THE NON-EXISTENT AFRICAN POLITICAL COMMUNITY IN AMERICA

As I sat down to think about his questions and the fact that the African community is quite lacking in all these areas, I began to understand how our culture of entitlement because we are educated, our ego to be recognized for our accomplishments, our laziness and anathema to being acclimatized to realities of our surroundings and situations, our glorification of what we would have been if we were back in our respective countries, our faked elitism in looking down and thinking we are better and brighter than our brothers and sisters in this country, and finally our egregious sin and stupidity in believing that we should be given something for nothing rather than work for that something, have all combined to this prostrate state.  Unfortunately for us, that’s not how the system works in this country.

THE NON-EXISTENT AFRICAN POLITICAL COMMUNITY

A Keynote Address by Dr. Chika A. Onyeani
Author, “Capitalist Nigger: The Road to Success - A Spider Web Doctrine”
Author, “The Broderbond Conspiracy”
Host, “Straight Talk on the All Africa Radio”
Fellow of the New York Times Institute for Journalists, New York, USA
Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of the award-winning African Sun Times, USA

on

“THE 2008 US ELECTIONS AND THE AFRICAN COMMUNITY”

By The

THE NIGERIAN PEOPLES FORUM-USA (Delaware Valley Chapter”

on the 48TH NIGERIAN INDEPENDENCE ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATIONS
Saturday, September 27, 2008 at the Marriott Hotel, Trenton, NJ

Honored Guests

Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen:

Good evening. I wish you join me in wishing a happy 48th Independence Anniversary to our great country Nigeria.  As much as we like to criticize her, we all still know that home sweet home.  So, join me in saying hip hip hooray, hip hip hooray to Nigeria.

I want to thank Dr. Ugorji O. Ugorji, somebody I have had a great respect for, that in the last 12 years or so, I began calling him the ‘young governor,’ and my respect has increased even further that I recently started addressing him as the ‘old governor,’ because then he would have been the youngest governor in Nigeria if he had gone ahead and did what was destined for him.  But now, we have all these brash, some crude younger guys who are loaded with billions of Naira just waiting for him to step foot in Nigeria so that they could buy all the votes and declare themselves winners.  But the sobriquet stands.

I want to also thank the Nigerian Peoples Forum for inviting me to be the Keynote Speaker at this august event.  It is an great honor I treasure.  I have been asked to speak on the “US Elections and the African Community.” It seems I have been offered the opportunity to hone my delivery as this would be necessary when I also deliver a keynote address in London in 10 days to a group of over 300 hungry African and Caribbean entrepreneurs on empowering them to reach the next level in diaspora wealth accumulation.

Before addressing this topic, and since this is billed as an bi-partisan event, I wish to declare that I am Barack Obama and I am also John McCain and we both approve this message.  We declare that as far as the US Elections of 2008 are concerned, the so-called African Community is non-existent, it is AWOL, MIA, does not understand its right from its left or vice versa. While other communities have organized, and are visible in the two campaigns, Africans have taken it on faith that the two candidates whoever wins the White House would allocate this largesse to Africa.  They forget it takes money to win elections, they forget it takes a committed group of volunteers (volunteers meaning civic non-paid work), making phone calls, canvassing your neighborhoods, printing and distributing fliers, making time to be at rallies, yes winning elections takes all these and many more.  That’s how we feel about the African community and US politics.  Unless, of course, Barack, you have seen them, after all they are your people.  There you go John, I don’t say the same about your Irish people.

About a month ago, I received a call from a journalism student from the Columbia School of Journalism.  I didn’t know he would be mentioned at the Africa-America Institute event honoring President Armando Guebuza of Mozambique.  Another student who had interviewed me had referred him to an interview that a correspondent with CNN had done with me.  Basically they wanted to ascertain where was the African community when it comes to getting things done politically, was there a central organization that Africans have formed specifically for lobbying politicians to bring services to our communities.

In fact, one of the cases this journalism student brought up was the case of the fire that ravaged a building owned by an African in a section of the Bronx, a New York City borough.  He wanted to find out what the community had done in preventing a recurrence.  In the face of that great tragedy, which took the lives of a mother and 10 children, what was it that the community had done in working with City Hall, apart from the initial flurry of activities then, in making sure that our people were educated about the dangers inherent in what had happened in that fire?

To tell you the truth I was stumped for answers and more than ashamed that the community is not doing anything to address the questions and concerns he raised.  As if I wasn’t already shamed enough, he then lobbed more questions at me about the current US elections and what the community was doing about it. Were there some political action committees (PACs) we had formed to support either Obama or McCain.  When he mentioned John McCain’s name, he noted that I chuckled.  Asked why, I replied that if he found an African Republican party member, he should let me know.  Well sure enough, in the article he wrote and emailed to me, he included quotes from three African Republicans.  Sad enough they were all Ghanaians.

As I sat down to think about his questions and the fact that the African community is quite lacking in all these areas, I began to understand how our culture of entitlement because we are educated, our ego to be recognized for our accomplishments, our laziness and anathema to being acclimatized to realities of our surroundings and situations, our glorification of what we would have been if we were back in our respective countries, our faked elitism in looking down and thinking we are better and brighter than our brothers and sisters in this country, and finally our egregious sin and stupidity in believing that we should be given something for nothing rather than work for that something, have all combined to this prostrate state.  Unfortunately for us, that’s not how the system works in this country.

We are caught up in the cocoon of our archaic African tribalistic inclinations.  You remember how during the Kenyan crisis, how the Kikuyus were no longer proud of Obama as a native son because his father originated from the Luo ethnic group.  We have thousands of organizations based on ethnicity (tribalism is a word I try to avoid).  The main function of most of these organizations is an utility as an avenue of validating our importance, how many ph.ds we have, how many chieftaincy titles we have acquired (in the case of the Igbo in Nigeria, whose republicanism as a way of life is well-known but now have more chiefs that subjects).  By the way, I am a culprit, I have two titles.  Although I can justify my lineage for these titles, it doesn’t stop me from proclaiming what a joke these titles have become.  The organizations are used by its leaders as a way of securing political positions or contracts back in their respective countries.  If these organizations are incapable of providing basic services to its members, which essentially they don’t do, how do you expect them of forming political action committees.

In fact, if it weren’t so tragic, it would be comical, the number of our people who make the pilgrimage back home whenever there is election to pretend to be “contesting for this office of that office.” We have had an emeritus chairman and organizer of that department, in his early seventies, who decided to return to Abia state in Nigeria, to run for the chairmanship of his local government area.  Imagine, his local government area, trying to compete with the young thugs, who are surrounded even with younger violently armed vagabonds.  Of course, they killed him.  Or that of the chairman of the agricultural department at Harvard University who also decided to go home and was mowed down as well.  Some have not fared as worse as these two people, but nevertheless have rushed back to America all bruised with machete cuts or gun shots.

The irrational part of these decisions is how individuals as I said earlier who don’t even know where the City Hall is located in their cities all of a sudden feel they are qualified to run for big offices back home.  It is nothing but that “culture of entitlement because we are educated” that bamboozles us into these decisions.  Worst of all, a lot of the so-called candidates are even unable to have a three square mail a day, but from somewhere or from stupid friends and family members, they gather $10,000 and feel they could just walk back home and take over from the people who have devoted all their lives building the people infrastructure and relationship necessary for sustain a winning campaign.  When I hear or look at some these “candidates,” I am apoplexed with laughter.

The other mix in my observation is how emotional we bcome on political issues either in this country or back home, the “my way or the high road,” syndrome, and inability to practice pragmatism in our politics.  Everyday, you open the blogsphere, and see the kind of rantings going on, how because of perceived slight or criticism we shouldn’t this or do that.  I remember the fierceness immediately Obama won the nomination of the Democratic Party as their candidate for the presidency.  There was a chorus of voices opposed to Obama selecting Senator Clinton as his vice-presidential candidate because of the slimy and kitchen-sink attacks Clinton had thrown at Obama during the primaries.  But there were a few of us who argued for a calmer voice that all in politics is fair, that if you couldn’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. 

My tke on that issue of Obama choosing Clinton I articulated in these words: “So, I vote for our keeping our eyes on the prize - POTUS, and despite all denials, I am happy that Obama is beginning to see the clear sky now that the fog has cleared.  I don’t see another candidate that could help him win easily as Senator Hillary Rdoham Clinton could, and I vote for her as the vice-presidential candidate to Senator Barack Obama.  It is a winning combination that is formidable.” Could have avoided the “Hail Mary” thrown by John McCain with his Sarah Palin pick? Well, only the morning of November 5th will tell. 

Which brings me back to the topic at hand and I must note how this election between Obama and McCain is shaping, how different groups and different organizations are lining up behind their respective candidates.  And how effectively some have used very little money to create viral advertisements.  I am sure you remember the so-called “celebrity” ad, made by the McCain campaign with very little money, but because of the narrative of the ad was mentoned more than a million times by MSM (main stream media), cable, radio and others, giving the ad millions of dollars in free ads.

On Wednesday this week, the New York Times carried an article about one of those little known organizations called the ‘527s’.  The ad, the paper said, linked Obama with disgraced Mayor Kwame M. Kilpatrick and Obama’s former Jeremiah Wright.  Just tell me what connection Obama has with Kilpatrick, except being Democrats.  The Times article went on to say how with just $60,000 this organization has targeted so-called blue-collar Democrats in a heavily white area.  The point here is not that the ad is viciously attacking Obama, but because the paper of record as the New York Times has come to be known, other papers will follow its lead and begin looking into the impact of this ad.  Their lies its virality, spending less and getting the maximum publicity for it.  What this goes to show is that with very little money, a group could make a huge difference in this election. 

So what is it that the African community could do to energize itself towards becoming more pro-active in this year’s electoral process, as dire as it is only effectively five weeks away from election day?  Is it too late for the community to form PACs?  The answer is yes, maybe not.  But I know we can do other things within this very short period.  I can say with certainty that at least a million of us have lived here, naturalized as citizens or are green card holders.  It doesn’t really matter which camp you are in.

The first step is making up your mind who you are supporting based on their positions on issues of concern to you.  Then, you need to contact that candidate’s campaign.  You can volunteer to come in and help send out mails, make phone calls, go into the neighborhoods and canvass, pass out literatures.  You need to talk to other Africans to find out whether they want to join you in raising money for your candidate.  In this day and age, I believe everybody has access to the internet, in other words you could easily find out where to send your money.  But in this short period, all we can do is send our money to the campaigns.  The ideal would have been to form a PAC, take out advertisement that would generate a buzz and get the African community in the news for doing something meaningful.

Let the African community stop acting like zombies.  As the New York Lottery advertisements says, “you need to be in it to win it.”

Again, I thank Dr. Ugorji for reaching out to me, I the Nigerian Peoples Forum, Delaware Chapter to providing with this platform to say what is on my mind, and I thank you all for istening.  Good evening. 

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