”To be black was to be the beneficiary of great inheritance, a special destiny, glorious burdens that only we were strong enough to bear. Burdens we were to carry with style. More than once, my mother would point out:”Harry Belafonte is the best-looking man on the planet.”
It was in this context that I came across the picture in Life magazine of the black man who tried to peel off his skin. I imagine other black children, then and now, undergoing similar moments of revelation. Perhaps it comes sooner for most-the parent’s warning not to cross the boundaries of a particular neighborhood, or the frustration of not having hair like Barbie no matter how long you tease and comb, or the tale of a father’s or grandfather’s humiliation at the hands of an employer or a cop, overheard while you’re supposed to be asleep. Maybe it’s easier for a child to receive the bad news in small doses, allowing for a system of defenses to build up-although I suspect I was one of the luckier once, having been given a stretch of childhood free from self-doubt. ”
(Obama, 2004:51)
This quote from “Dreams from my father” explains by large my early opposition to the Obama peace prize. As even his own campaign underlined, there is so many kinds of hopes resting on this man’s shoulders – and we are so many that want him to succeed: At least for the children. - Not necessarily in the sense of peace and climate change stabilization, that too off course – but more so for the tolerance and dignity among and within people that his heritage, given that he is the president of the US, hopefully will endow over time. But like generations of women has had to perform better than their male colleges to get the same recognition; the first American president of color need to deliver as none before him to maintain a lasting impact on the way people address each other. The fear is that the prize should bring further burden to the task.
Unless you are president Obama, addressing these issues is almost impossible without sounding inflated. But Obama, or rather more so the Obama family, has the position and therefore the power to hopefully make a lasting impact in this regard too.- The family because it really is Michelle and the girls that make the difference; had Barrack been married to a white woman the power of his tale would be different. - But being a mother of children of color, the agony in the above quote is to familiar, and the anticipation for change so strong that not underlining the importance of this dimension of the hope that he and his family brings is impossible.
My personal confrontation with the issue has been a step wise exploration from a distant examination to a hart felt confrontation. The first time as a little girl when I for the first time saw two black men on the street of my town and actually stooped, open mindedly as Human rights discussions were a common issue in my home but nonetheless; to peruse the sight. Luckily I was there with my grandfather, a human right fighter and wartime prisoner who gave me a life time lesson.
Later, as a young student going to the US to confront my attitudes towards Americans, their politics and culture, I lived in a white neighborhood outside Washington DC. The only black people I saw were those coming in to pick the garbage, and on the Friday night bus going to town - as the maids were leaving the rich to go home to care for their families over the weekend. However, the depth of the segregations didn’t really strike me until I took the daughter in the house where I was staying to the doctor, and the regular family doctor was replaced by a black substitute. The little girl got hysterical, refusing to be examined by a garbage man…… I was shocked and even further disgust by the American society (Luckily the girl grew up in a family that immediately addressed the situation and the issue in a constructive way).
Ironically, today, it was this year Nobel diploma designer artist Per Fronth that confronted my hash attitude, a lasting eye opener for the counter culture and richness of the American culture, during a incidental meeting a Friday night in Georgetown DC.
A decade later I was back with my own family; my African borne husband and our new borne baby. A Sunday afternoon tea at the home of the ageing secretary of our professor at Johns Hopkins University brought history to life. We had joined here at the service of her traditional black American church, and were sitting with her long time friends around the table in her tiny kitchen listening to tails from the riots of the black peoples fight for justice. These women had been there, been excited and given hope by – Martin Luther King. But now many years later they were still living in what I would call ghettos. I felt relieved when we returned to Norway to raise our children.
In retrospect, it’s hard to forgive oneself for its nativity. Finding my little girl, at the age of three, in the bathroom scrubbing her face to remove her color, represent a pain that still is difficult to grasp. To me it was a new shock to learn that small children in Norwegian kindergartens and schools have from somewhere learned to distinguish and stigmatize their peers by their complexion. I assume there is no need to go into detail on the effect of receiving the bad news un-packed at early age, alone. Also, I guess there is no need to express the thrill we all felt sitting up all night on Election Day to see the Obama’s entering the stage of what we like to believe is a new era.The hope is that the president will succeed with his mission, so that to be black will be the beneficiary of great inheritance, and no burden. But a fact of life that is style in its own right. In our globalized village that is an integrated part of the solution of ending wars and the effect of climate change: color blindness and all that goes with it
