I shouldn't entertain silly posts by people who say
that Obama is not an American when it has been proven that he is an American,
born to an American mother whose parents were Americans.
However, I do understand his plight and yours. You
say he is not an American and you refuse to accept it. I say you are RIGHT. He can't be one because people like you don't
want him to be an American. People like
me know the truth, he is an African American.
W.E.B DuBois wrote in his book "The Souls of Black Folks" that
African Americans have a double conscious. A two-ness that is divided by the
color line. That color line is called
"the Veil". As a person living behind the Veil, part of his being is
hidden. You refuse to see him as an
American because your ignorance won't allow it.
This is how DuBois put it ---
It is a peculiar sensation, this
double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the
eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in
amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness,—an American, a Negro;
two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one
dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.
The history of the American Negro is the history of
this strife — this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his
double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of
the older selves to be lost. He does not wish to Africanize America, for
America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He wouldn't bleach his
Negro blood in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has
a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be
both a Negro and an American without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows,
without having the doors of opportunity closed roughly in his face.
I know that flew over some of you heads but let me
sum it up like this. White Americans are considered just Americans. They are one.
When you look at all other races in America they are two. The Japanese
are considered Japanese Americans, the Chinese are considered as Chinese
Americans, the Indians that were here first are called Native Americans, and
blacks are called African Americans.
Whites are the only group that is considered just Americans. On every application that you fill out it
only says white and everyone else on the application has a double
identity. It lists their race and then
their nationality.
I said all that to say this. Obama has to walk two lines. The one that you see and the one that you do
not. The one that you see is the face
that he has to put on to please those Americans that question his loyalty and his
nationality. The other face is reserved
for the people that he relates too. Thus, his double consciousness in a nut
shell. DuBois spoke of merging ones
double self into a truer self. That
truer self is ones single consciousness and not the face we have to put on for two
groups of people. That single
consciousness was on the face of people like Malcom X and James Baldwin who
told America how she really was and made her look at herself. If Obama lived outside of that “veil” he
would be called an “angry black man”. The
tag that many want to label him anyway but he can’t allow it. He won’t allow
it.
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