Obama and racism in the West: What does it mean for Africa?

African peoples of all backgrounds, academics and governments have long been concerned about the image of Africa in the West. More recently, countries are being encouraged to re-brand themselves for the Western market and entrepreneurs, from a place of wild animals and semi-naked tribal peoples, to modern spaces where business can be conducted with efficiency and in languages that can be understood by foreigners. How does the re-branding of Africa as an entrepreneurial space fit with the persistently negative image of the continent’s people? In most of the world, and in particular in the West, these images have deep historical roots, and were used to justify slavery, colonialism, accumulation by dispossession and the continued unequal and ‘unfair’ trade relations that exist between Africa and the West. Despite hundreds of years of effort by Africans living in the West to challenge these images, they continue to be propagated. To many in the West, the only way for the continent’s image to improve is for Africa to take hold of its own destiny – to validate the lives of its people through improved access to those services which protect the human. However, a surprising alternative is the rise of people of African descent to positions of power in the West.

The election of the Obama family to the US presidency caught right-wing and liberal America, if not the world, by surprise. In the US, the right-wing press appears determined to force him prematurely out of the presidency. There the so-called ‘birther movement’ are trying to convince people that Obama is not an American. Obama is facing fierce criticism from all sides, while battling to deliver even the most minimal improvement to the lives of middle-income and poor Americans. For some sections of the Left, Obama is no different from former President George W. Bush. However, the Obamas’ presence, intellect, dignity and ordinariness have brought the humanity of black people to the world stage, and made its denial by racists even more difficult. Their presence challenges and destabilises notions of whiteness and white supremacy. The response has been a growing revisionist movement evoking historically derogatory and racist images of black people in Western culture as a way of reinforcing white supremacy. Some recent knee-jerk reactions are:

- The British Broadcasting Corporation’s (BBC) willingness to give the platform to a racist political party in the form of the British National Party (BNP) to express its policy of racial hatred. The broadcaster’s argument is that this is a legitimate political party, with local and European representatives, and that they have a right in a democracy to express their views. What the BBC does not realise is that they also have a responsibility not to cause harm to their non-white licence payers. One can be appalled by the policies of a political party on healthcare, education and even immigration, but a party whose modus operandi is race hatred, that attacks the essence of your being, is the ultimate threat. Did the BBC display its usual helpline message for people who are disturbed by the viewing after the broadcast? Would the BBC have sanctioned the role that Radio Télévision Libre de Milles Collines (Mille Collines Free Radio and Television) played during the Rwandan genocide?
- A spate of minor celebrities spouting racist remarks and backtracking when they are accused of racism. This has been a common practice in British culture, where the popular view is that hardly anyone in Britain is racist, even fascist parties, and if black people complain it’s ‘political correctness gone mad’. Having a sensible debate about the racism which permeates British culture and institutions is often blocked by the hostility of those seeking to protect their right to be racist – or to have a joke!
- The anxiety that the virulently anti-immigration Italian President Silvio Berlusconi faced in having to confer with a black man as an equal led him to draw attention to Obama’s skin colour as ‘suntanned’.
- On 15 October 2009, an Associated Press journalist, Liz Sidoti, described Obama as ‘obnoxiously articulate’.[1] It seems that some Americans are more comfortable with an inarticulate white man, AKA George W. Bush, than an ‘uppity’ black man.
- Another reaction is to invoke black stereotypical images from the past. Recently, the fashion magazine French Vogue blacked-up a white model and dressed her in tribal clothing.[2] This follows renewed criticism of the lack of black models on the runways and more so the covers of women’s magazines. Many people claim that they cannot see what is offensive. For a magazine that does not use black models it can only be ‘sick joke’. There is no doubt that this was a carefully planned project to cause a reaction or to make a statement.
- Of course none of the above compares to the numerous threats against Obama’s life by white supremacists – a reported ‘30 threats per day’ or ‘over 400% more than his predecessors’.[3]

One can only expect more racial ‘incidents’ as the capitalist depression, combined with the challenge to white supremacy, forces the ‘outing’ of many closet racists and the promotion of racist imagery.

US academics, noting the significance of race in American society, have started to address the Obama effect scientifically, in a new and growing research area termed ‘Obama studies’ – looking at the effects of Obama on racial attitudes in the US. The findings are varied, such as, for example, whites who voted for Obama are 'more likely to vote for whites in the future’, having felt that they have proven their ‘moral credentials’ by voting for Obama.[4] Some of the researchers hope that this may encourage white Americans to become more comfortable with discussing race. However, the reaction to Jimmy Carter’s accusation of Obama’s critics as being motivated by race, even by Obama himself, suggests that America has not yet reached that conversational moment.

What the Obamas’ presence means for Africa, militarily, politically and economically has been debated in these pages. There has also been some acknowledgement of their symbolic presence for what it means for a white America coming to terms and overcoming its slavery past. Some white commentators have even claimed that the US has entered a post-racial era, where racism was no longer a factor in defining who you are. I don’t think many African-Americans would have supported that claim, and certainly not those affected by revenge killings after Obama’s election and inauguration.

Can we unpack the symbolic meaning of the Obamas’ presence on the world stage, bearing in mind what a close friend said after Obama’s inauguration: ‘There are many black presidents – what’s special about this one?’? To begin with, he is the president of a declining, yet still powerful empire. He is the president of a country where racial politics simmers below the surface, despite legislative gains; where one in nine African-American men between the age of 20 and 34 are imprisoned and where, according to the Indian Nobel laureate Amartya Sen in his book 'Development as Freedom', the life expectancy of the average African-American man is well below that of men in Kerala state, India. However, I want to look at three symbolic significances of the Obama presidency. To Africans on the continent, where ‘being black’ is not a preoccupation, the following might seem rather surprising.

Firstly, Obama and his family symbolise the ability to transcend narrow racial categorisations in order to unite people for the common good. They challenge the patriarchal systems headed by white alpha-males and show non-white people, especially in North and South America and Europe, the possibilities of transcending the life-paths that have been written for them and a future where they cannot be excluded or bypassed. It may no longer be necessary for Afro-centrics to unearth the contributions that black people have made to Western society and to modernity – they can no longer be written out of history.

Secondly, on a personal level, the Obamas represent and give credence to the sanctity of the black family – despite Barack Obama’s attack on the absentee black fathers of African-American society – and the fact that everywhere there are black men and women who form stable, loving and supportive relationships. The image of the dysfunctional black family is one which is used by Western society to denigrate black people, and by black people themselves as an excuse for their personal failure – often not of their own making – to negotiate a more life-sustaining existence in capitalist societies.

Finally, for black women, the Obama family are particularly important – they give them their own fairytale. Black women in the West, especially those who survived slavery, were not represented by wider society as sufferers; instead, like their men, they were potential troublemakers, ready to take up arms to liberate their people. However, the media, in the form of early Hollywood films, prefers to represent them as fat and asexual mammies whose duty was to serve a white family, especially a white mistress, as the character depicted in the movie ‘Gone with the Wind’. It was the hatred of everything black, and the denigration of the features of black womanhood as ugly that made the 1960s dictum ‘black is beautiful’ such a revolutionary statement. Since enslavement, black women have always sought to liberate themselves from the brutality of enslavement and from the patriarchal structures and misogyny which black men sought to impose in their post-slavery households. When women fought to hold their families together amid this onslaught, they were labelled ‘superwoman’. Back in the 1970s, Michele Wallace in Fahamu Trust and a fellow of Jesus College, University of Oxford.
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NOTES
[1] Originally posted on Ari Melber’s blog 15.10. 2009, and reproduced in The Nation 'http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion/484939/ap_asks_if_obama_is_obnoxi…
[2] Hannah Pool, ‘ Why blacking up is the worst kind of fashion crime: Has French Vogue gone too far in its shoot of Dutch model Lara Stone?’, The Guardian Newspaper, 14 October 2009.
[3] See ‘Why the Democracy Corp Study on race doesn’t pass the smell test’, http://Daily Kos.com
[4] See D. Effron, J. Cameron & B. Monin (2009), ‘ Endorsing Obama licenses favouring whites’, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 81, 33–43 ; also cited in Chicago Tribune’ article by Richard Fausset, ‘Studies of racial attitudes grapple with Obama Factor’, 23.8.2009