Can Obama Live?

This guest article is written by Tomiko Ballantyne

I have been very frustrated by my fellow black people in recent months. If I had a dollar for every time someone’s said to me, “They going to assassinate Obama,” I could probably afford a new pair of Jimmy Choos. I will not say white folks have not had these thoughts too, but this commentary is about taking my own African-descended kin to task.

One time, I was headed to a barbeque in Oakville, Ontario. I was in a vehicle with three other black women and an Indo-Canadian driver. He stayed silent while I admonished one of the chicks for saying “Obama gonna get shot” from the back seat when the US elections were mentioned. I tried to impress upon her the danger of that kind of thinking. She laughed me off with an, “Oh, it’s really not that deep, fam.” As soon as Obama won the nod a friend sent an e-mail to my Trinidad Carnival crew saying, “Congrats Barack. Hahahahaha, how soon he going and dead?” To which I responded, “But why do you want him dead?”

Another time from my own cousin: “You see these people? Did you see Amadou Diallo? Sean Bell? JFK? MLK? Malcolm X? Let’s see how long Obama lasts.”

I try to force optimism into my life. The Lord’s Prayer is a fresh morning start. Grace before meals rids my food of any evil that may have gone into its preparation. “I am a winner in love,” reminds me that I am worthy of romance and affection. From my close friend I have adopted the phrase “relax, relate, release” to overcome struggles of varying sizes.

But I worry about the availability of happiness, confidence and optimism as go-to, reliable emotions among blacks. What happened to hopeful resilience? What happened to the unashamed and unabashed dreaming that we used to do? Do enough of us genuinely buy into Obama’s theme of hope?

Why are we are placing under the table bets on when Obama’s assassination date will be?

That black people are depressed, disillusioned and troubled is old news. Psychoanalysts have shown the different ways in which freedom to live each moment as a free being on the earth is endemic to basic happiness and hope. Yet, society seems to insist that it is the end, or transcendence, as Heidegger would describe it, towards which humanity strives. Life is not lived in the idealistic – for that would produce a one sided view of happiness. The indeterminacy, creativity and uncertainty is where true beauty lies. This is humanity. To modern philosophers who want to push past ideas of good and evil, this is Blackness. Blackness is humanity that rails against any conceptual barbarisms. Blackness should remind us that we are alive.

So why, when we finally have the chance to change the face of Blackness in our own minds – we squander the opportunity? Why, when we have the chance to transcend Blackness as necessarily mired in negativity – something we know is false – do we deny our chance?

Obama’s life will abolish skewed notions of Black authenticity. Thus far, the study of Blackness has been relegated to the externalities of belonging and less to the authenticity of being. Yet, in not rejecting our black identity as outside of a normative representation of America by saying, “They gonna shoot him,” we ignore the possibilities of understanding the ethical implications of our actions.

Will we genuinely let him reinstate hope?

As Stuart Hall has urged in years past – will we let him find a new position from which blacks can collectively speak? Can we create a new America in our image? Can we re-imagine citizenship – never fully disaggregated from the history of Transatlantic Slavery – as normatively of African descent in America?

Hillary seemed to be really getting off on it. When she made her implications about Obama’s impending doom we got pissed. When white people talk shit, we emotionally bleed. Smoke comes out of our ears. Yet, I often wonder if I am the only one agitated by the fact that we as black people seem resigned to our fates. Before he won the nomination, I heard black people say, “Obama should wait this one out. Let someone else clean up George Bush’s mess so that way his term, the one after Hillary’s, can be a smoother ride. If he has too many bumps, there could be too many bullets.” Some folks still think that if a black person is doing too well, the rest of us will pay the tax. I know some black folks, living and working in South Carolina, who felt their world was a bit frostier in February after Obama’s big win in January. Many felt the need to celebrate in silence. Do we have a price to pay between now and November and are we willing to pay it? I do not know. For me, this is a scary way to think.

I do not have to tell you about black people collectively suffering from Stockholm Syndrome and the idea of identifying with oppressors. When will we have our catharsis? How long will we remain beholden to the idea that our own bodies are not human? Furthermore, when will we realise that our own fingers are on the trigger? Why are we not willing to fight for his life instead of imagining his death? Why are we not celebrating his life instead?

Literally, can Obama live?

We have to believe that America is ready for a non-stupid president, regardless of his race. We, black people, have to normalize the idea that a black man can be in charge, as easy as David Axelrod did. We cannot be preoccupied with the train wreck of this man’s future. We should be aware of the snakes (Hi, Hillary! Hi, Hater!) in Obama’s grass, and our own. However, every one of us supporting him will still have to fight for him. Moreover, fighting is not enough – you have to smile, kiss babies, host barbecues, and dream big for him. If you back him, imagine his electoral win. If you care about him, imagine his candidacy and fantastic term. Imagine the black president as successful as any other. Imagine his presidency as perfectly normal.

Tomiko Ballantyne is a Phd Student at Princeton University studying 20th Century Caribbean History. Her focus is on Caribbean Carnivals in Diaspora, and she is currently researching her dissertation on Caribana while in absentia in Toronto