Black US President: Any Benefits For Africa?
Calling a
Black man black in the US black is no longer fashionable. African American is the tag in vogue. As it happens, the aspirant who currently leads the pack in the race for the Democratic Party’s presidential ticket is a black man. Except for his typically African kinky hair, Senator Barak Obama, like General Colin Powell, will pass for oyinbo or
white man on any African street. But with Obama’s victory in the recently-concluded
State of Iowa presidential primaries, and another one expected in the State of New Hampshire on Tuesday, Obama currently represents the hope of the black man making it to White House.
Blacks in the United States of America have a long and beleaguered history. Slave ships took them across the Atlantic to the new continent. Slave owners made use of them on plantations. Hard labour and inhuman treatments were their lot for more than four hundred years. A five year civil
war that centered around them had to be fought in the US. The war was between those who wanted to continue to own slaves and those who thought otherwise but who loved blacks no more than those who wished to continue to enslave them. The 1861-1865 American civil war settled the
matter of slavery. But not totally. Blacks were no better off for all practical purposes after the war. One whole century after the last gunshot was heard, American blacks still fought to be considered equal partners in the American project. Racial segregation policies led to the black protests of the 1950s. The matter came to a head in the 1960s. It was in the midst of it all that the likes of Rev. Martin Lurther King and Malcolm X lost their lives in the struggle for the emancipation of the American black man.
The process leading to the recognition of the black man in the US had been gradual. It has been slow. It was painfully slow. As recent as some four decades ago, a governor of one of the states in the deep south of America, George Wallace, was bold enough to ride to leadership on popular resentment for blacks among whites in his state. He even attempted to become the president of America on the same ticket. The likes of Wallace, till date, remain constant source of embarrassment to more moderate American whites. The nation, however, has since moved on. In the 1988 presidential primaries campaign season, one black man enjoyed enough popularity on the national scene to attempt to occupy the White House. Jesse Jackson is his name. He gave hope to the black race. And he came close to securing the Democratic Party ticket too. But he only came close. When the final results came in, Jackson lost to Dukakis. He, in turn, ultimately lost to George Bush Snr. and that was the end of the matter.
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