"Yoshie, when you and Joe attacked Obama, he hadn't made noises about Iran. You talked about how he really wasn't black or something like that."
My initial comments about Obama were not an 'attack'. Nor have I attacked him since. My first critical comments about him were in the context of him 'making noises' about Iran.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Joseph Wanzala" <jwanzala at hotmail.com>
To: <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org>
Sent: Friday, October 01, 2004 5:47 PM
Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Barack Obama
>Well, looks like Barack Obama is shaping up to be a just another
neo-liberal
>hawk.
>
>Joe W.
>____________
>
>http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/oct2004/obam-o01.shtml
>
>Democratic keynote speaker Barack Obama calls for missile strikes on Iran
>By Tom Mackaman
>1 October 2004
>Use this version to print | Send this link by email | Email the author
>
>In an interview with the editorial board of the Chicago Tribune published
>September 26, Democratic Senate candidate Barack Obama said he would favor
>the use of "surgical" missile strikes against Iran if it failed to bow to
>Washington's demand that it eliminate its nuclear energy program.
My initial comments about Barack Obama were not an 'attack', nor have I attacked him since. However, I have expressed my disappointment with reactionary positions he has taken. My first comment on Obama had to do highlighting the degrees of seperation between myself and Obama: as you know, his father was a Kenyan from the same ethnic group as my mother - Jaluo (my father is Ugandan and I was born in Kampala) his father and my parents were faily close friends after he returned from his sojourn in the US and UK, having seperated from Barack's mother and remarried an Englishwoman with whom he had two sons - Mark and David who I went to school with in Nairobi. Given this, I actually wanted to like Obama very much. Indeed, most Kenyans have taken a very uncritical pride in him for his considerable achievements and as a role model etc.
My comments about his ethnicity were not to the effect that he 'really wasn't black', but had to do with recognizing that his 'story' is quite peculiar and fundamentally different from that of African Americans. This has more than a little to do with his 'crossover' appeal. To me, his being elected to the senate is of considerable moment - not so much because he is a the fourth black senator - but because he is the first black senator born to an African father. As it turns out his links to Kenya and the African immigrant community are superficial and incidental. This is not a criticism, just a matter of fact. Further, he has not projected himself as a classic African-American (in that he was the result of a union between an African and an American) as opposed to people in America of African descent who have recently been 'hyphenated'. Thus he is something of an enigma at best - and where he is clear about his positions, what he says is not encouraging. So in my opinion he is not someone useful to refect upon in developing a 'moral vision'
Joe W.