(Download) "Obama, Africa, And the Post-Racial (Barack Obama) (Essay)" by CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture # eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free

eBook details

Title: Obama, Africa, And the Post-Racial (Barack Obama) (Essay)
Author : CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
Release Date : January 01, 2009
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines,Books,Professional & Technical,Education,
Pages : * pages
Size : 100 KB

Description

"It was into my father's image, the black man, son of Africa, that I'd packed all the attributes I sought in myself; the attributes of Martin and Malcolm, DuBois and Mandela" (Obama, Dreams 220), writes US-America's first African American president in his "story of race and inheritance." While the presidential candidacy of Senator Barack Obama sparked numerous debates on the concept of "race," including the notion of the "post-racial," scant attention has been paid to Obama's possible treatment of the tragic history of relations between the West and Africa. The lack of any serious engagement with reparations for slavery and colonialism on the part of the U.S. and most West European governments is arguably an all too often unacknowledged sign of the ubiquitous persistence of racism and an obstacle blocking the way to a vision beyond race. If Obama has only just begun to formulate his views on reparations and has just begun to implement foreign policy that would encompass a long view of Africa and the diaspora, he already has an important, complex relationship to Africa--a profound understanding of Maafa (African Holocaust), as well as of the contemporary dynamics of neocolonialism--that merits investigation into the possibilities an internationalist, even pan-Africanist, ethos would bring to the White House. While the U.S. media was locked in debates about the presidential candidates, significant historical issues on the subject remained at the margins of political discourse. Because of the history of racism and the hegemonial status of the U.S., the victory of Barack Obama was without question one of the most important signs of social progress in modern times not only for the U.S. but also globally. At the same time, from a contemporary perspective, US-Americans remained mesmerized by a myth, which James Baldwin saw all too well as the midpoint of the "Reagan Revolution"--the first simulacral US-American regime--when he quipped that "As long as you think you're white, there's no hope for you" (90). Today, both the sciences and humanities have discredited the very concept of race--from the mapping of the genome, which demonstrates genetic variation is superficial and common variations are transracial, to the academic institutionalization of critical race theory and postcolonial theory; however, although it is widely recognized that the world's distinct cultures, not races, are responsible for difference and diversity, we are surrounded by social and political conflicts that are based on race, or the guise of race.