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A Child Is Born
By anitamckay on 2008-11-20 07:03:24
On November 14, 2008, Nicolai Barack John was born in the nation of St. Vincent and the Grenadines. There is a lot of
history in his name, spanning hundreds of years. Maybe I'm making an assumption, but since John doesn't sound African,
Arawak, or Caribe, it's likely to be a legacy of slavery. I don't know the significance of Nicolai, but we all know who
Barack is. There have been hundreds of children born in the Caribbean since the US election whose name contains Barack
or Obama. It's no surprise to me that people of the same political bent as the anti-affirmative actions folks have been crying
about the election: "Why does it have to be about race?" First of all, just to set the record straight, Obama was not elected
by huge numbers of people of color turning up at the polls. The percentage of African-Americans as part of the voting
public only changed by 1% compared to 2004. Obama was elected by people across many spectra: color, gender, age, class.
It is interesting that whether it is affirmative action or a Presidential election, the ones who have benefitted (and continue to
benefit) by racism are the ones who bellow the loudest when they perceive that a person of color has gotten
something special because of that color. Racism is not a thing of the past. The Associated Press reported that there has been
a marked increase in race crimes all over the country since Obama's election. Some of the more chilling reports are of
second and third grade students chanting: "Assassinate Obama!" and a pool in a general store in Maine that has people
guessing when the President will be killed. Isn't that sick stuff about race, too? The election of a non-white is and will have
to be about race until the dominant group - loosely, Western Europeans and their descendants - stops dominating. I tried to
think of any country in the world where people of color have not been dominated by western Europeans. I've probably
missed some, but the only one I can think of is Bhutan, a country too poor and remote to be of interest to the superpowers.
Is it any wonder, then, that aside from the whole world rejoicing that an especially intense period of US militarism may be
coming to an end, people of color have even more reason to rejoice - not that it is their turn to dominate, but that someday,
there may be justice in the world. That's the world I hope Nicolas Barack John lives in.
