BARACK OBAMA: RACE AND THE RACE part 1

By Uchenna Osgiwe

A story centers on balloons. A black lad was watching a man who was sending balloons of different colors soaring into the air. First he sent a white balloon which soared straight into the air, and then a yellow one, then a red one, all soared into the air. The lad approached the man and asked if a black balloon could also soar into the air. Presently the man releases a black balloon which soars like the others straight into the air. Looking knowingly at the lad, the man said: “it’s not the color boy; it’s what is inside that makes it rise”.

This story comes to my mind each time I read about arguments that Barack Obama’s skin color, or more precisely, that race in America, is going to be an impediment to the election of Obama as the 44^th president of the United States of America. In June 2007, Larry King asked Oprah Winfrey if she believed a black man could become the president of the USA! A racist question, if you asked me. In his best selling memoir: Dreams from My Father, appropriately subtitled A story of Race and Inheritance, Three Rivers Press, New York, 2004, (referred to as Dreams, followed by page numbers, for the rest of this essay,), Obama tells the story of how he once spoke to a sixteen year-old boy who was going through a crisis. He was taking him to the gym at the University of Chicago, on the way he asked the boy if he was still thinking of joining the air force. The boy said that he was going to stay in Chicago, arguing that air force would never let a black man fly a plane. Barack said he looked at him crossly and asked, “Who told you that mess?” The young boy shrugged and answered, “Don’t need somebody to tell me that. Just is, that’s all.” Obama counseled the boy thus: “Man, that’s the wrong attitude. You can do whatever you want if you’re willing to work for it.” To this the boy replied: “Yeah, well…how many black pilots do you know?” (Dreams 254) This story depicts the predicament of many blacks in the United States and around the world today. Many of them still believe that certain things are not for them, simply because of the color of their skin. I remember once Condi Rice was asked if she would run for president and she gave this revealing reply: “I know my place.”

The tragedy is that, as Charles Taylor, the renowned Canadian philosopher said, for centuries black people have been told over and over that they are inferior to whites. They have been made to feel inferior by the laws and attitudes and coercive powers of white people. And because it has gone on for so long, some of them have come to internalize this diminution, nay negation of their persons. So, their own self depreciation has now turned out to be the most potent weapon against their own emancipation.

But what is race? Race is defined variously as a group of persons or a population related by common descent or heredity. Then there is racialism which is the theory that human races exist and that the biology that gives rise to the phenotypes that permit racial classification also gives rise to essential qualities such as intellectual, spiritual, ethical, and aesthetic dispositions. When racialism is accompanied with the belief that one’s membership of a particular race makes one superior to those of another race, it is racism. Racism in turn is typically accompanied by the belief that one’s racial superiority entitles one to oppress those believed to be racially inferior. The theories of race, racialism and racism, which purport that one race is in any way superior to other races and therefore deserves preferential treatment, are flat wrong. At the end we all really belong to just one race: the human race, and that’s what really matters. Or is it? 

Why do I say that these racial theories are wrong? First of all, there has been no scientific proof for any of them. None! They are lies that have been told over and over that many people don’t even stop to question their veracity anymore. A good example is the way black and white are entered in dictionaries. In Dictionary.com, we read this for white: Decent, honourable, or dependable; auspicious or fortunate; morally pure; innocent; without malice; harmless: white magic; etc. And for black we read this: Soiled or stained with dirt; pessimistic; dismal; harmful; inexcusable: a black lie; boding ill; sullen or hostile; threatening: black words; black looks; without any moral quality or goodness; evil; wicked: His black heart has concocted yet another black deed; indicating censure, disgrace, or liability to punishment: a black mark on one's record; marked by disaster or misfortune: black areas of drought; Black Friday; etc. These stereotypes have generally been accepted as given. 

Race was a theory developed by western Europeans beginning in the 1400s as a result of their global expansionist ambitions. Racism, (because it was originally a white supremacist idea), places the white on top and the black at the bottom of the scale, while the other racial identities occupy positions near the top or close to the bottom according to the way the racists designate them. The foundation for racism was laid when European sea travel linked the Old and New Worlds together in the late 1400s. It was the ocean-borne migration and forced transportation of Europeans and Africans into the Americas that first brought together large numbers of people who looked very different from one another. Yet, before the 1500s, slaves who worked the plantations in the Americas were both black and white. Discrimination then was not based on the color of one’s skin. For instance, the ethnocentric ancient Greeks who believed themselves first among the civilized and barbarian peoples around the Mediterranean, granted civilized status to the Nile Valley Nubians who were very dark complexioned but not to the light-skinned north European barbarian peoples. The same was true in South Asian, African and Japanese caste societies: what determined one’s caste was not the color of one’s skin. The same is true of the slavery that predates and has continued after the emergence of the race theory. Before the fiendish Trans Atlantic slave trade, slaves were not physically distinguishable from their masters in all human societies. Before then having a slave was a status symbol. Remember that in the in the New Testament St. Paul advised slaves to be obedient to their masters. In African societies for instance, slaves could regain their freedom by a dint of hard work which enabled them to buy their freedom. Slaves could also have slaves. A very good example was King Jaja of Opobo, the slave who became king.

In the early 1830s Samuel Morton carried out a “study” which “proved” the larger brain size, and consequently the “superiority” of whites over other “races”, quod erat demonstrandum (QED). It was only in the late 1970s that Stephen Jay Gould showed that Morton’s study was racially biased: the size of human skulls did not depend on race, Gould concluded. Morton’s racist bias had prevented him from identifying what clearly were fully overlapping measurements among the skulls he measured. Despite this lack of scientific evidence, some whites, but more tragically, some blacks, still believe that whites are superior to blacks and other “races”. As recently as a few months ago, a renowned scientist, James Watson, famed for his work on the DNA, expressed his pessimism about the prospects of Africa. He said that he is “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because he believes that "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours — whereas all the testing says not really." Watson was forced to apologize because of the furor that ensued. Despite his “apology” we all know that many people (whites as well as blacks) still believe what he said to be a self-evident truth.

W.E.B. Dubois, writing in the August 1911 edition of the journal Crisis, by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), he edited, stated that “The leading scientists of the world have come forward…and laid down in categorical terms a series of propositions which may be summarized as follows: 1. It is not legitimate to argue from differences in physical characteristics to differences in mental characteristics…2. The civilization of a race at any particular moment of time offers no index to its innate or inherited capacities.”

Further, Dubois, continues, “Every reputable biologist will agree that human genetic variability between the populations of Africa or Europe or Asia is not much greater than that within those populations, though how much greater depends, in part, on the measure of genetic variability the biologist chooses…”

What Dubois is saying is that genomics, or the study of genes, has definitively exposed this seemingly “self-evident” truth for the gibberish that it was. The scientific truth of the matter is that the differences between peoples are not in any significant way biologically determined. Our human characteristics are determined by our genes, that is, they are determined by sequences of the DNA in the chromosome. A locus is a region of the chromosome occupied by a gene. In individual members of a population some loci are occupied by different genes each of which is called an allele. A locus is said to be polymorphic in a population if there is at least a pair of alleles for it. There is not a “black” gene, a “white” gene, or an “Asian” gene. What is more, the genetic variation between two people classified as “white”, or any two other people classified as “black”, may be just as great or even greater than the variation between a “white” and a “black” person. Put simply, you may find two people, black and white, who are more genetically alike than two white people, or two black people. When one goes to donate blood at the blood bank, the blood is classified according to blood groups, and not according to race. So when someone needs a blood transfusion, no one asks whether the donor was black or white, green or yellow. 

The result is that biologists tell us today that race is not s scientific category. So “race”, hitherto thought to “natural” has been shown to be a product of human imagination; a dangerously destructive imagination! What this means is that every biologist will tell you that classifications of human beings based on “races” have been rendered meaningless owing to genetic discoveries relating to human DNA. Every individual human being is genetically unique. 

Unfortunately, the legacy of those pernicious theories has been very devastating because they went unchallenged for too long. It was one thing to have a ruinous theory and quite another to have the resources to make it work. Armed with these toxic theories, but more importantly with potent arms and ammunition, the white marauders went ahead to maim and kill, colonize and enslave most of the rest of the world. 

The fallacious idea of race was thus erected on the ethnocentrism of European colonialists, building on ethnocentric feelings of superiority where one group thinks it is better than the others as opposed to the tolerant view of recognizing differences in customs between groups of people. This ethnocentric beginning soon solidified into the theory of race. In Western Europe, the need was felt to develop a natural scheme for the peoples of the world.  And so humankind was divided into Caucasian, Mongolian, Ethiopian, American and Malayan. This led, not just to the devaluation but rather to the negation of the humanity of Africans, Native Americans and colonized Asians. Philosophers like David Hume, Immanuel Kant and George Hegel felt the need to provide a conceptual grounding for this phony classification. Hume claimed that the most barbaric caucasian was more human than any black person. Kant came up with his own classifications and sub classifications of human beings, concluding that non caucasians were less human. Kant, in the heat of this warped reasoning, went as far as advocating physical and psychological violence against black people solely on the basis of their skin color. Hegel took it to another level, declaring that the black person had no culture, no morals, no history and no power of reasoning whatsoever. In short, for Hegel, the black person did not yet have that self-consciousness that distinguishes humans from beasts.

I would like to pause here, and for the sake of balance, to invoke Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803), the German philosopher designated as the founder of modern religious humanism. While his contemporary and compatriot Immanuel Kant was classifying humans into superior and inferior races, thereby justifying slavery and colonialism, Herder saw European colonialism for the greed that it was. Hear him: “Can you name a land where Europeans have entered without defiling themselves forever before defenceless, trusting mankind?...Our part of the earth should not be called the wisest, but the most arrogant, aggressive, money-minded: what it has given these peoples (the colonies) is not civilization but the destruction of the rudiments of their own cultures wherever they could achieve this.”  I submit here that there is no doubt that Africa was very viciously violated by these marauders who claimed to be bringing us civilization. There needs therefore to be a healing process for all of Africa, just as for every group of people who have undergone the callous brutality of colonialism and slavery. But that healing process is in the hands of Africans themselves. And for it to take place, Africans will have to start creating their own states with their own unique political and economic systems. Unfortunately, with the present crop of politicians this lovely continent has been saddled with, the prospect for the beginning of that healing process looks very dim. But I digress.

So, the negation of the African or the other “races” really had nothing to do with the color of their skin. It all started with European’s greed for material acquisition. Race was subsequently developed to give this expansionism a conceptual background. The warped argument is that for me to take over your resources, I have to demonstrate that I am more capable than you to manage those resources. The best way to do it is to claim that you’re not intelligent enough, or better still, that you’re not intelligent at all. But if I concede that you’re as human as I am, then I would also have to concede that you’re also as intelligent as I am since our mind is what makes us human. So, I would have to push the logic to its end and deny your humanity. Successive generations of Europeans accepted it as “the way things are”. The first Christian missionaries that came to Africa did not at first baptize Africans because they did not believe that Africans had souls. That is, they did not believe they were human! Today one hears some believers claim that God created different races and did not want them to be together. This was the theory on which Apartheid was based. I heard it with my own ears from a white Zimbabwean farmer who now farms in Kwara state, Nigeria. A BBC journalist asked the man if he would love to see his children marry Nigerians. The farmer said that God made different races and didn’t intend them to intermarry. What the man was saying in effect was that he could go to Africa and farm because he’s from a superior race; after all, how many Africans have the capacity to go and do the same in the land of his ancestors? He was there to do the African a favor. But that favor shouldn’t extend to intermingling and intermarrying with the African who is obviously of an inferior race. Each time I hear this theology of race, I’m reminded of a Yoruba proverb that says that it was the human being that brought the pot into the forest of the gods before it became a mystical object belonging to the gods. 

I need to say a little on this theology of race because I have ran into highly educated Africans who believe that blacks are “cursed”. They readily point to the fact that things are not “working” in Africa or wherever blacks are in the majority, as a proof of this idiocy. I think this rubbish betrays a lamentable ignorance of history especially among people who are “educated”. Each time I ask them if they knew what Africa was like before colonialism, I draw a blank. Without belaboring the point let me just say that Africa before colonialism was a highly organized society. There were kingdoms in Africa, many of them very powerful. For most of these, the political, economic, religious, and educational systems were highly organized. All of a sudden, we were told that one of the sons of Noah who was cast into servitude was black, or something along that line; that there was a third group in heaven when Lucifer waged war against God, and since this group did nothing, after Lucifer’s defeat, they were cast into the world and compelled to incarnate in the accursed lineage of Canaan and punished with a dark pigment, as the negro or African, and so on and so forth. Some of these “discoveries” were made by the founders of the Mormons. Now, how any “educated” person could believe this hocus-pocus is beyond me! I would like to tell these ignoramuses to read Things Fall Apart, but if they riposte that it is a novel, then why not try Bolaji Idowu’s Olódùmaré; God in Yoruba belief. Find out about yourself. “Know thyself!” Ignorance should be no excuse for denigrating yourself and your rich heritage. In doing that you are not only insulting yourselves but you are also insulting the rest of us who know the truth. Stop swallowing these lies hook, line and sinker!

As I said earlier, the tragedy is not that the theories of race and racial superiority are lies, but that people, especially the victims, believe them. The truth is that the way that black lad felt about the black balloon and the other black boy felt about being in the air force are the lies their parents and grand parents going down the centuries have been fed about themselves by the dominant western culture.

Yes, it is tragic when a black person who believes in the lie that his skin color makes him inferior treats not only himself but other blacks with contempt and disdain. Many Africans—who have assimilated this inferiority—believe the only way they can give themselves value is by trying to be as European as possible. In most cases they are more European than the Europeans. I once watched with dismay as an African university don showed his European visitors around town. It was on a very hot African day but the rector was dressed in suit and tie while his European friends wore very light clothing. Here was an African dressed like he was in a European cold weather while the Europeans dressed appropriately. It is as tragic as the story of a man dressed in a three-piece suit with a tie, sox and shoes to boot, sitting in a poorly ventilated office in a very hot African weather, where neither the fan nor the air conditioner was working. These attitudes capture the dilemma facing many Africans, especially those who claim to be educated, ie who believe they know the European ways of life more than the Europeans. It is this inherent sense of inferiority that leads African politicians into stealing their state resources and moving same to the West, where they further enrich the economy of the receiving states while their people wallow in excruciating poverty. It never occurs to them that their primary task is to build up their own nations so that they can compete favorably with any nation on earth. 

One of the best repudiations of race I have seen is the one submitted by Kwame Anthony Appiah, Ghanaian philosopher and novelist, who has a black father a white mother. He uses an analogy which will be familiar with people who use libraries often. According to Appiah, in his article, “Race, culture, identity: Misunderstood connections!” in The African Philosophy Reader: “In a sense, trying to classify people into a few races is like trying to classify books in a library: you may use a single property—size, say—but you will get a useless classification, or you may use a more complex system of interconnected criteria, and then you will get a good deal of arbitrariness. No one—not even the most compulsive librarian!—thinks that book classifications reflect deep facts about books. Each of them is more or less useless for various purposes; all of them, as we know, have the kind of rough edges that take a while to get around. And nobody thinks that a library classification can settle which books we should value; the numbers in the Dewey decimal system do not correspond with qualities of utility or interest or literary merit.”

According to Appiah, what needs to be done is what the French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre proposed in his essay, “Orphée noir”, contained in an anthology edited by Leopold S. Senghor. Sartre argued in that article that what he calls anti-racist racism may be a necessary step to the final unity of humanity, the abolition of differences of race.

In the second part of this essay, I will look into how Barack Obama has handled the issue of race and explore how his candidacy for the American presidency, if successful, may be a path towards the abolition of differences of race via an anti-racist racism.

Robot  Villager

# 1 ...Read the full article. Posted by Robot| 04.10.2008 06:51