A Letter From A Sister Who's Trying To Be Brave

I had promised myself that I would not write another piece on Obama because I don't care much for politicians and I care even less for American presidents. The possibility of having a black man in a white house in Washington DC hasn't changed my mind. However, I decided to betray myself when I belatedly stumbled upon Alice Walker's piece "Lest We Forget: An Open Letter to My Sisters Who Are Brave."

I have been waiting to read a piece by a black woman which articulates my unsettledness about the historical milestone that Obama's campaign represents. I thought Alice Walker's piece would be what I was waiting for. But I am still waiting.

I suspect I am not alone in my uneasinessness, and that's why the blogosphere has numerous articles by blacks coming to terms with the Obama campaign, trying so hard to avoid saying "Pinch me if it's real" or maybe "What am I missing?" Alice Walker is one of the more famous and skilled writers at putting this enigma in words.

In her well circulated piece, she gives a mushy but artistically admirable take on Obama, explaining that he is the right man for the job, not because he is the first black man to make it this far in the race to the White House, but because he represents the best possibility for change. A change which I am yet to understand, since the Palestinian state, US imperialism in Africa, the Invasion of Iraq, the Prison Industrial Complex and a deteriorating public school system are the issues I consider to badly need change in government policy, yet Obama hasn't articulated a radical departure from the status quo.

I was not surprised that Alice Walker kept within the safe realm of writing that she supports Obama but placing a few footnotes to qualify that support. Hell, I did the same thing in my last piece on Obama. What I did not expect is Walker's failure to address the real implications of Obama's historical situation for black women who will never get anywhere near the White House lawn, that's if they even get to cross the borders of their own country or state. Her throwing in of "Womanism" towards the end of the article didn't make things any better. In fact, it felt more like manipulation of black women's sympathy to support her views because she is allegedly addressing their situation. The numerous positive responses from readers professing to be white women at The Root , where the article was first posted, show how far she was from the mark.

But even if Alice Walker did not deliver what I'd hoped for, she helped me go one step further in clarifying why I am not that excited - although I am still excited - about the Obama presidency. I do support Obama. I hope he wins the nomination and the presidency. I admire his guts - or what he calls the "audacity of hope" (that's if he still calls it that after distancing himself from Rev. Wright), his oratory skills, his charisma and the milestones he has made in the protracted Democratic primaries.

But I feel that he belongs on the glossy pages of magazines like Essence or Ebony which carry pictures and stories of beautiful black people who have been successful in the corporate world, education, politics and Hollywood. Those of us who can afford a few dollars to buy a copy, or who are lucky to stumble upon one, ogle at the oh-so-wonderful-to-look-at black people, while pinching ourselves in order to remember that America is designed so that only a few get that far - regardless of race. We also remember that for blacks, those few are always drastically fewer, and for them, staying at the top is more difficult and costly. And that's my issue with a black man - not Obama as a person - occupying the White House.

Obama may be alright in the White House. He may make a great president. He has inspired, and will continue to inspire many black children to have the audacity to hope and to strive for their dreams. But he's not going to be on the streets when our young girls are walking to school, heckled by young men who have equated cars, money and an active sex life with being a man. His presidency will be the achievement of one man while the rest of women struggle with men who have refused to be fathers to their children or protectors and providers for their families. Worse, reaching the pinacle of white patriarchal power will only affirm to black men worldwide that white men remain the model of manhood. A black male presidency will deal a great blow to the struggles of men such as Malcolm X and Thomas Sankara who recognized the need for black men to assume responsibility for their betrayal of black women instigated by racism, and a blow to the struggles of all great women of African descent trying to convince our brothers, fathers, sons and lovers to invent a new image of men in the 21st century, after five centuries of African humanity being distorted and disfigured by Euro-America.

Obama will not give us the historical validity we have been craving for, especially because he had been avoiding black American history until Rev. Wright's sermons first became an issue. And since then, he has been characterizing black history as riddled by bitterness, making little mention of the fact that black history is also as beautiful as an African night sky uninterrupted by electric lights, for it is liberally sprinkled by the bright stars of Sojourner Truth, Fannie Lou Hammer, Frederick Douglass, W.E.B Dubois, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and a host of others who cleared the thorny path that makes Obama's presidency imaginable in the 21^st century.

For the Africans expecting a boost in Pan-Africanist consciousness from Obama, we may be expecting too much. Obama is not going to be in the dark corners where Kenyan politicians pay money to males young enough to be their sons to burn women and children in a church. He is not going to reach the young Nairobi men whom I hear have now decided there's no point working so hard when life could be made easier leaving the hard work to a woman and marrying her instead. If Obama wins, the roads that used to lead from African capitals to the Champs Elysees to pay tribute to the latest winner of the French presidential elections, or lately to China, will now simply shift to converge at the White House. The poor excuses of African men who call themselves our leaders will perpetuate the debilitating lie that continues to dehumanize Africans, which is that we are nothing unless we have access to the government system left behind by colonial rulers. And young Africans will keep believing the myth that the United States is a land of opportunity for black people, simply because they are not taught in school and do not see on CNN the majority of black Americans on whose backs the country was built.

Our excitement with the Obama campaign may be a replication of what we in Africa call the "big man mentality," in which we peg our hopes and dreams on one person from our country, ethnic group or village eating the slice of the "national cake." I cannot think of a mentality that is so self-destructive and disempowering as this one which destroys not just our societies, but our very humanity. It makes us toil hard to sow and harvest wheat and sugarcane, feed the chickens and collect the eggs, tend the cows to get milk and butter, and finally mix the ingredients and put the cake in the oven, and then passively console our hungry and tired selves that "at least one of us is eating."

I know that the most educated of us would like to disassociate ourselves from the possibility that our support for Obama is informed by the same undercurrents. It was comically tragic to watch Kenya's intellectuals do the same, but betray themselves when they insulted and ranted at their colleagues from different ethnic groups for not supporting their preferred presidential candidate. American politics hasn't got to that blatant acrimony yet, even though it is not uncommon to read whites berating blacks for racism because blacks allegedly support Obama "just because" he is black.

Unlike Alice Walker, I don't believe that "We are the ones we have been waiting for," the theme of Sweet Honey in the Rock, applies to the Obama campaign. The possibility of a black man becoming president is definitely not what I've been waiting for.

I've been waiting for a black leader who will be an amalgamation of Malcolm X, Aimé Césaire, Thomas Sankara and a host of others. A leader who will call on men to behave like men, husbands and fathers, not just wave their masculinity as a weapon against their families and societies. A leader who will tell off a European politician for spitting on the graves of our ancestors, and a man who realizes that revolution must be fought for, not just talked about. I've been waiting for a change from a system that simply incorporates women into one in which matriarchy forms a philosophical and political foundation of government, laws and religion. Ifi Amadiume's Reinventing Africa: Martriarchy, Religion and Culture, and Cheikh Anta Diop's The Cultural Unity of Black Africa: The Domains of Matriarchy and of Patriarchy in Classical Antiquity explain this vision even better. I've been waiting for a change in the way humankind thinks about itself, not for the implementation of the cheap slogan about blacks and whites living in some harmony. I've been waiting for a leader who knows that inspiring black peoples to be the best they can be also requires acknowledging their pain and praising their achievements, rather than threatening white folk with our bitterness.

This does not mean I will not rejoice if Obama becomes president. I will be proud, and I will be happy for him. I may even celebrate. But I will look at his victory just as I look at the pages of Essence or Ebony - remembering that although his individual achievements reflect the spirit, dignity, humanity and victory of black people who lived before him, they do not represent where I hope black peoples worldwide would aspire to go: to a better level of humanity, not a higher level of Eurocentric patriarchal power. I think the American presidency is too little, too late, too cheap for the great black people of the world to settle for. I want more for us.

I'd be curious to know if Alice Walker would consider me a Sister Who Is Brave.