by Lilian Okello

Created on: June 30, 2008

THE OBAMA FACTOR

Like most people, I have been following Senator Barrack Obama's progress in the US presidential race with much interest. So far most of the highlights have been routine stuff such as you get in party primaries there. But matters got to another level and my attention was seriously captured when Mr. Obama gave his boilerplate speech in p0hiladelphia about race. This may be what made him or break him in the contest.

Race was bound to crop up along the way and I had no illusions it would.Infact ,one can say that it was always the hidden element nobody wanted to talk about, even as he has roundly beaten mrs.Hillary Clinton so far among young and college-educated white voters. Suppose in their own way these yuppies are trying to make a statement that they are above bigtotry.In a way they are seeking to send a message about themselves as liberated minds more than anything.
All along the impression is that mr.Obama was just another US political celebrity who was otherwise unremarkable, never mind his excited fan base in the US and even from his rural home in Africa. But the Philadelphia speech made me reassess my earlier thinking .Two elements that emerged in his unusually brave speech on a touchy subject coming from a presidential candidate e refused taking the easy way out of disowning the African-American pastor at the centre of the controversy, one Rev. Jeremiah, Wright, who had spoken of the September 11 2001 terrorist attacks in America as payback time for that country's often misguided foreign policy.
Naturally Mr. Obama had to disagree with the specific remark made by Rev.Wright and assert his patriotism. But it is his act of refusing to disown his family s long relationship with the man that struck me as courageous remarks. His remark that doing so would be the same disowning his own connection to Black-America was equally striking.
US voters are a crowd that is much given to platitudes, not serious stuff.Mr. Obama in this instance actually chose to pose some very soul-searching questions. He asked could he disown his own white grandmother, who he loved and who brought him up, even though she had a unpleasant towards the blacks who surrounded them.
He was also telling this mainstream that before superficially condemning the views of people like Rev.Wright, it was better to confront the historical root of this rage that makes Blacks Americans hold views such as these.
Up to this point, I had tended to view mr.Obama as somebody who was running a make-believe campaign by posing as being "above" race, which is simply an absurdity in American politics' Obamas candidacy carries huge and obvious significance. And it is not just for Blacks Americans. The significance touches every black person in the world, from Africa to Australia to the Pacific Island.

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