By Ali Mazrui

Prof. Ali Mazrui
Barack Obama, the US Democratic presidential aspirant, has philosophised about a new post-racial America. In his campaign, he has emphasised not merely Martin Luther King’s dream of racial equality, but a more advanced dream of post-raciality.

If Obama were elected the first Black President of the United States, that would of course not be the end of race-consciousness in America, let alone the end of racism. But it would be a major step towards a future post-racial America.

Africa gave birth to the human race; Europe cultivated racism millennia later. What has now arisen is whether America will be the final resting place of racism and race-consciousness. If Africa was the garden of Eden that gave birth to the human race, will America be the garden of Eden that inaugurates a world beyond racism?

In tracing the transition from that first African Eden cradling homo sapiens to the last American Eden cradling the post-racial age, let us briefly stop at the well-trodden path of Francis Fukuyama’s thesis about the end of history.

Fukuyama saw the end of history in ideological terms. He characterised liberal capitalism as the climax of the ideological biography of homo sapiens. He regarded political culture as being at its most triumphant when in pursuit of life, liberty and profit.

Our thesis here is a different kind of ‘end of history.’ We are seeking to trace, not the end of ideological history, but the end of racial history; not soon but hopefully before the end of this 21st century. Perhaps this is what Senator Barack Obama had in mind when he started dreaming about a post-racial America.

Ethnicity in its ‘tribal forms’ started where the human species originated: that is, in Africa. Indeed, Africa invented the human family and therefore the human clan as a unit of biological kinship. But if Africa was the cradle of the human race, the human family and the human clan, Europe eventually perfected colour-prejudice and elaborate racial discrimination.

Is the United States, under the egalitarian leadership of Americans of colour? Is the United States destined to become the final resting place of ethno-racial stratifications?

Francis Fukuyama is almost definitely wrong about the end of ideological history worldwide. But is there better evidence for the proposition that the end of racial history is on the horizon – and its final culmination will occur in the United States of America, led by the struggle of African-Americans?

The United States is still one of the most racist societies in the world. Four policemen can shoot an innocent black man 41 times in front of his own house and be acquitted of all charges.

It is inconceivable that if the policemen had shot a white man 41 times they would have gotten off scot-free. Subsequently in 2007, a black man was shot 50 times on his wedding day by three New York policemen. The victim was unarmed. The policemen have also been acquitted of all charges.

But although the United States is still so steeped in racism, most indications seem to single out this country as the most promising theatre for a racial and ethnic compromise before the end of the 21st century. This is so provided that all Americans join hands and are converted to the dream of a post-racial age.

We might call this entire odyssey from the birth of the clan in Africa to the end of racial history in the United States ‘A Tale of Two Edens’-the African Eden of human genesis, on one side, and the American Eden of human egalitarian dispersal, on the other.

Historical times

There is a sense in which all Americans, of any race, are part of the African Diaspora — since their ancestors all originated in Africa. But there is the other sense of ‘African Diaspora’ when the Diaspora refers to people of colour whose ancestors came from the African continent in more clearly defined historical times.

The generic African Diaspora is the one which makes Bill Clinton an ‘African President’ of the United States. The specific African Diaspora is the one which makes Martin Kilson, Toni Morrison, and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., African-Americans.

Africa is where the human species began. A persistent question in world history is whether the United States will become the final post-racial Garden of Eden before the end of the 21st century. Will it evolve into the nearest approximation of a genuine post-ethnic role model for the world? It will need African-Americans to achieve such a moral stature.

The Christian doctrine has had two Adams: the Adam who fathered the human species and the Adam who finally saved the human species. In the words of the 15th chapter of the First Corinthians: “Thus it is written: There was made the first man, Adam, living soul, the last Adam life-giving Spirit.”

In our more secular imagery, the first Adam was Africa-the cradle of human kind. Will the last Adam be the United States, a potential secular savior of the human race? We need to see the Edenisation of the United States as the beginning of post-raciality.

At the moment the United States is far from being a collective secular savior of the human race!

On the contrary, there are times when the United States displays the symptoms of evolving into a collective anti-Christ. Is that what Barack Obama’s pastor, Jeremiah Wright, meant when he said “God damn America”?

But, in reality, the twenty-first century brings the United States to the critical crossroads. Will this country evolve into a collective savior (the second Adam) or a collective anti-Christ? Will the United States realize its potential of becoming humankind’s post-racial Garden of Eden, completing the odyssey from Africa as the first Garden of Eden? Or will this country waste that opportunity through bigotry, prejudice, and conflict?

Our children and grandchildren as homo sapiens are burdened by the gravity of that responsibility, by the weight of that momentous choice.

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