Black Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums and Congressperson Barbara Lee showed up to join in the mourning during a televised funeral. As part of a calculated public insult, which offended Oakland’s black leaders, Mayor Dellums was not permitted to speak.
Let’s all have a beer.
Obama Souljahs On, Africa This Time
Both the president’s July 2009 Ghana speech, which absolved Europeans of the blame for the problems on the African continent, and the blame-the-victim NAACP speech have sparked a rise of anger among off-camera black intellectuals. The kind whose presence is missing from such MSM faux “Black” blogs, TheRoot, and NBC’s Griot, and AOL’s Black Voices. (Predictably AOL was among the corporate media that highlighted the “tough love” portions of Obama’s speech. Like the other tough-lovers, Obama ignored the recent stories about gains that black students have made in closing the intelligence gap in the South and in New York. Obama feigned outrage about the media emphasizing the tough-love parts, but he, Rahm Emanuel and Axelrod knew the deal.)
Despite the monopoly that shareholder-driven market opinion might have over the public opinion, which includes the farcical sight of all-white panels discussing race, there is a movement on the Internet to make some space for nonwhites. A number of black intellectuals are using this space to challenge the mass delusion of a post-race America.
I asked three black intellectuals of the kind who wouldn’t pass a cable producer’s interview for an on-camera appearance their reactions to Obama’s Ghana speech and his NAACP speech. Prof. Pierre-Damien Mvuyekure is Professor of English and African-American literature at the University of Iowa. He said: “Regarding Obama’s comments, he seemed to rehash the words of another Kenyan, Prime Minister Raila Odinga. In his commencement address at the University of Buffalo Law School, Odinga said, ‘We cannot continue to blame colonialism for Africa’s problems’ and added, ‘I believe very strongly that it is because of poor leadership that Africa lags behind in development’”—I Googled it and AllAfrica.com came up. “While to some extent this may be true, we cannot ignore neo-colonialism whereby the former colonial masters and the United States continue to underdevelop Africa through the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.”
Pierre-Damien continued:
Yes, the French were arming the Rwandan Army, while the U.S. and Great Britain were arming the Rwandan Patriotic Front through Uganda. Last week, Rwanda gave medals to the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, President Yoweri Museveni, and the late Mwalimu Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, for their efforts in “liberating” Rwanda.
At the beginning of the 1990 war, Paul Kagame was training at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas as a Ugandan officer! Then he left to take over the war when three of his colleagues died within two weeks of the beginning of the war. Gerard Prunier’s new book Africa’s World War: Congo, The Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe documents some of this.
Justin Desmangles is the host for New Day Jazz broadcast over KDVS in Davis, California. He said:
He’s lying, and he knows it. To think that this man has the wherewithal to stand on the very ground where Nkrumah was murdered at the behest of United States’ interests. Even the choice of Ghana was a cynical ploy to further coerce leverage for AFRICOM, a plan initiated by Bush in 2007, to find a home. It is currently based, without irony, in Germany. Massive oil discoveries were recently made off Ghana’s coast as well.
Not unlike his infamous Father’s Day speech of last year, Obama was signaling, and signifying, elsewhere. In this case to the very centers of capital that were founded and solidified by colonialism in Africa! These remain to this very day, no matter what anybody would like to say, the paymasters for the various military, paramilitary, terrorist and so called counter terrorist groups throughout the continent.
The United States government, vis. the Pentagon, the State Department, etc. are fully intent on fighting a proxy war with China over the resources in Africa. The very resources that without which the economy of the West would come to screeching halt. Coltan, the essential ingredient in the manufacture of IT, Sony Play Stations, laptops, cell phones of all varieties etc. is known to be the source of the conflict in Northeastern Congo’s Inure Forest. Can you imagine what would happen if the expedition of this precious mineral were slowed down or halted? Stocks, as you know, are traded on projected earnings. The height of the “dot com boom” was the period when, according to the UN and countless NGOs, that close to seven million people died there. We didn’t hear any outcry about that. Bob Herbert, whose column last week on Michael Jackson was unforgivable, seems to think it’s all about rape. I guess that’ll put him in solid with Eve Ensler and her crowd. Which brings us back to AFRICOM. Bush was laying down the groundwork for Obama to make that speech. He’s following up on errands. Obama, however, can do this as propagandist foil in a way they could not. That aside, Bush had laid out a plan for war in Africa just prior to the formation of AFRICOM before its creation in 2007. As larger and larger oil discoveries were being made there in 2003, 2004, and 2005, organizations like the Council on Foreign Relations and Hoover Institute began publishing policy papers and research identifying the continent as the emerging front in the “war on terror.” This is the true context for Obama’s speech and the guide for its content as well. Obama’s speech was even covered in the Times with the headline that it was “Tough Love”!
This kind of “personal responsibility” line is perfectly in tune with the recent attempts, sometimes successful, to shame and humiliate African leaders by dragging them in front of the ICC, such as Charles Taylor, or in lieu of that, falsely suggesting that they should be, as in Bashir of Sudan.
About Obama’s NAACP speech Kofi Natambu wrote:
To constantly single out one general national community for what is frankly a rather theatrical and self-serving series of public performances and admonitions that too often treats us as a bunch of errant, mischievous children in dire need of Daddy’s spankings is not only deeply insulting but an affront to what the president’s relationship to us — and all other American citizens! — should actually be. That relationship is or should be that of a committed politician and public servant engaging and paying attention to its citizenry. After all, Obama is not a preacher/minister/pastor/rabbi and we are not his flock! And thank God/Allah/Buddha for that! The last thing the black community needs at this point in our history is yet still another arrogant preacher and/or fundamentalist and overly self-righteous church telling us what to do!
Obama chided black folks in his “Rev. Wright speech”; Obama chided black folks in his NAACP speech; Obama chided blacks in his Africa speech; he even chided Arabs/Muslims in his Cairo speech. When is Obama going to chide white people about anything? How about white people going out and getting a legitimate job, instead of turning to dangerous and even potentially explosive meth labs for income? How about working-class white people not blaming all their problems on Latino immigrants? How about white people raising their teenage sons not to go out and shoot up random innocent victims (often targeting girls) at the school for whatever reasons their sons do? How about white males being man enough to not go back and shoot up innocent victims at the workplace just because they lost their job and/or their marriage, but going out to look for another job (they tell us black people that any job is better than no job, right? Even flipping burgers at McDonalds, or sweeping floors, or doing menial yard work — no matter your age)?