By: MICHAEL ERIC DYSON
Professor, Georgetown University

Race Has Affected the 2008 Presidential Election

There is little question that race has affected the 2008 presidential election, though often through inference and innuendo.

Initially, Barack Obama’s historic quest for the highest political office in the land was rife with suspicion from white and black quarters.

Eventually, millions of black voters signed on to his campaign after relinquishing skepticism about his being black enough and after he proved in Iowa that he could win over white voters.

Educated white voters followed suit, though Obama has had a far more difficult time effectively wooing working class white voters.

That has to do in large part with the effective, if cynical, effort of conservative activists to falsely paint Obama as an unpatriotic figure who pals around with terrorists because he is secretly a Muslim.

The manipulation of the public image of Obama as a subversive presence who hates the nation rests on racially coded inferences about unreliable blackness as it tinges the face of American politics.

Few quarters in American life have been tolerant of the complex black identities that constitute African American communities.

Republicans — Backward, Bigoted, Racist and Nativist FILTH of America

As a result, a punishing and narrow range of stereotypes have obscured the fact that black struggle for social equality and racial justice was never antithetical to the best interests of the nation.

Because black people loved the nation so much, they fought hard to make sure that it lived up to the true meaning of its creed, as Martin Luther King said.

Barack Obama represents both the maturing of black American politics, and the increased willingness of significant portions of the white population to embrace a worthy black presidential candidate.

Whether that is sufficient to propel Obama to the presidency remains to be seen. Still I am cautiously hopeful that it is.

[Enlarge] About The Author: Michael Eric Dyson (born October 23, 1958, in Detroit, Michigan) is an American writer, radio host, and professor at Georgetown University. Dyson has a Ph.D. in religion from Princeton University. He is an ordained Baptist minister. Dyson taught at DePaul University, Chicago Theological Seminary, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Columbia University and Brown University, before going to the University of Pennsylvania in 2003. There he was the Avalon Professor of Humanities. Since 2007, Dyson has been University Professor of Sociology at Georgetown University, teaching courses in theology, English, and African American studies. A University Professorship is said to be the highest position that a faculty member can have at Georgetown. From January 2006 to February 2007 Dyson was the host of a daily syndicated talk radio program, The Michael Eric Dyson Show, which aired on weekdays from 10AM to 1PM (EST) on the Syndication One Radio Network (owned and operated by Radio One). He is also a regular commentator on National Public Radio, CNN, and the HBO TV program Real Time with Bill Maher. Dyson is best known for his commentary on American culture, particularly as it pertains to African Americans. Dyson uses the terms “Afristocracy” and “Ghettocracy” to describe a bifurcation in American black society. He is also a leading scholar on hip-hop music and the culture that surrounds it, as well as its roots in African and African-American cultures and influence on American popular culture. Dyson is well known to repeat his famous line, “Go Ahead. Axe me a question.”

Poet Aime Cesaire
Poet Aime Cesaire of Martinique passed away last week. He was an iconic co-founder of Black consciousness, long before Steve Biko.

Surprisingly, of all the non-French speaking African heads of state, only South Africa’s Thabo Mbeki sent a message of condolences to the Cesaire family.

Why the silence?

In the realm of ideas, Mbeki has been particularly adept at provoking public debates. He did so in 1996 when, as the country’s vice president, he stood before the South African Parliament and proclaimed: “I am an African“. Shortly thereafter, he launched an equally vibrant discourse on African Renaissance. Two years ago, he raised issues relating to Afrocentricism. It dominated public interest for months.

It would have been ridiculous for any other African president to stand before his Parliament and declare to be African.

In White-ruled SA, however, indoctrination against Africa was so thorough that countless Black South Africans believed that Africanness was something to be scorned. Even after political liberation, it was necessary to keep reminding them that they were indeed Africans — that South Africa is part of Africa. Hence the imperative for Mbeki’s proclamation: “I am an African”.

Evidently, it was part of Mbeki’s unwritten job description to confront the arrogance of Eurocentricism by affirming the validity of Africanness. This preoccupation thrust him into the world of ideas regarding African identity. In this course, it was inevitable to encounter the ideas of Cesaire, hence, Mbeki’s affection for the great poet.

In context of colonialism, English-speaking global Africa was dominated by political means.

British form of colonialism involved actual control, direct or indirect. This systems denigrated Africans, it was perceived as racist and English-speaking Africans transformed their anti-racist sentiments into political movements that revolted and brought about independence to Africa.

Conversely, the French colonial policy was based on assumption of French cultural superiority. Black French colonies responded culturally by questioning the cultural condescension of assimilation. To challenge the arrogance, they embarked upon romanticising blackness and its attributes.

It was at the early stages of this process that Cesaire coined the term negritude. Leopold Senghor, Senegal’s founding-president, later expanded the view intellectually and popularised it.

Assimilated Black French-speaking intellectuals in France in the 1930s encouraged themselves to ask, are we really French? The answer was clear: “We have never been French, we are not French and we shall never be French”.

While at first they had been so proud to be assimilated, they now declared war on the same assimilation policy. By the late 1950s, they were demanding political independence from France in order to safeguard their culture, their negritude.

The bid to enhance Africa as a maker of history, Afro-centricity, has taken two forms. The first is Gloriana Afro-centricity that emphasises the great and proud accomplishments of people of African ancestry. These embrace castle builders, those who built the walls of Zimbabwe or the castles of Gondar in India or the sunken churches of Lalibela in Ethiopia; many would include those who built the pyramids of Egypt as well.

The other is Proletariana Afro-centricity that emphasises the sweat of Africa’s brow, the captured African as a co-builder of modern civilisation – the enslaved as creator, the slave as innovator. Slaves helped build the industrial revolution in the western world and fuelled capitalist transformation of the northern hemisphere.

What about the colonised peoples, as victims and builders of the industrialised modern world? African resources have been used for factories that have transformed the contemporary world. Without those resources today’s global economy would be vastly different.

Negritude is a kind of proletarian Afro-centricity, at least when it indulges in romantic primitivism. Negritude salutes the African cattle herder not the African castle builder. To that extent, it is part of Afro-centricity Proletariana.