Black History Month on the Eve of the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election

It's Black History Month, folks. Today, renegade though it may be to some, my focus is on the peculiarities I'm observing in this 2008 U.S. presidential election season. I'll begin with a fact that may not be obvious to some observers, and the farther one is from the U.S. and our history the less obvious this fact will be. Let's call it Fact 1:

Come November, U.S. voters, after well over two centuries, still will not elect to the presidency a Black person who is the descendant of "we the people" who were enslaved not long ago in the U.S.A. These descendants are the Black American people, the group of Blacks whom Kenyan historian Ali Mazrui somehow has come to deem "undefinable" or "unmentionable", or who somehow should not be singled out n view of our long historical existence, lest in some way we might be seen as an "elite." That is his term, not mine. The other side of this issue is the current possibilitiy of electing someone to become the first Black president of a country - in this case the United States - but a person who in fact does not come from the indigenous Black population of said country. We'll call this Fact 2. Or as Mr. Mazrui informed all of us during the January symposium which was supposed to be about Blacks and abolition of the U.S. slave trade, the United States may beat Kenya by electing the first "Luo" president. Apparently Luo is the name of the Kenyan ethnic group Barack Obama's late father belonged to. Kenyan opposition leader Raila Odinga is a Luo also, hence the inside joke, though not to Americans in general or to Black Americans in particular. ...

It has now been about three weeks since the forum on the 1808 U.S. abolition of the slave trade. This is where Kenyan Swahili historian Ali Mazrui accused me, humble authoress of this blog, of, I think his words were: "trying to create a black elite." I looked up "elite" in an online dictionary, and hope Mazrui's words are preserved on the U.S. National Archives' own video of the event. He declared me 'guilty' (not his term but definitely his intent) of attempting to create this "elite" in my mere propensity to talk about my experience and my identity - family, community, cultural and historical - as a Black American. Well, now it is February and thus *officially*, woo hoo, Black History Month and I am allowed. BHM was started as Negro History Week by another Black American, Dr. Carter G. Woodson. My mother talks about meeting Dr. Woodson when she was a child and he would visit her elementary school here in Washington, DC. Dr. Woodson was from the Black Woodson family of Virginia, and certainly also was related to Virginia's White Woodsons, too. Like far too many White Americans right up to today, the White Woodsons may still be insisting on denying the blood connection. As the folks from Gaza crushing the wall separating them from food in Egypt, I am bypassing Ali Mazrui's unsolicited and recently constructed checkpoint and granting "permission" to my 'little cullud self' to feel, think, speak and write about my Black American people and our country, the USA. When Black Americans speak, and especially during Black History Month, most of us want to talk about all of our U.S. history, and not limited to the few dismembered, isolated 'glorious' parts visited by so many Americans in limited public discourse.

The other part of this making me catch my breath in this election season is the deep unwillingness to talk about Facts 1 and 2 and their real and potential meanings. In Al Gore-speak it has become evident that few other truths are more inconvenient than these, but guess what folks; they are the facts. These issues could and should be discussed intelligently, but so far are not, a) among Black Americans ourselves, b) among Black people who are U.S. nationals but from other national, and thus other ethnic, backgrounds; and c) in the general American population. These are three distinct levels of discussion. There should be, but generally is not, a broader international discussion that should include Black Americans representing opposing views on the implications of Facts 1 and 2. There are implications, for U.S. life and politics, and particularly for the Black American ethnic population of the United States. International discussions taking place now about these issues usually are not including any ethnic Black Americans. In fact, there is a widespread tendency wherein certain Blacks say they speak as "Black Americans" when in fact their own backgrounds are from societies outside the United States and thus outside the Black American community. So few Black Americans are in residence outside the U.S.A. that most of us are not aware is is going on, although it is blatantly dishonest. There are also other types of attempts to avoid, thwart, halt and demean this critical discussion which amount to both censorship and self-censorship. Most of these attempts to limit free speech are not being reported in the press, neither, as far as I can tell, are they reported in any ethnic Black press in the U.S. or elsewhere, nor in the "mainstream" press. 

In the United States being enslaved was totally about parentage - Black (and early on sometimes American Indian) parentage. Specifically it was about your mother, not your father. Our slave or free status was determined by our mother's race. If she was Black, then from before birth you too were enslaved. If your mother was White, well, even that didn't make you "white", but you were supposed to born free, or at least in theory you were. Usually it made you a free Black or free colored or free mulatto or free person of color. As a Black woman in slavery, sadly, the odds were quite high that at least some of "your children" (read: someone else's chattel property) would be "fathered" by one or more white men. That's the nice way of describing sexual assault, sexual exploitation and human breeding. But 99 per cent of the time when it came to Black children whose real fathers were white, the label of "paternity" was biological and genetic only. In fact, by law where white men availed themselves of sexual access to Black girls and women, there was no paternity in question.  In fact, I am fairly certain that even those few white men who may have wanted to have their names listed as the father of their own children were prohibited by law from doing so. There is a direct link through history in the U.S. - and in the Americas - to so many white male politicians today making their institutionally hypocritical quasi-moral political pronouncements about children "needing to be born inside marriage." What a great idea! The first book published in the United States by a Black American was about this very theme of "White Daddyhood." This book is Clotel or the President's Daughter, written by Charles Chestnutt. Charles Chestnutt's photo will soon be published on a U.S. postage stamp. As soon as you see his face you will realise that this man knew whereof he wrote. Over a dozen generations, give or take a few, Black Americans have often had "fathers" who were white males, men such as a U.S. president or state legislator; a local bigshot and other public and private figures.

In spite of all this and our national history right up to the present, perhaps no U.S. political party considers significant any of these facts - facts which are central, not marginal, to the history of Black Americans. I also realise that more than a few Black Americans and other Blacks have easily declared the same. But what do most of us, the actual descendants of the enslaved ourselves, say about these issues? I can and will speak anecdotally, but collectively we really don't know. We don't know because no one is hosting the rational, intelligent debates on the matter within the Black American community; and no one has polled Black Americans on this issue. The bottom line, however, is that just declaring that Facts 1 and 2 are "insignificant" to the national political present and future does not actually make them so.

Comments

[Don]

Marian:

I got your points...you posed the question whether people realized 2 facts...that the US still wouldn't be electing a Black person who was descended from slaves and that Obama was not from the "indegenous" (whatever that means) black population.

I just chose to point out that this conversation is probably not getting a lot of play because it really doesn't *belong* in the current electoral discussion...it is unecessarily divisive and offensive to me as a "recent" black immigrant.

We will just have to agree to disagree.

[Marian]

Don, sorry that you seem to have entirely missed my points however thank you for your feedback.

[Don]

Marian,

I have to say the elements of your blog that attempted to segment Africans recently immigrating to the US and African Americans who are descendant of slaves, did not give me a really good laugh at all but left me somewhat offended but more so scratching my head at where your argument in insisting on pointing out Obama's heritage was coming from. Is it not an argument no different than voting for, or voting against somebody based soley on their race? Or as in Africa we suffer from voting for or against somebody soley for their tribe?

"Oh he is an uncircumcised Luo and not one of us"
"Oh he is a greedy Kikuyu and will just look after his own"
"Oh he is a cunning Kamba cannot be trusted as not on of us"

I guarrantee you, the moment you begin to look away from a candidates qualifications and leadership virtues, you are dooming youself to a political mindset no different than what Kenyans are suffering from right now with their tribal politics and attitudes.

To answer your question..If were to migrate to Australia legally how would I frame my relationship to Australia's indegenous people....well no different to how I frame it to how I am here in the US...why would I be any less Australian?......Why should my children be any less Australian if they were born and raised there? If my aim was to be as Australian as I could be, why should i suffer a penalty for being an immigrant?...Should we also open this conversation up to Native American Indians then who are indegenous americans?....Should therefore all other non-Indian groups be penalized? I really don't see where you were going with that argument...

It is interesting that as a black person in this country I guess I get to "benefit" from suffering from the mainstream stereotypes of being black (by non-blacks) and now it seems from slave-descendant African Americans like yourself I shudder to even make the distinction). You are not the first person I have heard this rhetoric from....and I'm sure not the last. I personally think it is harmful and unecessary. Should slavery and its legacy remain in the American conversation...YES...should it play a factor in determining somebody's rights in America as an American....NO NO NO....Americans would not be what it is without all groups, both willing immigrants and forced migrants (slaves).

I suspect the conversation you should be championing perhaps is the case for reparations for slavery and how the legacy of slavery continues to manifest itself in current American society....but you shouldn't be penalizing current African immigrants for the evils of history we had nothing to do with. This conversation has no place in the current American election discussion, especially in relation to Obama's candidacy.

[Tracilizz]

Marian

I did not mean to ridicule your comments; however I find this line of reasoning to be offensive. I did not realize (from your initial email) that this discussion about Obama was going to head down the road of his ancestry. To debate Obama's positions on the issues deserves a vigorous conversation. I'm all for that. However, I believe if you want to make the argument that the standard of being an African American or Black in America is based upon the existence of slavery in one's gene pool -- you should be prepared to be challenged and challenged vigorously. In my opinion, your position is so narrow in scope it makes you look silly? Your argument makes you sound like a racist? It negates everything that MLK stood for and died for. What do you think about his dream? You disagree?

I think many people of mixed race will be very offended -- and they should be. I'm offended. I have mixed race children. Yes, I have slavery in my gene pool -- but what if I my father was born in another country -- not even Africa but he was black. So my child should be denied the presidency or there should be legislation to rule out those who could run based up their where their drop of black blood came from? There are MILLIONS of mixed race people in this country who didn't and don't have any choice about the location in which they were conceived to fit the parameters of what you describe as qualifying to "be black."

People can't put their genetics back in the bottle if you are Black in America.

Barak did not know his father.. his father died when he a child. He was raised by his phenomenal maternal family from Kansas that moved to Hawaii. He did not even learn of his African roots until he was adult; and met his African grandparents for the first time.

The past and the condition and presence of slavery should not define who we are people or how we define others. There are MANY Latin American, Mexican and others who have slavery in their ancestry as a result of the GLOBAL slave trade.

Just because the man at the conference was from Cuba doesn't mean that he had no ancestors who were slaves. It is more likely that he did.

Lastly - if you stand for peace -- if you truly stand for peace (this is the most important thing to me) -- you would not make, accept or perpetrate these types of rhetorical race-based arguments that insinuate that one person's blackness is better or worse than another's because of the existence of slavery in one's gene pool.. it sounds like hate. Real hate and anger.

None of the Democratic candidates STAND for this kind of hate and narrow focus. They are all way beyond this envelope.

Our country needs to grow up and heal many wounds.. and the argument you make does not elevate the conversation about who we are and what we can be; and where we've been and what we've learned about it.

Hate sucks.. and sounding like hate or anger does not elevate the conversation.

We should all be judged by the content of our character not our color..did I assume wrongly that you supported this part of Martin Luther King's dream.

Traci Wilson-Kleekamp

[Marian]

Hello Don. Thanks for "stumbling" upon Marian's Blog. I'm sure many folks will get a really good laugh hearing my writing compared to some Republicans. There are several other key issues pertinent to this discussion which are hardly ever taken seriously or discussed, and virtually never treated as "mainstream" political issues. One is the basic fact that the United States is a "white settler society", like Australia and quite a few other countries, especially all over the Americas. No. two is the question - applicable in the U.S. just as in Africa and Asia - of what "migration" and "immigration" really mean for and what effect they have on historically and institutionally disempowered local populations. The Afrodescendants of the Americas - including Black Americans - are descended (in part) from the almost forgotten survivors of the "largest forced migration" in human history - the Transatlantic slave trade. Yet to this day public policy leaders do not reference the Transatlantic or Indian Ocean slave trades as pivotal events when they talk about basic issues of "human migration", including that of today. In terms of "immigration" Christopher Columbus' navigational error is not viewed by most Blacks and indigenous people of the Americas in at all the same way it is still routinely portrayed by many countries and also white individuals, although nowadays some whites, to their credit, do offer a more honest critique of the "European adventure" into this region. If you had migrated to Australia instead of the United States, how would you frame your relationship to Australia's aborigines? While national immigration authorities do not ask this question of immigrants it remains a serious and very real question, particularly from the viewpoint of those of us who are "the (marginalised and rendered 'invisible') Global South in the North." I thank you for writing.

[Don]

I stumbled upon your blog. You have some very interesting very wide ranging articles...I was also a John Edwards follower and was sad to see him bow out. I think all the Democratic candidates have great qualities and it is refreshing and exciting to know whatever the result is of the Democractic primary, the ticket will be formidable come November.

What disturbed me about some of your writing was the undertone that I got that from your blog that being a "recent" African immigrant makes you any less African American than African Americans who are descendant of slaves. I think the tragedy of slavery should never be forgotten and played down, but to use it to further divide people of color in times when we should be looking to the future to build on what people like MLK fought for to create better futures for generations of immigrants to come. What is the purpose in keeping pointing out this distinction and now especially with the Obama candidacy? If he is a champion of issues that affect African Americans (which he is), should it matter if his ancestors were slaves, or a Kenyan student who came from Kenya out of his own pursuit for a better future?

As a "recent" African immigrant when I read your writing, it honestly evoked sentiments in me akin to what I feel when I hear many Republicans (who forget that they are descendants of immigrants themselves) who keep calling for immigration reform in the most inhuman and brutal ways. Just because their ancestors came through Ellis Island that doesn't make them any more American than immigrants who come to this country today in search for a better fuuture in the form of the American dream. The tags used to describe us new immigrants ("aliens") and the perceived attitudes that we are any less entitled to the American dream undermines the very virtues on which this contry was founded.

So, I hope to read more articles of yours that would champion your candidate with the arguments based on the merit of their service and future plans for the country. I think both barack and hillary are great for this country. I look forward to what they will do in the future as I raise my children as African Americans in the USA.