The World's President: Part 1 - Hope

Since Barack Obama's stunning and monumental election as president earlier this week, Americans have started to repair the shame that has accompanied their nationality for years. Americans living in Berlin and Paris were out in the streets early Wednesday morning proudly displaying the flag; being an American in the world suddenly stopped being a liability and became an object of celebration. And the rest of the world reacted to the news in a similarly jubilant fashion. "Hope" and "Change," those buzz words of the long campaigning process, took on a radical new meaning and were handily yanked from the abstract when we saw a black American family take the stage in triumph, joined later by the Biden clan. Watching this group of Americans - black and white - appear before the nation was not simply a victory for the Democrats, nor was it only an "historic" moment, as we've heard time and again in post-election wrap-ups. The election of Barack Obama was a triumph for humanity.

This probably sounds grandiloquent. And naive. "It is the mark of inexperienced youth," some wag once said, "to read one's own historical moment as completely unique." With full knowledge that history moves along slowly, with fits and starts, and that it is constantly repeating itself, I also recognize that there are moments that come along every so often that change the game entirely. Often these events are technological: the invention of the printing press, for instance, ushered in a whole new era in the way humans communicate. Other times they are cultural: the writing of the US Constitution inaugurating this model of government, for instance. History trudges along slowly, but occasionally a power surge flows through the machine and forces its gears to speed things up. I believe that this election will be remembered as one of these moments, not just as a country but as a species.

Since the beginning of the colonial era, black people across the globe have been systematically kept from attaining real power. Perhaps the most emblematic story of this failure is the nation of Haiti, the world's first independent black country. Upon pushing out the French, the Haitians were left with only one option to regain stability: trade with France, who had made the colony the wealthiest in the New World. Alone in the world, isolated by oceans, Haiti needed diplomatic recognition and trade to prosper, but France would not grant them this privilege until they paid a huge fee (reparations, really). This debt crippled the nation from the very beginning, making it virtually impossible for them to succeed in any meaningful way. Add to this the symbolic import of an independent black country and what it came to represent for slaves throughout the New World, and you can see that the very idea of Haiti was profoundly destabilizing. For this reason, the United States has kept the country on a short leash for over a century, at times occupying it with Marines for years on end. Most recently, in 2004 the democratically elected and highly popular leader Jean-Bertrand Aristide was removed from power and essentially kidnapped by the US Military and sent to live in exile in South Africa.

I relate this truncated history of an unfortunate nation because it is, essentially, the story of black people the world over. Both within the United States and on the global stage, people of African ancestry have been marginalized and kept poor, uneducated, and unhealthy. Naysayers to this claim might argue that the intense tribalism within Africa has led to the continent's endemic cycle of poverty and politico-economic instability. Arguments made on these cultural grounds, however, really don't carry too much weight: for years in this country, the disadvantaged status of black Americans was all too often chalked up to "laziness" and other demeaning cultural excuses. While I certainly wouldn't put blame for the failure of black ascension entirely on the shoulders of the rich world, I would say that this is the major culprit for why the situation is as it is today. As the story of American slavery has taught us, it takes centuries to heal these sorts of wounds; in Africa, the wounds come from a colonial past. The current state in sub-Saharan Africa, with Somalia controlled by militias, Sudan engulfed in an ongoing genocide, Congo teetering on the brink of another devastating civil war, and Zimbabwe collapsing, is not just a tragedy for Africans - it is failure of humanity.

The ravages of poverty are just as much psychological as they are physical. What must it be like to look around the world and see not one single majority-black nation really succeeding on the global stage? (Perhaps with the exception of South Africa, who built its economic power over its years of white rule.) How would it effect you if the only wealthy people you saw who looked like you were athletes and rappers? A friend who lived in Cameroon told me that she was dismayed to learn that there is a lot of anti-black racism within African nations: professors at the main university in Yaounde told her that clearly there was a difference in intelligence between the races. The evidence? "Just look at the world. We are poor everywhere - you are rich," they told her.

The word "hope" must have an entirely different ring for individuals and nations that have come to accept the fact that they will always struggle. Obama's meteoric rise and victory has demonstrated something incredibly profound - in a world where "black" and "Africa" are virtually synonymous with poverty, AIDS, military coups, and a host of other crises of humanity, one man - with black African roots - has risen to lead the world's most powerful nation. The symbolic import of this moment very well might, I believe, cause a shift in the machinery of human history. It has the potential to fill millions of souls with hope, purpose, and greater collective self-worth. (This goes for people of all colors and creeds, of course.) But for a black person, the significance of this moment must stand as a game-changer.

Yes we can.