As Mexico’s drug violence spills into the U.S. and officials warn tourists of the danger, Mexican officials say more than 90 percent of all drug trafficking weapons are obtained from dealers and gun shows in the U.S. NBC News’ Mark Potter reports. — [ READ MORE ]

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Millions of Americans look forward to the inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama, he represents the rich ethnic diversity of America. In a post racial America anyone with the drive, determination, intelligence and eloquence of Obama can achieve greatness in their realm of expertise.

The vast majority of Americans, Republicans and Democrats, look upon Barack’s triumph as a symbol of hope and progress. But there are a few Neanderthals who don’t like our democracy’s rainbow of diversity, they prefer the monochrome hues of the 1950’s.

These reactionaries are terrifed that in a few years our country will be less than 50 percent white. They focus most of their vitriol on the hardworking undocumented workers who come from Mexico and South America. But their hatred can’t overcome the deomographic trends, and their racism won’t stop progress.

They portray Hispanic undocumented workers are criminals who come to America only to take advantage of our liberal social welfare programs. This is a bald-faced lie, migrants are the embodiment of the Protestant work ethic, and they contribute to the greatness of our nation.

Right-wingers are always railing against the “illegal immigrants” who are flooding our country with drugs and violence. There are millions of Americans, of all political persuasions, who eagerly consume these illicit narcotics. Mexico and the United States are responsible for the drug problem that plagues both countries.

Mexico has a right to complain about the guns that are being smuggled into Mexico from the United States.

“One priority of Mr. Calderón’s government is to reduce the number of real guns in Mexico, the vast majority of which are smuggled into Mexico from the United States. That is likely to be high on the agenda when Mr. Calderón meets with President-elect Barack Obama on Monday in Washington.” — The New York Times

Mexico is in the middle of an epic battle with drug cartels that has taken the lives of tens of thousands of soldiers, judges, politicians and civilians. And yet I don’t hear Mexican politicians blame our country for their predicament, and stereotype us as violence prone because we flood their country with lethal firearms.

The election of an African American president is not an aberration, it’s the beginning of a trend. We will elect politicians who look like the America of the 21st century: A multi-cultural and ethnically diverse democracy.

I look forward to the day in the near future when racists and reactionaries will be looked upon with disdain, and they will be in the same category as those who insist that the world is flat.

These racists are enamored with the past, but I thrilled with the present where we have an African American president, and I look forward to the future when the great majority of Americans will warmly embrace the undocumented workers who are part of the American landscape.

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Reference: Arming the Drug Wars (by James Verini) — The U.S. has pledged more than $1 billion to help Mexico win its war on drugs. But even as the body count rises above 10,000, most of the guns that do the killing — Colt .38 Supers and big-bore Barrett rifles among them?keep pouring in from the U.S.
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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.