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November 19, 2008
The election of Barack Obama to the office of the president of the United States of America represents both a challenge and a potential opportunity to the Pan African community. Challenging in that many individuals of African descent will view his victory as evidence that the path to full integration into American society is both desirable and achievable. His ascendancy to the highest office in the land reinforces some African people’s inclinations towards an integrationist answer to our problems, thereby potentially weakening the resolve of Pan Africanism among our people. Obama’s presidency, at the same time, provides the white supremacist movement a rallying point that could serve to help mobilize their forces against our community. However, we have the opportunity to figure out how to best use the election of Barack Obama to advance goals of Africans worldwide.
One of the principal elements of the election victory for Barack Obama was convincing white voters that he would not provide any preference to Black people if elected. We call this the white appeasement factor. This Obama white appeasement factor constitutes the biggest impediment to advancing our interest in an Obama administration. We could see this phenomenon at work during the campaign, but the larger question is, will it be a key factor in his administration, and if so, for how long?
The critical questions for Black people under an Obama president must be: 1) “Will the goals of the Black liberation struggle be enhanced by his election?” and 2) “What can we do to insure that his victory becomes our victory?” Clearly articulated answers to these key questions are essential to African people making real advancement under an Obama presidency. This UBC Black Paper will attempt to prioritize the goals and objectives that should form the bases of a Pan African campaign at this historic moment.
For the Pan African, the election of Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States must be viewed in light of its potential to contribute to the strength, well being and unity of African people. For the Pan African, the issue is not what his election will do for America, but what will his election mean for our principal concern, the collective well being of our people?
The Black Condition
In today’s globalized world, the current state of Black people is dire. Our ability to provide basic sustenance for ourselves is worse than it has ever been. Our indigenous cultures are being abandoned by the youth who are moving to the big cities and being absorbed by pop culture and poverty. The pop culture in which they are absorbed provides them with a style of living rather then a way of living. The result often becomes aberrant, pathological, self destructive behavior that weakens our collective well being rather than strengthens it. This loss of community-wide ancestry based culture undermines our community and collective identity making it increasingly difficult for our people to maintain pride in their culture and find common cause among ourselves. Our family structure is growing weaker with single parenthood becoming the norm, while the support of and loyalty to our extended family is being weakened.
The gap between the impoverished poor masses of our people and its middle class is widening, while the relatively successful middle class is less willing to help lift the collective Black poor, simply blaming them for their own condition.
Our overall health is deteriorating. Life expectancy is on the decline for most Black communities in the world due, in large part, to AIDS, malnutrition, black-on-black violence, obesity, illegal drugs, infectious diseases and war. In addition, Black people have slipped back to a period of self-hatred. We no longer think that “Black Is Beautiful”. We now see Blackness as something we must overcome, if we are to be successful individually. Our freedom movement is weaker than it has been since we came out of slavery, lacking the strong leadership we once counted on to take courageous risks and make real gains.
As a result, the health of the race is growing weaker with each passing day, and we are making very little progress in key areas of our collective well-being. An Obama victory should be used to help change these trends if it is to have any real meaning.
We must put forth a plan that, if successfully implemented, will move our people closer to our collective goals in an Obama presidency
Two Barack Obama’s
As Pan Africans, we need to first realize that there are two Barack Obama’s. The one that was forged by his white mother, grandparents and his upbringing, and the second Obama that emerged out of Black community experiences, his wife, and his church of twenty-plus years on the south side of Chicago, a neighborhood he sought to serve and change for the greater good. It should be obvious to African people that it is the second Obama, through which he managed to connect with his Black people and his Blackness, that we must appeal to in order to further the Pan African liberation struggle. Whether you see yourself as a Pan African Nationalist in the tradition of Malcolm X or an integrationist in the tradition of Dr. King, President Barack Obama’s utility to his people depends on the degree to which he has internalized that second part of his life, and is grounded in the needs and desires of Black People.
The Agenda of the Pan African Community in a Post-Obama World
The Pan African community sees the needs of Black people a little differently than most in the Black community, many of whom are concerned primarily with Black people’s inclusion into American society. Pan Africans want to build a strong international Pan African relationship in the world, which is able to protect Black people’s interest everywhere we find ourselves. The Pan African agenda puts emphasis on independence, unity and strength for our people, not integration into US society. This should not be seen as contrary or against a movement that places emphasis on peace and justice but as an extension of a movement that would insure peace and justice in the world through strength in Black people. The Pan African agenda put forth in this UBC Black Paper should be seen from this prospective.
The Pan African Agenda for a victorious Barack Obama should have as its primary focus the following concerns for improving the quality of life and the collective strength of African people:
§ Political and Cultural concerns
§ Food and Hunger concerns
§ Health concerns
§ Education concerns
§ Family concerns
§ Global warming/Climate Change concern
§ Economic Globalization concerns
Each of these categories contains sub-areas with specific agenda items that need to be working on in order for the Obama administration to be truly meaningful to Black people worldwide.
Political and Cultural Concern
A presidential administration under Barack Obama should move to apologize to all Africans for America’s role in both the slave trade and African colonialism and encourage other Western powers to do likewise
An Obama administration should encourage and support African nations in their attempt to reconnect with the descendents of the millions of their populations dispersed all over the world by the slave trade, particularly those African nations that are willing to offer dual citizenship to displaced African descendants in the Diaspora.
Such a gesture should be seen as part-and-parcel of the redress that must accompany a sincere apology. Working to correct the damages that have been caused by the slave trade is the only way any apology would be deemed sincere.
America’s African policy under an Obama administration should encourage African nations to develop federations among themselves that can eventually lead to a United States of Africa. American policy under an Obama administration should encourage African states to look beyond their colonial history and turn to each other for their sustenance rather then their former colonial masters. In other words, President Obama should help place the USA on the side of African unity and strength rather then disunity and weakness as it has done in the past. America’s Africa policy under an Obama administration should seek to actually aid Africa rather then exploit it for its own purposes.
A major part of reconciling America with its sins against Black people in an Obama administration must involve stopping any further militarization of Africa by bringing an end to the plans to develop and African command (AFRICOM), clearly designed to insure the continued control of African resources by the West.
Food & Hunger Concerns
America’s Africa policy under an Obama administration should encourage the development of state owned and/or state regulated commercial enterprises in Africa and through out the developing World in sectors of the economy that are vital to the welfare of it’s people.
America’s policy of encouraging private ownership in Africa of the most important economic sectors by foreign interests should be stopped. The people’s needs must be placed at the top of new World economic agenda. Public utilities providing basic human necessities should be owned and managed by the state rather then wealthy individuals or foreign interest.
The current economic crisis in America should make it very clear that an economic process dependent on individual greed, foreign capital and the structural economic adjustments of the World Bank is disastrous for the needs of most of the world’s populations. It is clear that even in a very industrialized society like the USA, such an approach often results in the disruption of local subsistent economies and increasing poverty and hunger for many communities.
An Obama administration should move to encourage African countries to put the economic welfare of the poorest members of their populations first by building a reliance on the production of locally or regionally produced staple products that encourage local jobs, fill a local need for food and provide shorter distances to the consumer of those products, allowing for both jobs and the meeting of human needs.
In addition, the Obama administration must be encouraged to lead the western world in providing debt relief to Africa. The crushing burden of dept constitutes an economic hole that makes it almost imposable for many African countries to fully address the economic fundamentals of feeding their populations while constructing new infrastructure without selling off there future by providing mineral resources, much to cheaply, to the rest of the World.
This approach by an Obama administration would help protect the most vulnerable members of African society from starvation, unemployment, world economic instability and global warming. It is such an economic policy from an Obama administration that is critical to the African masses, African stability and general well-being of Black people worldwide. The current Africa policy of the United States discourages independence and, in general, is bad for both the short and long term interest of Africa and Africans. This must be addressed under an Obama administration.
Health Concerns
Black populations all over the world suffer from what amounts to the world’s most precarious health circumstances. We suffer from the worlds highest rates of AIDS, cancer, malnutrition, obesity, illegal drug use, heart diseases, stroke, and diabetes and have the lowest access to both preventative care and treatment for these conditions than any people in the world.
It is important for an Obama administration to pay particular attention to this situation on the Black world. America should support the development of training made available by large numbers of health providers and educators, able and willing to serve poor Black populations all over the world. These providers/educators should come from the populations to be targeted by this effort. This training should be free to those that are willing to work within the targeted populations. An Obama administration should encourage wealthy nations to help develop an international core of health professionals to support this purpose. The fact is no freedom in existence means anything if you are not alive and healthy enough to enjoy it. Optimal health and quality healthcare for our people is an essential need for our survival and growth.
Education Concerns
The rate of illiteracy has increased almost exponentially in the Black world. Black nations are unable to provide critical resources to educate their people to standards of a more technological complex world. This trend will continue until a global intervention effort is undertaken to address the issue. An Obama administration should show leadership in developing coherent literacy programs that will assist Black nations in providing an education that will be sufficient to meet global technological challenges. Here in the USA, Black students have historically performed below other groups in almost every category of education. An Obama administration should address this issue head on. Generations of Black youth are caught-up in the penal system simply because an adequate education was not theirs to have.
Family Concerns
In addition to the low state of Black health world wide, in the United States, the Black family is in a dire state. The percentage of families with only one parent is growing annually. The numbers of orphans in the Black community are far beyond the ability to absorb them into other families. Unwed motherhood is becoming the norm in the Black community. The often unspoken reality is that the black family is in crisis and needs to be reinvigorated.
Given the very positive image of Black familyhood that Barack Obama’s family represents, his election to the presidency would send a powerful symbolic message of the possibilities of Black family life.
If the first family of the country is an intact Black family headed by a strong male, this alone might help to popularize the notion of a wholesome family in the Black community. However, in addition to the power of the image of the American first family, an Obama administration should actively seek to develop pro-family efforts in the Black community that will seek to help reestablish strong Black family ties based on strength of marital ties between Black men & and Black women. These should take the form of encouraging marriage and discouraging divorce in the Black community.
One of the most troublesome cries faced by Black people is the lack of males available for marriage due to the very high rate of incarceration. Black males are said to be about 5% of the US population, but comprise 50% of its prison population, helping to further undermined family stability.
President Obama should make the problem of Black incarceration rates a major focus of his administration, starting with the de-criminalization of drug possession, the reason why most Black people in prison are in prison. An Overlying percentage of the Black men and women in prisons in America, many serving decades’ long sentences or life, are there because of non-violent drug possession. Instead of receiving treatment for their illness and life skills education, they are incarcerated with violent criminals for long periods of time, where they are schooled in violent crimes and most are eventually released back into the Black community, where they can demonstrate their new “skills” and pathologies. This cycle must be broken.
The Global Warming/Climate Change Threat
The global warming threat currently facing the entire world poses a particular threat to African people. It is generally recognized that the greatest human threat posed by global temperature is to the economically poorer countries and smaller island nations that are closest to the Equator. Countries inhabited primarily by Black people. A climate change policy that recognizes the particular impact that such warming will have on Black people should be one of the top priorities of an Obama administration.
The major disruption in the lives of Black people that will occur if this problem is ignored would be devastating. The lose of life caused by reduced food production capacity due to average global temperature rises and an increase in the size of the Sahara dessert could make the death toll in both Darfur and Rwandan genocides seem small in comparison. Global warming and climate change posses a particularly catastrophic effect on Black people worldwide that must be addressed. An Obama administration should immediately recognize this fact and begin to develop international efforts to provide scientific and technology exchanges that will help bolster the economies of small countries on the equator and in the Caribbean against climate change and global warming.
The Globalization Threat
An Obama administration should recognize the detrimental effect globalization has had on most Black people. Centralized manufacturing, and foreign food sources deprives the masses of our people all over the world of jobs and food, making them both more impoverished, dependant, and less able to survive. A global economy based on poor nations' exportation of raw materials and/or basic cash crops will only allow the elites of those nations to do well and prosper, leaving the masses of the people fewer options for survival.
If current trends continues, globalization, coupled with global warming, can potentially produce a catastrophe for Black people worldwide, the likes of which we have not seen since slavery.
A Post-Obama Future for Black People
For the past 500 years, Black people have had a valiant history of struggle to regain their humanity and establish their presence in the world. Barack Obama’s presidency of the USA will probably bring about some degree of positive change here in the USA and in the rest of the world. But, for that change to have any real impact on African people, we must work even harder then in the past, in large part because the possibilities are greater.
During the many years of struggle one thing was certain, we didn’t wait for a savior and shouldn’t now. Our oppressive condition dictated that courageous African men and women rise up and continue to strike a blow for liberation. Nothing less is required now.
The United Black Community (UBC)
Washington, DC