Obama, the African Colonial

[Rebel]

June 25, 2009
Obama, the African Colonial
By L.E. Ikenga

Had Americans been able to stop obsessing over the color of Barack Obama's skin and instead paid more attention to his cultural identity, maybe he would not be in the White House today. The key to understanding him lies with his identification with his father, and his adoption of a cultural and political mindset rooted in postcolonial Africa.

Like many educated intellectuals in postcolonial Africa, Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. was enraged at the transformation of his native land by its colonial conqueror. But instead of embracing the traditional values of his own tribal cultural past, he embraced an imported Western ideology, Marxism. I call such frustrated and angry modern Africans who embrace various foreign "isms", instead of looking homeward for repair of societies that are broken, African Colonials. They are Africans who serve foreign ideas.

The tropes of America's racial history as a way of understanding all things black are useless in understanding the man who got his dreams from his father, a Kenyan exemplar of the African Colonial.

Before I continue, I need to say this: I am a first generation born West African-American woman whose parents emigrated to the U.S. in the 1970's from the country now called Nigeria. I travel to Nigeria frequently. I see myself as both a proud American and as a proud Igbo (the tribe that we come from -- also sometimes spelled Ibo). Politically, I have always been conservative (though it took this past election for me to commit to this once and for all!); my conservative values come from my Igbo heritage and my place of birth. Of course, none of this qualifies me to say what I am about to -- but at the same time it does.

My friends, despite what CNN and the rest are telling you, Barack Obama is nothing more than an old school African Colonial who is on his way to turning this country into one of the developing nations that you learn about on the National Geographic Channel. Many conservative (East, West, South, North) African-Americans like myself -- those of us who know our history -- have seen this movie before. Here are two main reasons why many Americans allowed Obama to slip through the cracks despite all of his glaring inconsistencies: ---MORE---

[franksolich]

She's exactly right.

I tried saying something similar before the elections, but she knows more about it than I do.  My speculations and insight were based upon the history of British West Africa, and which of the inhabitants prospered, and which didn't.

[Eupher]

A very compelling article. Thanks for digging that up, Reb.

I wish I could say that I read Lord Zero's book, but I haven't. I can't even look at a photograph of that guy without bile rising in my throat.

[Rebel]

A very compelling article. Thanks for digging that up, Reb.

I wish I could say that I read Lord Zero's book, but I haven't. I can't even look at a photograph of that guy without bile rising in my throat.

Don't think I could bring myself to read even one book by someone so arrogant as to write two autobiographies about himself before the age of 50. Talk about a narcissist.