I find it rather daunting that after centuries of racial turmoil in America, many mainstream politicians, religious leaders, and academics have yet to make critical connections between the brutal history of racism in this country and foreign policy impacting black and brown peoples of the world. Are we as Americans suffering from historical amnesia? Have we forgotten the genocide of Native Americans, the slave trade, Hiroshama and Nagisaki, segregation, lynching, and most recently the atrocities of a post-hurricane Katrinia dibocle? Obama presidency holds exciting possibilities precisely because he may bring sensitivities about race and the ways in which racial attitudes are infused in the formation of policies and practices. Even with the greatness of Abraham Lincoln, America has never experienced this kind of leadership. We do not yet know how Obama will engage policy with an awareness of race and racism. We do hope, that as an African American, with an African wife and African American children, he will bring to his leadership an awareness of how race has shaped the U.S. policy agenda. His pragmatic approach is very appealing and I think will be well received. It will also, perhaps, lead to new conversations about policies that are grounded not in white supremacist of nationalistic ideologies, but in sound thinking and wisdom.
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The connection between America's history with racism and its foreign policy has been overlooked for far too long. The nation's approach and dealings with other nation-states is often mediated through the lens of false notions of superiority and imperialistic ideals. Those devising and implementing both foreign and domestic policy have been conditioned in a eurocentric culture that has historically viewed whiteness as divinity and blackness as its negation or that which is anti-white, anti-good, anti-human. So does racism and discrimination have anything to do with policy?
As the country heads towards the general elections, particularly the Democratic convention, the real test for "redeeming the soul of America" begins. Over forty years ago, Martin Luther King, Jr. surmised that one of the most urgent goals of the Civil Rights Movement was to save the "soul of America." April 4, 2008 makes the fortieth anniversary of King's assassination on the balcony of the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis, Tennessee and the question still looms larger than life, yet the stakes seem even higher now than then. The role of the U.S. government in the global economic and political community is unquestionably empirial. The U.S., through military might, technology, and economic hegemony, has become a leader in the forward progression of globalization the world over. Which means that in many respects the fate of America is deeply intertwinned with the fate of the world. There is much riding on this election. I truly hope that individuals vote not only their conscience but have the courage to see beyond race, gender, and the petty namesaying that often accompanies the public political tug-of-war game. For the sake of generations unborn, let us hope that America does the right thing and advance the kind of leadership that will seek to illiminate poverty, truly engage in peacemaking work, and find some way of providing basic health insurance for all Americans. Only time will tell.
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