What is America to me?
Thoughts on the US Presidential elections

October 22, 2008 By Mukoma Wa Ngugi
Countee Cullen, a black American poet, once asked: What is Africa to me?

http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/19201

excerpt:

With the US elections just days away, and Africans holding their breath, fingers mostly crossed for Obama, I find I have to reverse the question and ask: What is America to me?

Why should the outcome of the US presidential elections matter to Africa?
What my heart feels and what my mind knows are at loggerheads. My heart, nationalistic and black, beats with the ups and downs of the Obama campaign. But my mind, at times cynical but always searching for the bottom line of things, knows an Empire is not run on good will, that there are no gentle giants and that history is not erased overnight.

What is America to me?

I want to reconcile my heart and mind. I want to speak freely.

I want to ask some hard questions because Obama, with his unflinching analysis of race relations and the state of the US in the world, invites us to do the same.

What is America to me? I have to begin with Obama.

I did not fully understand Obama's candidacy and its historical importance until I saw him speak in Cleveland, Ohio this past February. In person, he is rather thin and not very tall, and surprisingly his unscripted talk delivery is not fluid in a Martin Luther King Jr. style. He halts unexpectedly as he searches for words. His charisma, I thought, is not embodied in him - rather it is embodied in his vision - that in this time of war and economic turmoil, Americans want to believe that they can do better.

It occurred to me that Obama, a mosaic of cultures and experiences, is probably the first political leader to fit snugly into the skin of globalization, with all its promise and contradictions. He is one of those rare historical figures that come to embody a historical period and offer it promise while inspiring hope.

And we from Africa, as well as Latin America and Asia, are responding to that hope and promise.

But more than that Obama has created a rare opportunity for us to reflect upon ourselves as peoples and nations. As an African I ask: were I to hold up Obama as a mirror to reflect Africa, what would I see?

I would see an Africa that knows how to struggle, - a continent of hope and promise; where Africans defeated colonialism and apartheid, and have given notice to the last of its dictators.

But I would also see Africans blinded by ethnicity, and who wear religion so tightly that it is a straightjacket of madness;

I would see Africans plagued by an intense lack of curiosity about the world at large and who relate to international politics through foreign aid;

I would see an Africa where, in spite of the promises of globalization, poverty is on the rise. And other measures of progress, like child mortality, show that things are getting worse in Africa while they get better in other parts of the world.

I would see an Africa that has as yet to deal with colonial legacies such as land distribution, and where white skin is still more valued than black life;

I would see an Africa that is encouraging caricature democracies, where countries like Zimbabwe can learn from Kenya that the vote does not count, where democracy becomes a cover for injustice and plunder;