Over the past several months I've talked with about sixty journalists about the issues of ethnicity (which is neither colour or "race"), representation and the lack of it, and history - particularly the history of the USA and every other society in the Americas, Europe - including Britain - and Africa, which is a continent, not a country. In talking with journalists, historians and others there are fundamental and serious concerns about this election cycle which, despite the hype and in very basic and uncomfortable ways, is like every previous U.S. presidential election. What I find most astounding is that with so much "free" press running around - domestic and international - almost no one is willing to go on-record to ask, acknowledge or discuss, in clear language whether English, Kreyol, Spanish, Arabic or Choctaw, what it means that in 2008 the U.S. continued its erstwhile tradition of never nominating or electing an American Indian or a Black American - a descendant of those enslaved in the USA. Posed against election hoopla versus an almost overwhelming need for decency and accountability right around the world, what does, or what should, this fact mean?
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