SSAY
Topic: "Madam," Obama warned "I hate a wasted journey--I am African."
"Madam," I warned,
"I hate a wasted journey--I am African."
"HOW DARK?" . . . I had not misheard . . . "ARE YOU LIGHT
OR VERY DARK?”
Considerate she was, varying the emphasis--
"ARE YOU DARK? OR VERY LIGHT?"
-Wole Soyinka “Telephone Conversation”
Meet Barack Hussein Obama II, presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party of the United Sates of America; a man who is to contest the 2008 American Presidential Elections and not without a cause. Barack Obama, a graduate of the University of Columbia, as well as Harvard Law School has worked for his state Illinois for eight years, has also taught at Chicago Law School. A man with impressive credentials, excellent experience at field work, a certain elusive charisma that is de rigueur to American Presidents and a sound political campaign, Barack Obama has it all to be the next American President.
Or does he?
Meet Barack Obama; a man of mixed-race with a Black Kenyan for a father and a White Kansas lady for a mother; a man who isn’t a WASP (White Anglo Saxon Protestant) and a man who has proudly flaunted his Kenyan roots. After presenting the icons of America’s two biggest weaknesses (discrimination against women and Blacks), the Democratic Party challenged USA to make a choice. Racism won over sexism and Hilary Clinton had to satisfy herself with a defeat. Barack Obama, the other nominee, marched on. And now he faces John McCain in the Big Race. Will he win? Will he lose? That is a lock to which only the Americans have a key to. But the time draws closer when America will have to come out in the open about its attitude regarding racism.
That Obama should win simply because he’s Black is not acceptable. But that he should lose for the very same reason is not acceptable at a level too. If America’s basis for casting vote is campaign policies, then Obama is already the...