blog - gObama 2008
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
(Berlin, Germany - 12.07 a.m. local time)
Something is starting to piss me off. It’s Obama’s campaign stuff not allowing a woman to sit behind him, because she was wearing a Muslim head scarf. Although his campaign apologized for this shortly afterwards, it shows that sensitive issues like race, religion and class are major obstacles in this democratic experiment called America. Top down, bottom up.
I remember that some of his campaign stuff in Iowa were vex when I approached them - not fully equipped with openness that Obama propagates. The fear and paranoia that I detected, while I tried to interview some of the campaign stuffers in Iowa, was a bit of a shock to me. I guess it has more to do with the standard right-wing media attacks and two stolen elections that have traumatized this nations liberal elite. Maybe not...
I feel it has more to do with the fact that Obama has been raised in different cultural environments and countries. And most Americans have never even left their home states. The media reforms that A.M.Brown demands through the citizen media will not necessary bring a more open minded and tolerant debate. The experience of dealing with complexities of inter-racial and multi-cultural discourse must be lived in person and not speculated intellectually or laced with assumptions.
As I said before: something is pissing me off. America talks and might heal itself one day. But here in Europe when the majority of white liberals and multi-culturalists constantly remind me of selling my difference “being from the East and being African-German” as an interesting package, I ask myself if I have time for this. To sell my film or my talent to the rest of the world I thought of telling an entertaining story. The so called democratic media movement does not exist, but if I had to invent it, I would get it wrong, as I figure out here again and again.
If America has an open debate is questionably since journalist Amy Goodman asked her guests A.M.Brown (above audiotake) of her bi-racial heritage - she has her standard routine answer, although she only wants to speak about media reforms. This insistence on difference is an absurd take on the subject matter of media reforms. Amy needs to chill and get with the program. The social constructs of race and ethnicity are not relevant anymore. A younger generation is born that is much more at ease with this. Mash up! Something gotta go...
The identity wars for meaning and minority discourse did not bring a liberation for the communities that used it as a weapon in the Eighties and Nineties. It was rather a market com-modification to sell product and target consumers better. A process, that is now accelerated and consolidated as the clash for resources and privileges intensifies world-wide. The only liberating media reform will not come through the channels and pipes - now that conglomerates try to control which content flows through their networks. In this fragmented society of individuals with their logic: “the game is to be sold not to be told” - the cynical logic breeds a de-humanized cynicism that stands on the opposite spectrum of “the audacity of hope”... the spin doctors of Obama’s campaign gotta be careful to not to destroy his sincere and original intentions.
A final redemption from this cold logic --- “a bit of other” sells product better can not be found in day-to-day politics. It might be only possible to quench my thirst, my burning desire for belonging, acceptance and justice by naming it.
This systematic division of groups and individuals is amplified by media wars. What grows out of individual ignorance drops the nickel and turns my being into a “chip on my shoulder”. Sometimes it becomes a fucking large pebble that I can not get out of my left shoe. It makes me having a problem with new shoes or start a riot. I own a funky pair of “crocs” that costed me 40 euros but they still make stinky feet. I guess I am the hippy type that likes to walk around bare feet during summer and leave the big city behind.
...somewhere in between two worlds but never at home would the specialists for bi-racial minorities say...
If your read this article until here - I got sold for a bag of rice!