"Most Powerful Single Black Individual That's Ever Walked Planet" - Historian Puts Obama In Context

Hissyspit

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Tue Feb-17-09 04:22 AM
Original message

"Most Powerful Single Black Individual That's Ever Walked Planet" - Historian Puts Obama In Context

http://www.alternet.org/rights/127247

"The Most Powerful Single Black Individual That�s Ever Walked Planet Earth" -- Historian Puts Obama in Context
By Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!. Posted February 17, 2009.

Ali Marzui, a giant in African studies, explains Obama's unprecedented rise to power.

The following is an excepted transcript of an interview with historian Ali Mazrui, from Democracy Now! by Amy Goodman.

Goodman: We turn now to our next guest, an intellectual giant in African studies for the past four decades. ... I�m talking about the Kenyan-born, Pan-Africanist thinker Ali Mazrui. He is Albert Schweitzer Professor in Humanities and the director of the Institute of Global Cultural Studies at State University of New York, Binghamton. Born in Mombasa in Kenya in 1933, Dr. Mazrui studied in Manchester, New York, and Oxford, then became a professor in Uganda, in 1973 forced into exile by the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, and has taught in the United States as well as at institutions around the world. ... It is great to have you with us. ... This is the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Kwame Nkrumah, the founding president of Ghana. It�s also the time of the election of the first black president of the United States, his father from Kenya, Barack Obama. I heard you speak yesterday at the International Studies Association in New York, and you said it�s bigger than that for Barack Obama.

Mazrui: Yes, indeed. Barack Obama is setting a precedent not just for the United States, but for the entire Western world. In none of the countries in the Western world with a white majority population has there been an election to install a head of state or a head of government who was black.

Goodman: You�re saying he�s the first black president of the Western Hemisphere?

Mazrui: And of the Western world. That is, including Europe, not just the Western Hemisphere, but the Western world as a whole, because we keep on wondering when we�ll have a black president of France, for example, although there�s been progress in appointing ministers who are from Africa or from the world of color. And then, a black prime minister of Great Britain would be very nice, and I�m sure it will happen, not necessarily in my lifetime, but probably in yours or in the lifetime of my children. And then, even more surprising, but -- historically, but perfectly understandable in modern terms, a black chancellor of Germany, and that will take a while. But I�m sure because of Barack Obama breaking that original taboo in the Western world about appointing as heads of states people who are not of European extraction, it opens other doors around the Western world as well as the Western Hemisphere.

And then, Barack Obama, himself, becomes the most powerful single black individual in the history of civilization, you know? There�s never been a person in control of the resources which the United States has, of the creative and destructive powers that the United States has. We�ve had great individuals in African history, like Menelik II of Ethiopia or Ramesses II of Egypt or even a more recent one like Kwame Nkrumah. Those were powerful within their countries or their regions. They were not globally powerful in the sense in which a president of the United States is. So he�s easily the most powerful single black individual that�s ever walked planet earth. And that�s a major breakthrough in race relations.

MORE