From Obama to O'bama

Barack Obama takes a seat for an expanded bilateral meeting with David Cameron and other delegates in the cabinet room

fotocredit: Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty

jacked from the Graun

Yesterday Barack Obama addressed both the Houses of Parliament (not this pic) as part of his tour to Europe. David Miliband, former Foreign Secretary, now MP of South Shields tweeted:

"Obama speech came alive talking about diverse societies. But not one non-white person on British establishment side of stage."

Though Miliband is part of the very political establishment he derides, this tweet hit home. It's been really weird, surreal even, watching Britain's political elites and media fawn over the Obamas. On Monday Obama was in Ireland visiting the village where his great great great maternal grandfather is said to have come from. And so Obama, or rather O'bama is now an Irishman. To prove it, the Guardian printed an opinion piece with a headline declaring 'Obama finds his inner Irishman.' And the Irish Times ran an interesting commentary by Gavin O'Malley on the political history of the Irish and Black American communities:

"the African American community responded by providing the votes needed to elect the first Irish Catholic president [John F. Kennedy]. The course of history changed. Black merged green and green merged black. Irish-Americans and African-Americans dropped their hyphens... and once again became one."

For those who don't know much, it's informative, but it tends to recall only the good bits about Ireland's past and seems to leave out the bad bits. Seemingly, its o'kay to leave those bits out, as the most of the UK media has done, because on this occasion it's about celebrating the visit of O'bama the 'Irish' President of America. Balance and a more critical approach, would have been a little embarrassing because as there's been plenty of solidarity, there's also been plenty of oppression too. And though present-day Ireland and America certainly paints a better picture of oneness and a people bound by a common identity, it feels strange, but positive, but also weird to watch O'bama being welcomed with a pint of Guinness and a name change. 


Even more awkward was Wednesday. Obama gave a speech in Westminster during which he mentioned his paternal grandfather: 

"It is possible for the sons and daughters of former colonies to sit here as members of this great parliament and for the grandson of a Kenyan who served as a cook in the British army to stand before you as president of the United States,"

Indeed Obama has proved it is possible for the grandson of a Kenyan cook to become President of USA, but the rapturous applause he got shows the bi-polar nature of parliament - which as David Miliband's tweet above notes, is quite unrepresentative. This is the same institution trying to wriggle out of compensating the Kenyans tortured under British colonial rule because the government is not responsible for what happened in its colonies. Obama ever the diplomat, didn't mention how cruelly the British treated his grandfather, a subject he oddly never mentions much. It's odd that, apart from Libya, the highlights of Obama's speech and general tone has been one of acknowledging migrant histories and the benefits of multiculturalism and yet this government believes in 'muscular multiculturalism' and ridiculously proposes no right of appeal on visa rejections. And now that immigration figures have just been released showing an increase in migrants coming on, one can expect to see the right hit the panic button and call for tougher immigration controls. So what was parliament clapping for or was it just the lily-livered lefties?

California on Egypt

While the Pew Research Centre has produced some very interesting research* to dispel the myth that Americans are not as ignorant as the rest of the world sometimes thinks they are,  some young people Cali are simply clueless. 

This is Kaseem G on the streets of Cali. 

#subscribetokaseemg!

* Pew Reasearch shows that +-32% of the public said that they kept up with news about the situation in Egypt and the Egyptian Revolution made up 56% of media coverage last week. This is said to be one of the 'highest levels of coverage for any story since PEJ started its weekly analysis four years ago -- and the highest for a foreign news story'. Kind of surprising given that America's fighting two wars and has military and humanitarian interests in so many countries around the world.

jacked from: http://xkcd.com/850/

'The world according to a group of Americans who turned out to be unexpectedly good at geography, derailing our attempt to illustrate their country’s attitude toward the rest of the world.'

Martin Luther King on Ghana

[Independent] Ghana has something to say to us. It says to us first that the oppressor never voluntarily gives freedom to the oppressed. You have work for it. Freedom is never given to anybody. Privileged classes never give up their privileges without strong resistance.

- Martin Luther King Jnr
(1957)

Diasporic Relations: Cleveland in Translation

by Mukoma wa Ngugi

Author of the novel Nairobi Heat (Penguin, SA 2009), an anthology of poetry titled Hurling Words at Consciousness (AWP, 2006) and is a political columnist for the BBC's Focus on Africa Magazine. He was short listed for the Caine Prize for African writing in 2009 and for the Penguin African Writing Prize in 2010.

I am sipping a cold Taj Mahal beer at Empress Taytu, the Ethiopian restaurant on Cleveland’s East Side. My wife, friends and I have just finished some doro wat stew and injera bread while our 10-day-old daughter, Nyambura, takes a nap.

I am a Kenyan claiming Ethiopian culture in order to feel at home. Perhaps years ago, it would have felt ironic, but not anymore.

I came to the United States in 1990 to attend college and reconnect with a father I hadn’t seen in eight years. A writer, he was living in political exile after using his pen against the dictatorship of Daniel Arap Moi. Leaving for a conference in London, he’d been told he’d receive a “red-carpet welcome” on his return — a euphemism for being jailed or killed.

I was able to leave Kenya only because I was born in Evanston, Ill. My parents had returned home shortly after my birth, so my first language is Gikuyu, and my English accent is unmistakably Kenyan. The dictatorship had denied my siblings passports — an attempt to punish my father — while I, armed with my birth certificate and Kenyan identification, was able to go to the American Embassy and get a U.S. passport.

So my return to the states was an escape. But because I had lived in Kenya all my life, it was not a return home; it was to begin the life of an immigrant in the country of my birth. To cope with my feelings of isolation in the racially polarized America of the 1990s — the time of the Rodney King beating, the Los Angeles riots and the O.J. Simpson trial — and the news from East Africa — the dictatorship intensifying in Kenya, the genocide unfolding in Rwanda — I sought the company and conversation of other Africans and African-Americans. I had to abandon a narrower Kenyan identity and embrace my Africanness and blackness.

Still, even today, I can get terribly homesick. But even though I left Kenya for very complex reasons, the cure is in finding small, mundane things that bring home back to me. Immigrants are forced out of their native lands by great upheavals: war, famine, oppression. But in our host countries, those larger issues become abstract. We miss small, practical things that function as metaphors for home. When we do find them, it is deeply satisfying. We feel like we have reconnected with our culture.

Finding such nuggets, though, is like translating between languages. I am constantly looking for the original or equivalent. At other times, I have to compensate and substitute. For example, I wanted to get married in a free-flowing African kitengeshirt, not straight-jacketed in a tuxedo. I couldn’t very well drive to Steelyard Commons for it. But at the Calabash African Market in Cleveland Heights, I found one with matching shorts.

Mostly, though, I am in search of food. If you love food as much as I do, food is culture. And for Kenyans, there is no substitute for goat meat. We eat roast goat at weddings and funerals, at birthday parties, in five- and one-star restaurants. There is an urban legend set in Cleveland of an elderly American couple who went out of town for a few days, leaving their pet goat under the care of a Kenyan student, who promptly threw a party. No need to spell out the fate of the goat, or the friendship.

So in 2007, when my wife and I moved to Cleveland from Wisconsin so that she could start medical school, I promptly found my way to the West Side Market. Although I cannot buy a whole goat there, a full leg for roasting gets the job done.

Sometimes, as a food lover and fumbling chef, I have to innovate. Indian naan flatbread replaces thicker Kenyan chapatis. And in order to make ugali, a hard cakelike dish made of maize, I must find the dry, white maize flour at a Hispanic or Asian grocer, since sweet, yellow American corn flour won’t do. Thus, I’ve also begun to experiment with foods from many different cultures — and now even make a mean pad thai.

Ultimately, some things do not translate. Last year, when I flew home and my brothers met me at the Nairobi airport, we immediately went out for goat and Tusker beer. In the restaurant, a lone musician was strumming his guitar, singing old favorites in Gikuyu. The audience did a Mugithi train dance, snaking and chugging around the dance floor. This is home at its essence — music, food, family and language.

But what Cleveland cannot give, it can compensate for in profound ways. My daughter was born here. Her roots, which I hope will span wider than mine or her mother’s, will always start here. We named her Nyambura, which translates into bringer of rain, after my late mother. Culturally speaking, my mother continues to live through her.

Translation means a word is reborn into a different language and culture. So isn’t my mother being reborn in Cleveland the ultimate act of translation?

*This essay first appeared in the October 2010 issue of Cleveland Magazine and re-produced @ www.africanwriting.com, now jacked by yours truly.

postcard from miami...

Miami, US: A man has glitter applied as he prepares to take part in the Miami Broward One carnival. 

The event celebrates Caribbean culture.

foto & caption cred: Lynne Sladky/AP& TheGuardian

Diva Fierce!

pic jacked from AFP/Gawker

fisttap Bombastic Elements for post title and pic

Move over Lady O (USA), Chantel Biya's (Cameroon) the fiercest of the First Ladies at the UN General Assembly. 

iAbsolutely love her hair, that furious red is so outrageous and bold, y'gotsta love it! 

Forget the sniggering NYTimes et al sniggering, it's a good look - if Rhianna or Bey did this, even a model on a catwalk in Milan, NYC or London, wouldn't the paps be snapping them up for the fashion pages and wigmakers naming weaves after the look? Admittedly, sometimes Chantel Biya gets it oh-so-wrong with the outfits, but who doesn't? Even Mrs O, SamCam, Sarah Brown and Carla Bruni have off-ish days. 

Props to Chantel Biya for the attention-seeker that she is, to be so fashion forward and fashion furious to break with the conformity and demureness of international diplomacy. Consigning her to the pile of gaudy African dictator's wives is an erroneous kneejerk reaction that's made far too easily, anyone with an eye for fashion should be able to see this hair as iconic. Yes, iconic! There couldn't be a more fitting, cliché word to use.

BTW Checkout this uber cool blog http://chantalbiyahair.tumblr.com/page/1, for pictures of Mme Biya's hair.

BlackStars Get in There!

made in '06, but still relevant. check for nii parkes @ 2:48 - 3:27.

got my fingers firmly crossed, ancestral spirits invoked & prayers to the Most High uttered hoping that GH have improved *immensely* on their goal execution so they win today! 

 (for dem who nah know nii parkes is a briliant poet and author of the novel, tale of the blue bird)

L-Boogie On The MIC

Lauryn Hill performed at the Harmony Festival 2010 in Santa Rosa, California earlier this week and seems like there are reservations from some quarters, but to me L-Boogie can do no wrong. I saw her a few years back and she tore the roof off and to makeup for being over an hour late, we got full refunds...Concerning this performance, iLove most things Elizabeth Seward does not. I don't know abt how the live sound was as I wasn't there, but her hair (especially!),  the chunky earrings and the jumpsuit are FABULOUS! Her performance is kewl. For those not getting her, think Janelle Monae and Erykah Badu mashed up in one.

Art iHeart

Been meaning to post the work of Wardell Milan II and Demetrius Oliver since a while back when I had a convo with, Gee Chee, a member of my digital fam, about their work. iDig Wardell Milan's site, it's worth checking out. Most of all I like his Battle Royale collection, the way he mashes up the pics using a similar style to that of Titus Kaphar (peep the archives) - they have rolled together and have set up a museum together with Demetrius Oliver. Battle Royale is based on Ralph Ellison's boxers in 'Invisible Man' and the images explore issues surrounding identity politics, masculinity, falliability but most importantly, IMO, the elasticity of identity and power.

Wardell Milan

Self-Potrait

Demetrius Oliver is also nice, I mean his art is nice. His work draws inspiration from various places and these pics below provide commentary on inscription/erasure of identity through history and contemporary consumerist culture. The body is used as a canvas, as corporeal metaphor for the cultural and political condition of a people. Excuse me, I'm channelling Sartre here.

Bust

2006

DV if you ever see this, this is Demetrius' work not Leslie Hewitt as y'said on ur blog.

Lump

2006

Tracks

2006

Halo

2005

SoulMan

James Brown!

James Brown!

James Brown!

Silly youuuuuuu!

You love hip hop

but you don’t know whoooooo

made that beat drop.

He’s the maaaan

with 2 Funky Drummers

in his baaaand

And he made

your Grand-Ma

want to daaaance!

And he made

your Grand Pa

wear tight paaaants!

to do the

camel walk

to do the

mashed potatoes

to do the

funky chicken

to do the

JAAAAAAAAAMES BROWN!

James Brown!

James Brown!

- Saul Stacey Williams, part of a collection of  children's poems 

commissioned by Nickolodeon for Black History Month.

shamelessly jacked from his FB fanpage.

Ten Days in Africa

Regi Allen travels to three West African countries to discover for himself the truth behind the myths that separate black identity in Africa from black identity in the Diaspora.

There's a shorter version which is woven more tightly; stylistically its better and sums up the whole film pretty nicely in 8:20 mins, unfortunately I couldn't embed or download & upload.

The Illusionist, The Puppet or The Joker?

B.O AS 'THE JOKER'

Around the world, in its many variations; street art has historically be a form of political expression for the disenfranchised and marginalised and this was the first thought that came to mind when I saw this montage of President Obama as 'The Joker'. However, this poster has become an overnight controversy along partisan and racial lines. The poster first appeared in LA and Earl Ofari Hutchinson of the LA urban policy unit has said, "Depicting the President as demonic and a socialist goes beyond political spoofery." In my opinion, to label this, "demonic" goes beyond political hysteria and is spoofery in itself! Its a gross misinterpretation of the image and where it comes from; its The Joker character acted by the late Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight (2008). Obama's Stans (obsessive fans) in the blogosphere have claimed; this is reminiscent of the minstrel show and have described it as racist. Steve Mikulan was quoted in the UK daily, The Telegraph as having stated, "The only thing missing is a noose". This is a far stretch of the imagination, methinks.

The green hair, white face, black-ringed eyes and red lips of The Joker in The Dark Knight is not the same as the image of minstrel as claimed. The minstrel was black-a-face, with red lips whose thickness was exageratted and eyes made extra wide. The picture above is not the same as those of AfricanAmericans denigrated years before; anyone who's watched Spike Lee's Bamboozled (2000) will understand what minstrel means historically and in corporate Amerikkka today. To suggest this poster has the same connotation of black-a-face is absurd and playing the race card; there are real issues of racism more deserving of social outrage than this legitimate satire of a sitting President. The same image was used of Dubya, Sarah Palin, John McCain who were indeed jokers, but not 'The Joker'.

For the Republicans who've delighted in seeing this as criticism of Obama; the joke is on them. America has had a long history of a hyperfear of socialism and anybody who thinks Obama is a socialist needs to realise its 2009 not 1962, the Russians aren't a superpower anymore and neither are they threatening to storm in on Washington. They need to take Socialist theory 101 and read the writings of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. And to fully understand the intersection of race and class in the US; Amilcar Cabral, Angela Davis and Malcom X would be a few names on a long essential reading list of Black Liberation and Socialism 102. If they did, they'd not only realise firstly even in the warped American imagination that equates socialism to 'the death of capitalism and democracy' as Americans know it, Obama has proven to be a true blue. This Banker's President, is anything BUT a socialist proposing to nationalise everything; a man who's passed the biggest stimulus bill in American history and refused to nationalise the health insurance plan can hardly be equated to real socialist revolutionaries like Che or Castro. Secondly, returning to the lesson plan; these Socialism phobes would learn that socialism modelled on the Scandinavian system of The Third Way might actually be beneficial to America where unbridled capitalist greed and foreign aggression are the modus operandae.

In light of the current birther movement and the real racist images of Obama doing the rounds online, this image just makes the Right look even more hysterical, irrational and desperate. Its also extremely hypocritical of them; the same people who ran the country badly for 8 years. The Conservatives are the xenophobic, eugenicist, capitalist architects of social iniquity and to now take up a position of protest in solidarity with the poorer and disenfranchised people disillusioned with the Obama administration would be the real insult of this image, if that was the intended message of the unknown poster.

If Obama's PR team and Stan bloggers are young and smart enough to remember the movie, they'll realise this image was neither racist nor slander. The joker was the best character in that film. Even though everyone pretended he was the bad guy, in reality he was the hero that everyone was rooting for and he made it worth watching. This poster is probably quite accurate in that sense as people like Obama as a person; he is the articulate likeable guy who appears on TV to reassure the people and give them a renewed sense of hope so much that it elides his Bush-lite manner of handling domestic and foreign affairs. The Obama hype machine has spawned an enormous movement of mostly seletively informed (on the details of his policies), but fervent supporters who have knighted him 'the untouchable one' and it is almost forbidden to criticise him.

As a Stan of Obama who belatedly saw the light when the first air strikes left 17 dead in Afghanistan and Somali pirates were murdered at his behest; this is my li'l planet to write what I like (a la Steve Biko) and critique the administration as and when I see fit. Obama has reneged on too many of his campaign promises to deserve status of The Joker, maybe the suave Illusionist, or Wall St's Puppet titles would better suit him; so here's to better thought-out, intelligent, protest street art to come!