blog - gObama 2008
America & its delicate Iraq mess
Thursday, January 17, 2008
(Boston, MA - 4 p.m. local time)
I spent the afternoon in Boston after Chris dropped me off at the subway. Kendell Square station lies in the midst of MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) with pavements full of smart guys in suits... I took the train into downtown Boston and strolled around Park Station, where I found a Borders book store that finally got “A Bound Man” by Shelby Steele as an audio book which reads in its subtitle: “Why We Are Excited About Obama And Why He Can’t Win”. This title sounds preposterous and I wonder, what the f...k is this guy talking about?
Another more interesting quote of Steele is online. An idea which catapulted me back to people’s perceptions of my white ancestry (being a man of both African and German descent). As such an insider I know how to deal with white (German version) guilt. Not particular my own, but what has caused the shadowy memory of the Holocaust. For most part of my life I have watched (as has an entire generation born in the 60’s) older German people retreat into silence and shame about it. A silencing of the “other” was part of this deal. So in order to get by in modern life: “Ask no question and I will tell no lies.” I got used to being the silent witness. Which “other” you may ask.
Not “other” like in cultural studies. But other spaces like the concept of white supremacy that united East and West Germany in the past -- rooted both in Nazi ideology and Communist mythology. It did not matter much being raised under Communist doctrines or consumer splendor of the 50’s Marshall Plan. Same grandeur, same delusion and ultimate failure. Followed by shameful retreat and rising nationalism among liberals.
Here is how the Shelby Steele brain -- the black conservative from Stanford puts it:
“It began, I believe, in a late-20th-century event that transformed the world more profoundly than the collapse of communism: the world-wide collapse of white supremacy as a source of moral authority, political legitimacy and even sovereignty. This idea had organized the entire world, divided up its resources, imposed the nation-state system across the globe, and delivered the majority of the world's population into servitude and oppression. After World War II, revolutions across the globe, from India to Algeria and from Indonesia to the American civil rights revolution, defeated the authority inherent in white supremacy, if not the idea itself. And this defeat exacted a price: the West was left stigmatized by its sins. Today, the white West--like Germany after the Nazi defeat--lives in a kind of secular penitence in which the slightest echo of past sins brings down withering condemnation. There is now a cloud over white skin where there once was unquestioned authority.”
© Steele. "White Guilt and the Western Past: Why is America so Delicate with the Enemy?” o Wall Street Journal, May 2, 2006
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_Street_Journal
It brings us back to Obama, who struggles together with Hillary to transcend race and gender issues inside the great white American narrative. The Western media world searches for meaning. What plays itself out in the media is the pathological unpreparedness of journalists and news editors. They might not be ready for the cultural paradigm shift the world expects from their coverage. As presidential candidates both have to unite the country and overcome their (black & female) marginalized differences.
White men’s burden will come to an end. The world community wants to see a (political and spiritual) marriage between an iconic black man and an iconic white woman. I think Obama and Hillary both qualify for president on the content of their characters. Even if one calls it “Amour fou” - a short lived romantic infatuation - people are tired of Bush and Cheney....
This represents a new possibility to negotiate some of the damage that was done by the onslaughts of those white cowboys in WASHINGTON. How the West was won? By riding on horses, pretending to be super heroes and cleaning up indigenous cultures under the banner good versus (the axis) of evil.
This myth is kept alive by forces in the entertainment industry and we can watch it on Fox and CNN every night, here. There is nothing new under the sun, but the quiet revolution might not be televised and sleeps inside the belly of the beast on the net. Here is what citizen-driven media likes most: www.democracynow.org