The Return of the Africans

First of all, whenever I see pictures like this of President-Elect Obama looking brown and dignified, I find myself involuntarily uttering “This is our President!” in pride and amazement.

Obama is now the grandest example of a very interesting trend that I noticed some time ago.  The children of African immigrants, or those from the wider African diaspora, have come to America and are succeeding in typical American immigrant fashion.  I’ve observed this phenomenon in music, with musicians like TV on the Radio and Dragons of Zynth, in acting, in sports (which I do not follow closely), in my personal life (I have good friends who fit this description), and now finally in politics.

For the original African-Americans this is a bitter sweet turn of events, and one that I think requires more analysis.  I can tell you without a doubt that no one from the civil rights movement predicted this.  The movement has always nurtured a vision of Pan-Africanism that presumed we, the descendants of slaves, would be the ones going back to the continent, and elsewhere, to blaze the trail of progress and justice.  Although Africa is more of a basket case than ever, it seems more likely those trails will be blazed by African-Americans of more recent and direct African descent.

I believe his phenomenon renders the final verdict on whether or not the failure of America’s slave descendents to achieve broadly defined success, after the most recent crest of the rebellion in the 1960s-early 70s, is due primarily to external or internal factors.  With the success of people who look even more African than we do, there is no doubt it is the latter.  It places in stark relief the absolutely devastating impact that slavery and the subsequent general repression has had on the the very core of our being.  Our sense of self is tattered, misshapen- and our community rarely operates as an actual community.  The inheritance of our experience in this country weighs heavily about our necks, mocking and dull.   These are our greatest impediments to progress, greater than all others can be, because only people with the exact opposite attributes can overcome the obstacles before us.

I am inspired by the rise of Obama, as are the vast majority of the great slave rebellion’s progeny, and indeed- a great majority of all Americans.  However, I hope we original African-Americans take this occassion to turn a critical eye on ourselves and re-embrace the notion that our own behavior will ultimately determine the outcome of this struggle.  I hope we no longer feel it necessary and prudent to tell our children that they cannot be a black Bill Gates because white folks won’t let them.  My only response then was “They can’t stop me”, but now I can add to that “Yes We Can”.  Thanks Obama, I needed that.

Triumph!

Our man won!  Like so many of my fellow citizens, I am feeling proud and hopeful.  Unfortunately for us all, there are some huge immediate problems and structural issues that he will be forced to address.  Noted economist Jeffrey Sachs has an excellent and sobering rundown in this article.

Dazed and Disenfranchised

I am sitting in the basement of a cafe at Geary and Leavenworth, using their wireless Internet.  The owners are probably Lebanese- or similar (apologies).  A classical music station is blasting.  The room most resembles a Turkish cave with plastic plants.  They just switched the TV from Al Jazeera’s election coverage to CNN’s.  One of the patrons just declared that he voted for Obama.  The owner and staff periodically check the screen with much interest.  They appear to be speaking Arabic, and the only word I understand is “Obama”.  Everywhere I’ve gone in the past few days I’ve overhead that name- Obama.

Of course, I also intended to cast my vote for Obama in this historic election, but my patriotic intentions where usurped by the bureaucrats of my backwater home town.  As is the norm in this country, the most sacred right of suffrage is administered by the small-minded partisans at the Champaign County Clerk’s Office, who obviously do not take this duty as seriously as one might expect.  Or perhaps, being the zealous Republicans they are, take it quite seriously as a most convenient lever of tyranny.  Let me recount, for the record, how I came to be disenfranchised by my fellow citizens.

I first requested an absentee ballot from the Clerk’s Office at the end of September, via a website they had established for that purpose.  Since I had just returned to the States and was not certain as to where I might end up, I directed them to mail the ballot to my Miami forwarding address.  A few days later, I was notified by email that I was no longer registered to vote in Champaign County.  I was not surprised about this, as I had left Illinois in 2000 and had not returned for any significant length of time until December 2006.  I assumed I had simply been purged from the voter rolls.

I sent in my mail-in voter registration form as instructed on October 6th, 2008, the post mark deadline being the next day October 7th.  I gave it a few days and then re-submitted my absentee ballot request, directing the clerk’s office to mail it in care of a good friend in San Francisco, where I was now committed to remain at least through election day.

Having not received my ballot or any correspondence by October 27th, I sent an inquiry to the clerk’s office functionary who originally contacted me.  Having received no response by the next day, I called the office and spoke to a very brusque older white lady who was undoubtedly overweight and wearing some variation of horn rimmed glasses (one can tell these things even over the phone).  Her name was Rena.  Rena informed me that I should not have been told to re-register, as I had been registered since 1996.  She continued on, explaining that my re-registration was processed October 20th.  Most unfortunately, my ballot was not mailed out until that very day, October 28th.  And to the Miami address.  When I asked when the ballot would need to be returned, Rena said she must have it “in her hands” by that Thursday, October 30th.  I didn’t point out the obvious reality that it was highly unlikely I would even receive my ballot by Thursday, let alone get it from Miami, to San Francisco, and back to Champaign in that same brief period.  Rena seemed wholly unperturbed and rather smug about this reality.  I thanked her, and hung up the phone, a bit dazed.

As my confusion turned to anger, I sent an email to the Clerk’s Office, with a complete account of all correspondence and a time line of the unfortunate “process”.  In the message I also felt it necessary to make all manner of legal threats, although I lack the means to carry through with them.  I have yet to receive a response, but my ballot arrived via US Postal Service in Miami yesterday, November 3rd.

I can take some solace from the fact that all the votes of Champaign County will barely affect one way or the other Senator Obama’s presumed victory in his home state.  I can take some solace in the news that the Presidential election appears to be over save for the celebrating.  There is solace in these things.  But the raw fact remains that I was not permitted to be part of this history, to have my opinion duly counted, not only in the important matter of who will lead the US executive branch, but also what manner of men and women would join or be excused from the many, many mundane representative offices at all levels of government.  All the way down to the small-minded partisans at the Champaign County Clerk’s office.

I do not understand my fellow citizens who seem so cavalier about the immense number of votes not cast, or indeed cast out, due to simple incompetence or wicked purpose.  Those so alienated and numb to the massive modern superstructures of man’s rule over his fellow man that they are willing to be led like sheep to slaughter with nary a protest.  Do they not understand that the very foundational principle of this Republic is that the people are sovereign?  Do they not understand that this sovereignity is exercised by electing, through the vote, a government of representatives who’s only legitimate authority derives from this process?  I, for one, have sworn to always protect myself from wolves.