the eight years of the George W. Bush administration (more on this later). I was therefore leaning toward Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential ticket. My colleague, on the other hand, was positively enthusiastic for Obama. Her positive enthusiasm shamed my cynicism (it can confidently be taken for a given that for me too, the idea of an African American as the president of the United States of America was a very tantalizing one). A strong good woman in the Oval Office came a close second. But I was trying to reconcile these feelings with the reality I knew and I couldn't quite get myself to accept that the old white guard would allow a Black man to become America's president. Not yet, I thought. Whether they would allow a woman, a white one at that, was also an issue. The Democrats were taking a serious gamble with these two as front runners; that made me fearful. If the Democrats misread things and got it wrong, we would be in for another four years of Republican rule in America. And that was a frightful prospect. Another win for the Republicans would boost their confidence even higher and lead them to assume that what America and the world needed was still more of the same as we had had with the George W. Bush administration. I found myself therefore  vacillating between what I saw as two unlikely prospects: Clinton and Obama. To cover up my doubts I began to comment on how remarkable it was that this woman and, especially, this Black man were the only truly serious contenders for a major party presidential ticket.

Obama especially I found astonishing. I marveled at the seeming ease and comfort with which he moved and negotiated his way through the corridors of American power. But in making these admissions, I found that my own attitude and perception had begun to change. Perhaps for American the time had come for some real change.

It was while I was at my desk with these thoughts that hope began to rise for me. To put things in better context: I was there as a student in North America during the 1980s when other Black folk made their run for the White House. The most promising of them was the Reverend Jesse Jackson, the Baptist minister, civil rights activist and orator, whose campaign to be the Democrats' presidential nominee in 1984 so electrified the country that it made many, even those of us outside of the United States, believe it was possible, in that era, for a Black man to become the US president. But it did not happen. Jackson lost the Democratic ticket to Walter Mondale in 1984 and again in 1988 he lost it to Michael Dukakis.

The specific reasons for Jackson's losses, especially in 1984, not withstanding; the disappointment of Black folk everywhere was profound. For many of us, it produced a cynicism bothering on fatalism. And we blamed it all on racism. It was a period when the more insensible situations in apartheid South Africa were being brought home to us on the television screen. In one instance, the TV magazine program, 60 Minutes, showed a white farmer and his grandfatherly Black hand; the later being forced to crawl on his bottom to approach the white farm owner. The point, for the farmer, seemed to be merely to demonstrate how far the white farmer could degrade the Black grandfather. But those television images really seared into our minds the base evil, cruelty and banal stupidity of the farmer's behavior and the system that made it possible for him to act that way freely. Nelson Mandela and the other freedom fighters in South Africa were still in jail and the apartheid regime was still defiant. Here in North America, the policies of the Reagan administration had reduced a majority of Black folk and poor whites to even greater depths of poverty. There was this sense of mockery about it all – the privileged and affluent in society seemed to be mocking the Black and the poor. Their poverty and the effects of racism – their mockers argued in newspaper columns and on radio and television talk shows – were their fault. Bell curve sociologists/statisticians became celebrities hawking theories that justified the social inequities and injustices which came with racism. For the resigned, these accusations and the atmosphere they encouraged provided reason for morbid depression and despair. But for those who hadn't quite yet given up the struggle to claim their human rights, it provided a reason for resistance and struggle.

To live with such seemingly irremediable despair was an invitation to suicide; or life-long depression; or that miraculous mental transformation that allows one to lose memory and reformulate perceptions of reality in order to enable continued existence under the existent conditions. The choice for some under these conditions is much simpler. It consists of finding the will and the appropriate method with which to fight back. And when once the fighting spirit is found, the inevitable anger in the face of obtuse racism arises. That evil thing that revels in the denial of others' humanity is met with profound anger. It is a kind of anger one never believes could be mustered until it actually manifests. It is like the wrath of God in righteous judgment. It stirs the good to action and the complaisant to wakefulness. In my opinion, it prepared us for the coming of President Barack Obama.

Sitting at my desk and answering e-mails, it dawned on me that America might just be ready for Obama. Somehow what, in my eyes, was improbable before, was now a clear possibility. Watching him perform and hearing him enunciate his ideas, it became clear that Barack Obama is a man of vision; a capable man with profound understanding of the world around him and who knows how to handle situations – everything from his association with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, to issues of racism and globalization. Certainly he was not going to be the type of president who needed others to think for him. Rather he would be able to assess what others have thought up and come up with the best solution for America and the world. Barack Obama is possessed of a fine intellect and sound morality. Watching him one sees a Black man, yes; but one also sees a man whom all America could trust to be their leader. A man whose leadership not only America but the world craved. Thus I rationalized the Obama phenomenon. The prophecy of the dreamer had come true. America has indeed risen to the challenge embodied the Martin Luther Jr. "I Have a Dream" speech delivered more than 40 years before on August 28, 1963 in Washington DC. America, a nation that once practiced slavery and race-based segregation and mistreatment of some of its citizens, has risen up and is living out the meaning of its creed that ‘…all men are created equal.’ For America race has suddenly become less important. The nation has also chosen to judge its own, not on the basis of the color of the skin, but by the content of the character, as the dreamer predicted. Americans have chosen their leader for his character, his ideas and his promises and capabilities; and their leader is a Black man.

America and the world needed change and, perhaps for the second time in modern history, America arose to the challenge of leadership for change in the world. The first time when this country showed the world the way was at the time of its creation when the founders of the American republic outlined the principles of modern democracy – individual freedom and the equality of all citizens before the law. Yes, it took it more than 200 years to make appreciable progress in the attainment of these principles, but America was in the lead in the pursuit of these ideals and American democracy has since remained a model for the world. Though the idea of human equality and universal suffrage were there in principle it took many centuries of struggle – the fight to end slavery, give women and blacks the vote and the fight for Black civil rights – before they could become reality for all. It has been a long struggle, but the fight to realize our freedoms and to maintain a safe and sane world is not yet over and it may never truly be over.

Every new era presents new challenges posed by the vaulting ambitions of men. Trouble in this world may not be rare; what is rare is the right kind of leadership to pilot us through it safely without betraying our fundamental values or creating even greater problems for us. In our time, terrorism became a challenge posed by people who wish to overturn the order of the world. There are also economic challenges arising as individuals and nations pursue legitimate goals of wellbeing, wealth and freedom.

These are challenges that call for a rethink of the way we do things. The political and economic events of the last 100-plus years have taught us a few things. One of the most important of them is that the best way to gain lasting or sustainable solutions to political problems is through the freest and broadest possible alliances. The same thing is true of economic problems. The same alliance that sustains political systems can also be used to sustain economic ones; which is why the events of the last nine years have been most unfortunate. Specifically, by taking war to Sadam Hussein in 2003 against the advice of the United Nations and most US allies, former president George W. Bush alienated many US allies and risked over-extending America and reducing American influence in the world. America’s prosecution of a near unilateral war threatened to de-stabilize the political alliance that sustains the free world and risked taking the world back to a pre-Cold-War world where individual nations and their strong-man leaders tended to act unilaterally to assert their preeminence in the perceived order of things. That tendency proved the undoing of French strong-man, Napoleon Bonaparte and resulted in the First and Second World Wars. It reduced the preeminence of European powers in world affairs and ensured the rise of America to world leadership.

On the economic front, all the convoluted talk of experts on the whys and wherefores for the current “financial meltdown” crisis cannot hide the fact that government emphasis on tax cuts and other incentives for the rich (individuals and corporations) in America contributed immensely to the looming global recession. If, as we are led to believe, the trigger for the crisis is the so-called sub-prime mortgages held mostly by ordinary Americans, then the government must take a serious look at the reasons why these Americans could not meet their mortgage obligations and why the value of these properties degraded so rapidly that America could not meet its obligations. The rich who make up less than a third of the US population are not the ones buying most of the houses and paying the mortgages; the poor and the middle classes are the ones who need to rent or buy those homes. Yet over the years the ability of this group of Americans to earn enough income to maintain their mortgages and take care of other life needs has gone down. That is the fault of a government that penalizes people that it perceives as not being in step with it.

This is a problem that President Barack Obama must now fix. It may seem like a very tall order, but there is nothing that big that it can defeat an intelligent and effective chief executive of the most powerful nation in the world. The idea that the president could bring neglected America into the fold of the American dream and do the other things – strengthen relationship with America's core allies and bring others into better cooperation with America – is the reason for rising hope in this presidency. President Obama’s success in his ambitions for the United States of America hinges on the sincerity of his belief in the core values of America and the intelligence and strength of character he brings to bear on the challenges before him. I say ‘sincerity of his beliefs’ because often times many people mistake ideological or class preferences for what is best for America. The president must get beyond ideology and class if he hopes to overcome the vested interests – ideological and business – that tend to define, at any given time, the course of the American nation and the nature of its leadership.