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.

Dreams of my Father

The surprising thing about Barack Obama’s memoir, Dreams of my father, is that it’s such a cracking good read; I don’t know why this surprised me, after all, he is eloquent, a smooth and persuasive speaker with a knack for soundbites that capture the popular mood. Yet, the emotional intelligence that courses through the book, is not one I, and I suspect, most people would expect from a modern day politician; it has the tone of a man suddenly aware of the physical power he wields, both aware of it, terrified by it and determined to wield it for good. On one level, I couldn’t help but think this was a very good myth, a powerful story of the creation of a hero, like the odyssey, a story of a prince learning the limits of himself before he returns to his kingdom to rule; but then I remember that this was written before his momentous, historic campaign for president, before he became the Obama of Yes, we can.

I think it had so much more force for me, because it came before, because it was written at the stage in life, where as he says somewhere in his book (we do the things we tell ourselves we need to do to grow up), and exists now as a record of how a man goes from that to where he is now. I don’t have any illusions of grasping for the same kind of power Barack Obama has reached out for, yet in reading his book, the journey from taking himself – a confused, fucked up, mixed race kid to the security of campaigning as a post-racial candidate, I find a map of sorts. It involves boxing with shadows, and wrestling with demons; if he does nothing more than run for president of the United States, Barack Obama has already achieved a great deal – millions of mothers can point to him, as his own mother did with the role models, of King, Baldwin et al and say yes, you can too.