We have overcome....

Ambition is always grasped with the hazy reach of desire. The desire to transform, influence, create usually begins unclearly; just a beating in the breast, an anxiousness to do something, be somebody. It is either nurtured or crushed by the measure of its owner’s force, by their confidence, or the mirror the world holds up to them. For a long time, in the United States of America, and by consequence or in similarity, the rest of the world - the ambitions of black peoples have been constrained by the ever present concern that they won’t let it happen. It is for this fact that in 1972, when Shirley Chisholm declared audaciously her candidacy for the United States presidency, her campaign was humoured, to put it politely, and laughed at, to be blunt. Yet, the audacious hope that led her, and Jesse Jackson and countless other leaders, thinkers and martyrs to push their weight and mind against the weight of entrenched prejudice and centuries of oppression has borne fruit.

On November 5th 2008 we lived to see a black president-elect of the United States of America, the same country that legislated less than three hundred years ago that black men and women were three-fourths of a human being. For this moment alone, it is good to live in these times. Yet in many ways, it illustrates the world as it is. The world has not suddenly changed the odds it puts on the lives of black men and women, and the intractable problems of Africa and Africans have not been resolved because a ‘son of the soil’ is on his way to the white house. It has however woken up to the fact that we can alter history. The structures of power that would have made it impossible for Barack Obama to be president forty years ago can be and have been challenged. Now, it’s time for that slow revolution called ‘African Progress’ to begin.