BIDEN AND AFRICAN-AMERICAN COLOUR TRIBALISM
President Joe Biden’s dance on skin tribalism is perhaps triggered by the massive support by Black voters, writes Okello Oculi
On Friday 6th May, 2022, CNN telecast Joe Biden’s white female Presidential Spokesperson introduced a ‘’Black-Is –Beautiful’’ African-American woman as her successor. She had been her Assistant.
Unlike Vice President Kamala Harris and President Barrack Obama (with Indian and Caucasian ancestry in their skin colour, respectively), she is a direct line Black-African; and a double first timer.
She becomes Biden’s fourth promise to ‘’have backs’’ of Black folks covered in return for voting for him directly or for the critical Jew and Black Democrats as Senators from the State of Georgia. Those two seats gave him the very critical 50 votes to match the 50 votes by the opposition Republicans. In a tie over a proposed legislation, Vice President Kamala Harris, as the Chair of the Senate, would cast the winning vote. President Obama had faced hostile Republicans who routinely killed his bills.
Biden’s choice of Kamala Harris as running mate had made a WOMAN and a BLACK-AMERICAN ‘’break the glass ceilings’’ of racial and gender exclusions. Appointing Linda Thomas-Greenfield (another direct line ‘Black-African African-American’), as Ambassador to the United Nations matched her racial visibility with that of the head of the Armed Forces.
Vice-President Kamala Harris attended Howard University during a time when it was mandatory for applicants to attach their photographs. University officials preferred entrants with racial mixture in their skin. Film Director, Spike Lee, made a film which lambasted this scandalous Black-on Black racism.
These appointments highlight the magnitude of the race not yet run, namely: cleansing the zones of poverty, child-pregnancy, drug ingestion and Black-on-Black violence, high fall-out from school, lack of access to Federal State and Local Government funds for household economic advancement. It has been documented that official policies denied funds for acquiring personal housing and business ventures; as well as racist gang violence against Black businesses, have blocked the flowering of African-Americans.
.This is a zone in the status of the African Diaspora crying for intervention and social engineering by the so-called new-African immigrants. There has been some limited start through African graduates who graduated from high quality American universities and took up jobs in ‘’Black Colleges’’. They injected traditions of taking learning with seriousness both in teaching and grooming students.
It is noted that the new African Diaspora are degree holders and earn high salaries. Their economic intervention to aid the slum victims would make vital investment. The African Union should review this situation.
Prime Minister Michael Manley has left a most valuable record of social engineering in Jamaica. He legislated free Primary and Secondary education as well as scholarships for tertiary education to children of poor Black families.
His Black wife Beverly, and Bob Marley, urged the Black 89 per cent of the population to: ’’STAND UP FOR YOUR RIGHTS’’; and fight as Africans to terminate ‘’the Philosophy that holds one race superior’’ to another
Brazil’s official policy of weakening a Black liberation movement by indoctrinating mulato/’’MESTIZO’’ children to hate BLACK Africans and Afro-Brazilians also beckons for intervention by the African Union and the African Diaspora. In 1922, Sweden’s ambassador warned European governments that Brazil was becoming the largest African Country in the world. Biden may welcome it.
The American policy of classifying any person with a drop of African blood as None White, however, aroused intensive frustration in Mulatoes and made them the vanguard for struggle against racial oppression.
Unlike Brazil, Civil Rights combatants like Martin Luther King Jr., Andrew Young, W.E.B. Dubois and Malcolm X did not break ranks with their Black roots. Marcus Garvey, a dark-skinned immigrant from Jamaica, openly exploited the gap in ‘Skin Tribalism’’ for building his ‘African Empire of Mind and Soul’. In his quarrel with Dubois and Dubois’s contempt for his lack of education, the ‘skin colour divide’ lurked in the air.
This divide would be echoed in rallying chants of: ‘’I am Black and Proud’’, ‘’Black is Beautiful’’, ‘’We are young gifted and Black’, ‘’Black Panther’’. By the mid-1960s, Mulato girls began to date and marry Africa-Black Males. Barrack Obama followed Michael Manley’s route by seeking out a Black Michelle for a wife.
Several American Presidents encouraged this ‘colour-tribalism’ by giving high government jobs to ‘’Mulato Blacks”: Ambassador Ralph Bunche, Secretary Colin Powel, Condoleezza Rice, and Andrew Young. President Joe Biden’s dance on this skin tribalism is probably impacted by those very effective in mobilizing Black voters at the grassroots.
In Africa, DStv has promoted advertisements projecting Caucasian models. Cartoons deny Black children figurines which look like them.
Nollywood, Music, Advertisements, Television presenters and Fashion sectors have what Fela Kuti called: ‘’YELLOW Fever’’. Their impact on the self-esteem of children across Lagos, Sokoto, Plateau, Akwa Ibom and Bayelsa States cannot be uniformly healthy. The claim that 60 per cent of Nigerians are mentally ill partially reflects this prejudice.
Prof Oculi writes from Abuja
